Wightman Farm (Swanholme)

Now a housing subdivision for which construction began in 1988, this was until then the site of a grand “plantation” founded by George Wightman. Wightman settled in North Kingstown in the 1660s, married well, and eventually amassed 2,000 acres comprising parts of what is now North Kingstown, Exeter, and Westerly. The family residence began as a three-bay, two-story “chimney-ender”: chimney to the west, with the original second-story overhang still visible under the gable of the eastern end. The addition of two more bays to the east, probably in the late eighteenth century, converted the three-bay house to the standard five-bay type, with the chimney now approximately centered. Another two bays added to the west in the nineteenth century brought the house to its present form. The original seventeenth-century interior contains an unusual treatment of the overmantel of the great room as a series of ornamental shelves, with much paneling of the period.