• Norfolk Crowds Return to New Farmers Market

    By Andra Moss The crowd was large, loud and loving it at July’s Northwest Farm to Fork farmers market, held under the pavilion at Norbrook Farm Brewery. “We were very pleased with the turnout, with approximately 230 customers coming through and 16 food and farm vendors,” says Lisa Auclair, a co-founder, with Devin Grosso and […]

  • Friday Night on the Green Celebrates America’s 250th

    July 3 was a picture-perfect night for the community-wide event cel-ebrating America’s Independence. Following a quick parade, picnickers enjoyed burgers and ice cream while judges dug into the entries in the pie baking contest. First Selectman Hen-ry Tirrell moved seamlessly from his welcome speech to the dunk tank, and a few folks, like Pete Sanders […]

  • NORFOLK REMEMBERS Laurene Mary Wallace

    Laurene Mary Wallace, 77, of Colebrook passed peacefully at home surrounded by her family on Friday, July 10, 2026. Laurene was born on April 28, 1949, in Bridgeport, the last of four children born to the late Lawrence and Irene (Misencik) Firmender of Stratford. A retired registered nurse, Laurene’s career in nursing and cardiac rehabilitation […]

  • Norfolk Remembers Sally Sterling Ellis Quale

    Sally Sterling Ellis Quale, of Norfolk and St. Petersburg, Fla., formerly of Bronxville, N.Y., died unexpectedly of heart failure on July 7 at the age of 87. Sally will be remembered for her deep commitment to her family and communities and for her warmth, kindness, intelligence, creativity … and, of course, for her beautiful smile […]

  • Norfolk Then…

    This charming house, still standing on the west side of Litchfield Rd., was built in 1905 for Richmond Paine, the newly appointed conductor of the Litchfield County Choral Union (LCCU). Carl and Ellen Battell Stoeckel engaged the architect Ehrick Rossiter to design the house for Paine as well as the Music Shed for performances by […]

  • Norfolk’s Newest Neighborhood Puts Down Roots

    Haystack Woods lauded as a “model for the state” By Joe Kelly Norfolk’s newest neighborhood, the Haystack Woods affordable housing development, has officially come to life. A year ago, the 39-acre location—a former gravel pit off Old Colony Road—was little more than a muddy building site. Now construction of the 10, two- and three-bedroom homes […]

  • Winsted Church Auctions Tiffany Window for $1.25 Million

    Sale highlights women’s role in Tiffany designs By Joe Kelly When medieval architects found ways to build taller cathedrals, the techniques they developed also made possible the enormous stained-glass windows that we so enjoy today, such as at Chartres and Sainte-Chapelle in France and Canterbury Cathedral in England. American-made stained glass is more recent, dating […]

  • A Revolutionary Year

    1776 Norfolk explored in summer exhibition By Andra Moss Communities across the country are looking back with wonder at 1776, the year that 13 British colonies initiated a revolution that, against astonishing odds, led to the birth of an independent republic. In Norfolk, two curators have combed the Norfolk Historical Society’s (NHS) collection for colonial-era […]

  • SUMMER MUSIC: Familiar Quartets, New Composers at Yale Chamber Festival

    By Patricia Platt The Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, running from July 3 until Aug. 22, will present an exciting season of classical, innovative and international music. This summer, the Brentano Quartet, Shanghai Quartet, Ying Quartet and the Horszowski Trio are among those who will perform during weekend concerts and serve as artist-in-residence mentors to the […]

  • Botelle Students Move Up

    By Avice Meehan Four sixth graders bid farewell to Botelle Elementary School at a laughter-filled, but occasionally serious, ceremony on June 16 that was attended by family, friends and town officials. First Selectmen Henry Tirrell, a Botelle graduate whose mother and aunt taught at the school for many years, reminded the students that they would […]

  • Norfolk Rail-Trail Project Pedals Forward

    By Jude Mead After more than a decade of planning, permiting and redesign work, Norfolk’s long-await-ed Rails-to-Trails initiative has reached a major milestone, bringing the community closer to the creation of a new multi-use recreational trail along a historic railroad corridor. The project is the North Brook Trail, a planned three-quarter-mile ADA-accessi-ble pathway that will […]

  • LEGISLATIVE UPDATE: Budgets, Beetles, Nips and More

    By Avice Meehan State Rep. Maria Horn came prepared to share details about the Connecticut budget (she is co-chair of the legislature’s Joint Finance Committee) and the progress that has been made toward paying down the state’s unfunded pension liability, increasing the rainy day fund (now up to $18 billion) and allocating more state funds […]

Articles

State Education Bill Makes Ripples in Norfolk

Decrease in state’s funding for Botelle possible By Wiley Wood When the U.S. Department of Education parceled out $4.35 billion in 2010 to states whose schools showed measurable student gains, Connecticut failed to qualify. Its three neighbors—Massachusetts, New York, and Rhode Island—received almost $1 billion between them. The Education Reform Bill pushed through the Connecticut […]

Scouting for a Contiguous Wilderness

Norfolk Land Trust pursues purchase of Grantville Road property By Colleen Gundlach A 1957 newspaper clipping reported that the Bridgeport Area Girl Scout Old Timers Association sponsored a benefit card party to raise money “toward buying several acres of land for the new Girl Scout camp, Iwakta, at Norfolk,” to add to the small tract […]

Havemeyer Receives Doctorate

A degree 30 years in the making By Lindsey Pizzica Rotolo There’s a new doctor in town.  Not a general practitioner, but tireless Norfolk Historical Society Curator Ann Havemeyer, who received her Ph.D. from Yale University at their graduation ceremony on May 21. Her 250-page dissertation, “An Architect of Place and the Village Beautiful: Alfredo […]

More Healthy Life Choices Open to Norfolk residents

Joel Howard Norfolk is undergoing a fitness craze. From Pilates to yoga to Zumba at church, people have more venues to pump it up and shake it out than seen in the recent history of this town. A unique link in this chain is 7day recreationalists, a holistically designed exercise program devised by partners and […]

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. Well, Almost

Town budget promises an inconsequential hike in taxes By Lloyd Garrison Norfolk’s Board of Finance Chairman, J. Michael Sconyers, may be no Santa Claus, but with a creative shift of funds from one column of the budget to another, he has given the town something to cheer about come tax time in 2012. The budget […]

New Arrest Warrants Issued in Curling Club Arson Case

Defendants charged with tampering with pump station valves By Lloyd Garrison There was supposed to be another hearing last week in Litchfield Superior Court to advance the case of the State vs. Mathew Carey and Kyle Majewski, but nothing went right for the two 19 year olds accused of multiple felonies that led to the […]

Lecture Offered on Conservation of Sandy Brook

An ambitious plan to protect the Sandy Brook watershed, a 17-mile expanse of land that crosses northeastern Norfolk as well as parts of Colebrook, Sandisfield, and other surrounding towns, is being spearheaded by Aton Forest. A broad coalition of land-preservation groups, municipalities, and landowners will be called on to bring this effort, known as the […]

Curling Club Starts to Rebuild

Fundraising Gears Up as Plans for New Curling House Go Out to Builders By Wiley Wood The rubble is gone. A long slab of concrete, painted with targets on either end and lying in a vacant lot on Golf Drive, is all that remains of the Norfolk Curling Club, which was torched by arsonists last […]

Colebrook-Norfolk School Merger Gets a Fresh Look

Joint Study Committee Holds First Meeting By Bob Bumcrot With primary-school enrollments projected to decline and per-student costs expected to rise over the next decade, a study committee has been formed to examine the possibility of a merger between the Norfolk and Colebrook schools. A first public meeting was held on April 10 at the […]

Stopping the Cycle of Abuse Through Communal Effort

Susan B. Anthony Project Serves Northwest Corner Towns By Colleen Gundlach When geese fly, their formation allows each individual member to be pulled along and uplifted by the drafts of air created by the bird flying in front. When a goose is sick or injured, other geese leave the formation to provide assistance. These simple […]

Norfolk Farmers Market Starts Season

Several New Vendors and Many Old Favorites By Wiley Wood There’s always a reason to go to the Norfolk Farmers Market on a Saturday when the sun is shining. It’s a place to walk a dog where it will be admired, to commission a copper weathervane or to buy a crusty loaf of sourdough and […]

Lily Bernstein Wins National Writing Award

Norfolk resident Lily Bernstein, a sixth-grader at Botelle, entered a national essay contest this winter at the urging of her homeroom teacher, Kim DeDominicis. More than 1900 other students from around the country joined the competition, which is sponsored annually by the BIC Corporation. Bernstein won a runner-up prize. For her 200-word essay, she will […]