Enfield Shaker Museum

We went to a wedding here recently and it was just beyond belief. The wedding party and guests took up the whole great stone dwelling, and every room was beautiful. The construction of the place, the carpentry skills evident in the floor, the built-​ins, the shutters, all of it what you would expect from shakers.
Since we had the run of the place, we went exploring from top to bottom. From the bell tower (yeah, we rang the bell) to the stone arch foundations in the basement. We even wandered through an unlit room full of old spinning wheels (slightly spooky).
Across the road is the Shakers’ old stone mill, which sits alongside a creek. That’s where the wedding itself took place at sunset, and you couldn’t ask for a more peaceful and gorgeous setting.
Apart from the architecture and the history to learn, the Shaker museum is right next to some wooded hills, and there are trails to hike if you want to get out and stretch your legs.
I’d recommend this place for events, but also as a great place to stay if you’re traveling around New England.

Quick tip: I’ll give the Great Stone Dwelling a 5+ but the overall Shaker village gets a 2 due to the intrusion of private houses and an overall disorganization.
We slept one night in the Great Stone Dwelling (GSD), and it was fantastic. We appeared to be the only ones staying the night in the entire building and no workers were there. We were able to wander around the entire structure (except for locked exhibits) and really get to know the building and its beautiful architecture. What a fantastic opportunity!
But the next day was not nearly as good. We arrived for the included breakfast at nine o’clock but we waited for 15 minutes before a worker arrived. When it came to the tour, there was no tour guide working and a nice, chipper woman gave us a truncated and ill-​informed tour that really did not tell us anything about the Shakers or the Enfield community. The temp tour guide did the best she could, but it was really unfortunate that there wasn’t a tour guide with a passion about the subject.
Besides the GSD, most of the buildings were locked. One of the buildings had information and photos in the hallway, but when we went to open a door there was an exercise machine and boxes of stuff and a woman drinking diet Coke! There was no sign informing us that the building had residents. It was really awkward.
I highly recommend seeing the GSD, but hopefully someone comes along who can bring the village some much needed organization and shape things up. If we hadn’t slept there the night before and given the opportunity to explore the GSD, I would have been very unhappy with the services offered.