At Home
in the Fitch Tavern
Lea Ann and Michael Knight
Quite literally, visitors encounter an immediate sign at Lea Ann and Michael Knight's home on Great Road that it's very old and has a storied past. It says, ''Bedford Minutemen, Line of March, April 19, 1775."
But it's the room just past the entryway that really makes the point. Even among the region's most seasoned homes, not many living rooms have a fireplace with pothooks for hanging kettles, warming cabinets to maintain food temperatures, and a bread oven.
There's a cooking fireplace in the dining room, too, a dark area lit by one lamp with the aid of candles. In the center is a reproduction of a long, narrow, 18th-century dining table. On one side is the former owners' antique minister's bench; on the other are authentic 1700s chairs the Knights owned before they bought the house. (''They were just waiting for the perfect home," Lea Ann says.) With countless wooden ceiling beams and walls made with wide King's Pine wood, it is the room most representative of the home's early past, when it was Fitch Tavern.
Built in 1710, the house was sold to the Fitch family, who opened the tavern in 1770. Meals were served, the Knights surmise, in what is now the living room, and drinks were drawn in the taproom -- what is now the dining room. One of its most auspicious meals was a breakfast of cold mush and warm ale for the Bedford Minutemen the morning they hurried off to battle in Concord.
In the 1850s, the owners built a new kitchen and several guest rooms down a narrow rear hallway, and then built an annex for their law offices in the 1890s, a wing now occupied by the Knights' nanny. Lea Ann, 43, an investment representative of Edward Jones Investment, and Michael, 42, an investment advisor for a large Boston firm, have three daughters: Kate, 6, Nina, 4, and Anna, 17 months.
The Knights relocated from Newton a year ago and are slowly refurbishing to highlight the home's past. ''Having a young family, it's got to be livable here too. You're living in a very old house," says Michael, ''but you don't want to destroy the history."
They have updated the heating and cooling systems and removed all wallpaper installed by the prior owners. It was ''too Victorian," says Lea Ann. Instead, they painted the walls authentic colors and added window treatments Michael designed after researching the period in art books. They also repaired and refinished several wooden floors, finding it impossible to replace the King's Pine.
Their yellow Labrador retriever, Spencer, likes the house but not the strange, squat spiral staircase in the entryway. So he restricts himself to the first floor of this four-story home. The two second-story rooms, now the master bedroom and large den, were once used by overnight visitors, several of whom slept in one room. The original bedrooms on the third floor are now occupied by the children, and the former attic is a finished playroom.
Although the kitchen was renovated in the 1950s, the Knights plan to return it to its original feel. Still, Lea Ann emphasizes, all renovations are ''liberal in our interpretation of the period. It is a reflection of who we are."
''We fell in love with the house and all its charms and quirks," she recalls.
Indeed, it has nooks and crannies, back and front staircases. Even without the nanny quarters, it contains seven bedrooms and three bathrooms, one with a claw-foot tub. The central chimney supports seven working fireplaces.
The fourth non-Finch owners, the Knights continue a tradition passed on through the years: They open their historic home for breakfast for the Bedford Minutemen every Patriot's Day, and periodically to schoolchildren and local organizations, including a holiday house tour sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce.
The final surprise in this historic home: Sneak into a back closet, lift a specific floorboard, slide down into the basement and through a portion of the Underground Railway where slaves once escaped to safety in a barn across the street. Today, that location houses the Bedford Police Station.