For many years, Lot 3A on George Street in Barrington was used for horseback riding, but about a few years ago, a developer purchased the land. The Warwick-based builder drew up plans for a large scale condominium complex on Lot 3A. 

Environmentalists, preservationists and others opposed the planned development, and some questioned the impact it would have on endangered diamondback terrapins which nest in that area. 

In 2019, hundreds of residents voted to approve the purchase of Lot 3A, which included 6.8 acres of open space on Nockum Hill. The land acquisition cost residents $1.125 million. 

“Shortly after the town bought the property, there was a meeting at the town hall where a bunch of people from the preservation society and the land trust met with Jim Cunha, who was the town manager at the time,” said Stephen Venuti, who has been part of the team studying the town-owned property. “We convinced the town that since you own the property, we’d actually like to look and see if we can find the meeting house. 

“There was an archeological firm in Connecticut that we knew about, which had a separate arm that was a 501c3 nonprofit, and they would do studies relatively cheaply. The town put up a couple thousand dollars, the preservation society put up a couple thousand dollars and we hired this team of archeologists called the Public Archeology Survey Team (PAST), and they came out here and they spent a couple days doing a study.”

Venuti said the first round of the work featured an extensive amount of metal-detecting. 

“What we did is we came out here and worked with the archeologists and they basically started at one end and worked to the other end,” he said. 

The group’s discoveries led to an American Battlefield Protection Program grant awarded to the town by the National Park Service, based on historical evidence suggesting that the site was the location of the flashpoint — the actual beginning — of King Philip’s War.

The group has secured a second grant also, and has plans for the money. 

“With our second grant we are trying to figure out a couple different things. Was there an approach that we can figure out — did they (the Native Americans) come from the west? Did they come from the north? Did they attack from the water? We don’t know, but with our second grant we are going to be doing a lot of metal detecting in the surrounding area to see if we can find that out,” Venuti said.