The Kearsarge Regional School District, to which New London belongs, opened a new Middle School in March, 2008. This $25 million facility in Sutton, NH, replaces the New London Central School, which had been expanded to create the regional middle school. The fate of its New London campus is uncertain.
On October 12, 1942, the $80,000 New London Central School was dedicated after a year of construction. It replaced a smaller school at the Four Corners (Main & Pleasant intersection). Facing Ervin Edmunds's IGA store, Bill Kidder's Garage, and Tracy Memorial Library, the old building sat vacant. Paint peeled. Windows broke.
The first one-room schoolhouse at the Four Corners was built in 1804 at a cost of $140. By 1854, the Superintendent reported that "the schoolhouses in some of the districts are bad beyond endurance," and in 1862 the original District #3 schoolhouse was finally sold and moved down South Pleasant Street. A larger, one-room schoolhouse was built in its place. This served the neighborhood until 1906, when a four-room building was needed to accommodate the consolidation of three district schools—made possible by improved transportation over New London's hills. In 1932, when local high school students could no longer attend Colby Academy, they were moved into the two upper-story classrooms in this building, which was at once overcrowded.
In 1942, the New London Central School was constructed on land behind Main Street after the previously selected site was abandoned. All proposals for using the old school building failed, and the public "eyesore" was razed in 1948. Its salvaged materials were used to construct the Professional Building (today's WNTK) on Newport Road. Once the terms of Ezekiel Sargent's 1829 property deed were modified, the central Town Parking Lot was created.
[Newspaper articles courtesy of the New London Town Archives.]