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Community Corner

Mixing Mystery, History: Putnam's Stone Chambers

No one is 100 percent certain as to when the structures were built, who built them and what purpose they served.

Years ago, Brewster resident David Simington would often walk the woods of Putnam County, never giving much thought to the stone structures he came across.

But that all changed one day nearly two decades ago, when he got to reading up on the culture and language of Medieval Culdee Monks. He saw a striking resemblance to their religious structures and the more-than 160 stone chambers strategically constructed into hillsides and near bodies of water throughout Putnam.

Today, Simington still visits those sites, which are part of what the New England Antiques Research Association says is the largest collection in the Northeast. National news articles, online photo galleries, websites  and even Facebook fan pages are dedicating to unearthing the origins behind this slice of North American history.

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While Simington has narrowed his beliefs down to two popular theories, other researchers back a third idea, which involves farmers.

The structures were built in cylindrical or rectangular shapes, and are capped with large stone slabs. Stones are laid one by one in a drywall, almost bee-hive look, with each successive, or higher, layer of stone placed ever so slightly closer to the interior of the structure. The result is a structure tall enough for a person to stand in, long enough for a few people to sprawl out in and secluded enough that it would be hard to spot from afar.

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“I was fascinated," Simington said. "The top slabs hold the whole thing together. How many people did it take to lift those slabs into place?”

Generally, the structures are almost always associated with rivers or bodies of water, he said, adding that there are two main theories as to who built the chambers. The first theory is that they were built by colonists in either the 16th and 17th centuries, the second is that they were built by European and North African Celts during the Roman reign around 100 B.C.

With the second theory, Simington said, the Celts were in North America at the order of the Romans to select and retrieve oak trees.

"This was so that the Romans could build their ships because they took down the forests at the edge of the Mediterranean," he said. The Celts wrote on a number of the stones, he added, with Medieval alphabet called Ogham.

All of the sites, Simington said, face either east or west and have large gaps between stones so that the sun can enter.

It is theorized, he said, that this style of architecture allowed for the makers to keep track of the time and day, as the sun moved across the sky.

But Putnam County Deputy Historian Sallie Sypher said that the structures were built by farmers in the late 1700s and early 1800s.

Sypher says that the structures had a utilitarian purpose and that farmers had draft animals to do the work.

"All are on a road, not off in the woods," she said. "If you neglect those chambers, there is earth on top. They need to be are tended."

Many of the stone chambers sit near high-traffic areas in Putnam, such as at the intersection of Route 6 and Simpson Road. The structure is located in the middle of a driveway next to a large tree. Its entrance, although now boarded up, faces a New York City Watershed body of water. Covered in grass and mulch, it could be mistaken for a root cellar or an old storage site.

At another site not too far away, off of Farm-to-Market Road, a chamber lies next to a swamp. Created of large, 4-foot stones, it is approximately seven-feet-high and 20-feet-long inside. Giant, 10-foot-long slabs of rock lay across the top, with the middle rock enduring a huge crack through its center. Remnants of a relatively recent fire can be seen at the back, along with an old plastic Diet Coke bottle.

More modern-day signs are visible at other structures, too. Orange fencing has been placed around a chamber on Route 22.

Simington added that, to his knowledge, little anthropological research has been done around the stone chambers because nothing “of interest” has popped up on the surface.

“It would be interesting to see what could be found under the soil,” he said.

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