288 Shaker Road Canterbury, New Hampshire 03224 Phone: 603-783-9511 Fax: 603-783-9362

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You are purchasing a Family pack (value $42) for half price! Good for up to 2 adults and up to 3 children thru 7/31/2010.

Canterbury Shaker Village is a place for learning, reflection and renewal of the human spirit! The Village is open daily from 10:00am-5:00pm

Canterbury Shaker Village is one of the oldest, most typical and most well-preserved of the Shaker communities. It boasts the only intact, first-generation 18th-century Meetinghouse and Dwelling House, both on their original sites.

Many of the Shaker communities were similar in size and layout. The Shakers constructed functional self-contained villages organized as urban streetscapes in rural areas.

Many early-nineteenth-century visitors were impressed by the density of buildings at the Canterbury Village. At one point during the 1820s, the community consisted of four organizational units, known as "families": the Church family (so named because the Meetinghouse was located there) and the Second, North and West Families. Each family had its own set of buildings; in all, the four families built approximately 100 structures for themselves. The location and layout of these buildings can be seen on a monumental, detailed map completed about 1848 by Henry Clay Blinn, a Canterbury Elder. By 1848, nearly 300 Shakers lived at Canterbury.

Three basic buildings form the basis of every Shaker community. The Meetinghouse represented the center of religious activities. The Dwelling House embodied the center of Shaker home and social life. The Trustees' Office was where the Shakers conducted their business with the "world's people."

There are 25 original and several reconstructed buildings at Canterbury Shaker Village.