About Our New Hampshire Inn

The Bedford Village Inn & Restaurant was built around a farmhouse that dates from Bedford’s agricultural heyday. The building’s fine condition attests to years of gentle use, but this site has quite a history.

"The Gordon Farm", as the Village Inn grounds are called in early town records, was originally part of a large parcel granted to one John McLaughlin, the first Town Clerk of Bedford. McLaughlin subdivided his parcel, selling a fifty-acre corner to neighbor Samuel Gordon, whose younger brother John Gordon cleared the land in 1774 and raised most of his fourteen children there.

His oldest son, Josiah, built the present Federal farmhouse in 1810; in 1832, a "granddaughter of John Gordon" married Dr. Peter P. Woodbury, MD, who practiced in Bedford for many years and helped write an early history of the town in 1850. The Gordon Farm was passed between the Gordons and Woodburys until 1940, when Judge Peter Woodbury sold the place to Henry and Olga Wheeler, who in turn sold it to "Gentleman Farmers" Ralph and Sybil Fletcher in the mid-1950s. The Fletchers subsequently sold the old pasturage on the opposite side of Route 101.

During this time, the original farm had grown from 50 to almost 350 acres. With the decline in farming and the increased activity in residential and infrastructure development, the original farm estate was preserved at 5 1/2 acres by 1980. In 1981, the "farm" was purchased with the intention of renovating the house as a Restaurant, and the old livestock barn as the Inn. Over the next three years, the owners worked with the Committee to Save Fletcher Farm - a coalition of like-minded citizens and Bedford Planning Board members - to rezone the property for use as a "Class A Inn and Restaurant." Two years of delicate preservation work and substantial new construction began in the summer of 1984, with the Restaurant opening in August 1985 and the Inn opening in October 1986.

The wedding of old and new adds grace with function and defines the special appeal of the Bedford Village Inn and Restaurant. Semi-private rooms in the Restaurant feature the main house’s original working fireplaces. The barn has been transformed into three floors of entertainment and lodging space for the Inn. Featuring original post and beam construction, the original milking room has become a lounge area for the Inn guests. Original and reproduction antiques, woodwork, and wallpaper round out the existing structures, making the Inn and Restaurant a fine approximation of Federal Era splendor - with all the modern conveniences.

Jack & Andrea Carnevale are the proud owners of The Bedford Village Inn. Throughout their ownership, the couple has succeeded in attracting local and national recognition for the quaintness of the facility and the world- class cuisine served in their award-winning Restaurant.
- Research by Doris Peck Spurway, Bedford Historical Society