photo/Chad Frisbie

Cruising up Route 9 in Falmouth, I tried to imagine that my van was an 18th century stagecoach creaking toward the Bucknam Inn. Stagecoach passengers sought food and shelter there on northbound journeys from Boston. Now a padlocked dump, the inn at 258 Middle Rd. offers no cozy fire — just the slow burn of decay.

Built in Greek Revival style, this two-and-a-half-story house was erected between 1770 and 1790. Its rotten clapboard walls reek like a compost pile. But at least it hasn’t completely collapsed, like the shed out back.

For a split second in 2006, the Falmouth Historical Society considered buying the three-quarter-acre parcel the inn sits upon and renovating the structure to make it their headquarters. The property’s tax-assessed value is just over $142,000, but the cost of renovations was bound to send the price of the project through the roof. The Society opted to occupy a farmhouse on Blueberry Lane, instead.

The old inn’s owner and former occupant, Jane Forsyth, lives in Massachusetts these days. She declined to comment about the property, which has been in her family for nearly 100 years, according to her son, who declined to provide additional details.

A Forsyth family member will occasionally come up from the Bay State to mow the lawn, but not a soul has inhabited the building since the 1980s, said neighbor Kathleen Daigle. That is, assuming raccoons don’t have souls. (A raccoon couple apparently decided the attic was a good place to raise litters. Daigle said she saw them carrying baby ’coons in and out of the shattered attic windows for years.)

Neighbors worry that the inn’s decline will run one of Falmouth’s oldest standing structures into the ground. “It’s a shame to see it let go like that,” said neighbor Bob Wilson. “I’d love to see something happen to it.”

Cindy Gustavson lives across the road. She said she “doesn’t mind the old look of the house,” but wishes the plastic tarps used to cover a shredded side of the structure would stop blowing into the road. “It’s a rather beautiful building,” she said. “It would be nice if the walls could talk.”

The walls wouldn’t tell me anything, but the neighbors had tales to spin. Legend has it that a guest at the Bucknam Inn once went insane and decapitated his companion. He chucked the guy’s head out an attic window. Since then, whenever a new pane is installed in that window, it shatters soon afterwards — cursed by the flying cranium.

Now it seems the curse has spread to nearly every window in the house. White curtains blowing out of broken panes waved me off like ghosts. Whether caused by hocus pocus or pure neglect, the Bucknam Inn’s deterioration may soon preclude any opportunity to salvage this unique example of Falmouth’s heritage.

Let’s not throw the house out with the head.

— Chad Frisbie

About this series…

That’s My Dump! is dedicated to investigating run-down and/or abandoned properties in the Portland area. Stumped by a dump in your neighborhood? E-mail dump hunter Chad Frisbie at chad@thebollard.com, and maybe he’ll poke around that one next.