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| The not quite pristine beach at Watch Hill. |
From Westerly (below), we headed for Watch Hill, which is
famous for its gorgeous coastline and ocean views, endless sandy beach and
more recently, Taylor Swift’s $17.8 million coasty bungalow. Grampa Stephen
settled near Misquamicut Beach nearby in the late 1600s. A large Wilcox Farm
was carved from the woods here and by the 1700s, at Watch Hill, so I have to
wonder if the Swift estate might once have been ours. Hey, where do I
claim my share of the proceeds?
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| Ocean House Hotel, Watch Hill. |
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| Wilcox Tavern. |
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| Closed for the season, but heck, I'm first in line. |
Just up the coastal highway, another relic of our Wilcox
heritage, the Wilcox Tavern, sits adjacent to the highway. The building dates
to 1730 and began operating as a tavern around 1850. Though it is owned by
others now, the Tavern has operated for many years as a fine, colonial
restaurant. We were advised by other Rhode Islanders to for-sure have dinner there, but
alas, they’d already closed for the season.
I discovered that an annual event of interest, the Guy
Fawkes Bonfire, was to take place that evening at Misquamicut Beach, so we
headed there next. A kind of rock-and-roll outdoor musical Shakespearean theater ensued, put
on by local performers and non-performers alike, including a decent band
playing old classics that added much good humor to the script and ultimately to
the lighting of the bonfire. The fire commemorates the executed traitor who in
1605 tried to blow up the House of Lords with barrels of gunpowder and
overthrow King James. The botched exercise made Fawkes a folk hero among Catholics tiring of the King's oppression.
From there, we drove over the two big bridges to Newport and
found our motel for the night.
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