The Ram Pasture: Terra Cognita

Q: When is a piece of land not just a piece of land?

A: When it’s the Ram Pasture.

Most of the properties in Newtown’s 60 square miles have been claimed, reclaimed, divided, and subdivided over the past 300 years to accommodate the individual needs of its citizens. But one parcel was set aside by the town’s selectmen in 1732 for a collective use. In Newtown, the 18th Century farm town, sheep were a staple and as good a measure of the community’s prosperity as anything else. The Ram Pasture, where flocks could be gathered and protected, was as prized as any spot in town, except maybe the Meeting House.

In the intervening years, the collective use of the Ram Pasture has strayed into new territories — along with those original sheep. Today it is a venue for kite contests in the spring, for long summer lunches on blankets by the pond, and, most famously, for the annual Christmas tree lighting and carol sing on one of the year’s darkest nights in December. This open piece of land in the center of town is terra cognita in almost everyone’s mental map of Newtown precisely because the memories it holds are collective memories.

Not many people think of it this way, but the Ram Pasture is actually private property, owned and maintained by the Newtown Cemetery Association, stewards of the town’s original burying ground on the knoll at the southwest corner of the Ram Pasture tract. The association has kept the lawns mowed, cut back the invasive loosestrife, and dredged Hawley Pond when necessary so that this historic place remains inviting to all the people of Newtown.

On November 17, however, representatives of the Newtown Cemetery Association will be meeting with wetlands officials from the town who have some complaints about the way they have been running the property. The association has been issued a wetlands violation warning letter, alleging that its maintenance practices may be contributing to stream bank degradation on the site. While the cemetery association already maintains a buffer of vegetation on both sides of Country Club Brook, the town’s conservation official has suggested that the time may have come for Newtown’s Inland Wetlands Commission to exercise its power to require a 100-foot buffer of vegetation extending from each side of a stream. (The flagpole on Main Street is 100 feet high.) This official wants the cemetery association to consider transforming the open lawns of the Ram Pasture into a meadow and to review its policy of open public access to the site — in effect disinviting the public to this long-common ground.

While wetlands officials are conceding that a 200-foot buffer the length of Country Club Brook in the Ram Pasture “probably would not be feasible,” they are suggesting that the November 17 session can be used to reach “an equitable compromise” with the cemetery association. We urge the association’s representatives not to attend the session with compromise in mind. Before there is any further talk of the wetlands commission’s prerogatives on this land, they must quantify the extent and severity of stream bank degradation on the site and present their data in a historical context to justify their sudden sense of urgency for an overwrought and, given their eagerness to negotiate, apparently arbitrary remedy. The burden of proof is on them, especially when the problem is not readily apparent to anyone but them.