The first of five pieces of the new Stockton Springs Community Church steeple arrived last week and is expected to be installed sometime in the next four to six weeks. In the interim, the building will be fitted with a box-shaped footing on which the rest of steeple will sit.

The church has been without its landmark spire visible near the intersection of Route 1 and 1A since 2008, when rot required it to be removed. And while the completed reconstruction is likely more than a year off, the start of work is significant milestone.

A group of church member volunteers set to work raising money the spring before the steeple was removed, holding monthly events — suppers, yard sales, food sales and auctions —  to raise the $260,000 needed to completely reconstruct and install the steeple.  The group has continued its work for five years led by a group of six women between the ages of 70 and 90. Officially they're the Steeple Committee. Around town they are known as the “Steeple People,” or sometimes the “Steeple Ladies.”

“That’s what they call us,” said Peg Mace, treasurer of the committee. Mace said the group of six has had a lot of help from other church members and people in the community. 'They give us a lot more credit probably than they need to," she said.

Five summers of fundraising and numerous private and in kind donations — Lane construction, which is rebuilding the highway overpass next to the church recently lent time and equipment to move pieces of the steeple into place — have brought the group within $67,000 of the total bill.

Mace attributed to the success of the fundraising effort to the church having played a larger role in the community for many years, hosting high school graduations and other community events.

"A lot of people have ties, though they maybe never attended our church as such,” she said. “Being a small church we could not even have considered [rebuilding the steeple], but the community came forward and they've been a huge help with it."

The first section of the steeple is a box-shaped piece that on some churches would have displayed a clock face.

There was no clock on the original Community Church and there won’t be one on the new steeple, which is being built to match the original using plans extrapolated electronically from photographs taken before it was torn down. The fancier parts are yet to come, according to several people involved with the project.

"It's a very ornate and beautiful steeple. It has five different levels and intricate details,” said Robert Hanscom, who built the new section and is in the process of replicating the bell tower, spire and other portions of the historic steeple.

Hanscom, who works out of a shop in Greene, has rebuilt some 50 steeples since he coined the job title “steeplewright” for himself in 1984. The one in Stockton Spings should look just like the original, he said, but improvements in building materials and techniques will make it better able to withstand the elements.

"It’s the same idea as what it used to be there, except it's done with bolts and pressure treated timbers instead of mortise and tenon [and untreated wood]," he said.  

Hanscom cautioned that it may be some time before the weathervane is reinstalled at the tip of the spire — usually the final step. He plans to work on the next sections this winter he said, adding “and maybe the next.”

"There's a long way to go here,” he said. “We’re just getting started.”

Mace has no illusions about the construction timeline — “That’ll be all for this year,” she said, speaking of the one section currently on site — but suggested she’d be happy to see the money in place sooner.

"We raised slightly over $15,000 with our fundraisers this summer but we also got some donations,” she said. “Hopefully we're gonna get some larger ones and get this finished up."

Additional information about the project and fundraising is available on the Stockton Springs Community Church website.