Antrim, NH

Antrim is a Hillsborough County town in the Contoocook River Valley, with the main village at US 202 and NH 31 and smaller settlements at Antrim Center, North Branch, and Clinton Village. Gregg Lake, Willard Pond, Great Brook, and the Contoocook’s North Branch give the town a water-shaped geography. The 2020 census counted 2,651 people in the town, including 1,395 in the Antrim CDP.

Great Brook once carried the town’s industrial life. Over 20 mills ran between Gregg Lake and the Contoocook River, using the drop in elevation for saw, grist, and other mills. The Goodell Company became Antrim’s signature manufacturer, beginning with apple-paring machines in the 1860s and moving into cutlery. The railroad came through the area in the mid-nineteenth century, drawing shops and town activity toward the mills. Today the Antrim Home and Harvest festival arrives in early fall, while the Contoocook Valley Regional School District connects local students to a wider group of towns. Antrim still has that village-and-water pattern: old mill corridors, a town center around South Village, and lakes and brooks at the edges.