Choose Granite Countertops in Plympton, MA for Elegance and Durability

PLYMPTON (CBS) - A Plympton couple is set to star in a brand new HGTV series, Houses With History, premiering later this week.

Jenny Macdonald and Mike Lemieux, owners of Full Circle Homes, spoke to WBZ-TV back in 2020 for the station's It Happens Here series.

At the time, they had saved and restored dozens of antique homes on the South Shore. Their ability to renovate and preserve historic spaces was eventually recognized by a fellow Massachusetts native and HGTV star, Jonathan Knight, a member of "New Kids On The Block."

"Jon Knight, we have to give him credit. He was down here looking at the building that we're standing in. It was a dirt floor, a complete wreck in here at the time, but Jon came through and saw some of our work. He was starting his Farmhouse Fixer show and he said, 'You guys should have your own show.' They came out and did a quick sizzle reel and we got green-lighted for an entire series," Macdonald explained.

The six-episode series was filmed during the pandemic and presented even more challenges than renovating a home usually entails.

"When you're talking about filming and renovating as many houses as we had to, managing sub-contractors, trying to stay COVID-safe, and then you run into the supply chain issues. The normal challenge of renovating a house is quadrupled. We had a very safe, strict plan for all our employees including testing 3 times a week. We stayed safe through the whole thing," said Lemieux.

The series follows designer Macdonald, history-buff Lemieux, and carpenter Rich Soares as they take on 6 dilapidated antique homes on the South Shore, some up to 300 years old (the oldest house featured was built in 1666.) Film crews traveled all over, shooting in Plymouth, Pembroke, Plympton, Kingston, Duxbury, Marshfield, Middleborough, Carver, West Barnstable, Sandwich and Bourne. Local craftsmen are also brought in to help during each episode.

"We take a lot of time digging into the story of the people that lived there. Everyone isn't George Washington, but everyone in their town or their locality could have been very significant, and you just didn't know anything about them. So, if we can expose some of that story and give people the opportunity to relate to it when they move in, they can say, 'Oh wow, this home was part of the industrial revolution of this town or the economy or this person played a very important role.' You just don't know or necessarily always hear about them," Lemieux told WBZ.

"A lot of these houses, we really are saving them. One of them we were bidding against another contractor that was going to demolish It. We really are pouring our hearts and souls into this and want to save every historic home. It's a piece of history you can never get back once its torn down," Macdonald added.

So what can viewers expect to see on season one?

"Mike is pretty funny. Rich and Mike really play off each other. I think you'll get a laugh out of it. You'll also learn something, and you will most definitely see me cry," said Macdonald.

"We want people to feel like history is actually extremely interesting. You are a vital part of it, you can help preserve it, and it's important to do so for the future. It's where we came from, it's who we are and it's who we're going to continue to be. There's no real separation between today and yesterday. We're all part of it, and you can be too," said Lemieux.

Houses With History premieres Wednesday, September 29th at 9 p.m. on HGTV and Discovery Plus.

Full Circle Homes is hosting a premiere watch party at the old hay field on Crescent Street in Plympton in an effort to keep everyone outside and socially distanced. Afterwards, there will be live music by Massachusetts-based folk band David Wax Museum. For tickets click here.

The new HGTV renovation series “Houses with History” takes viewers inside centuries-old properties around the South Shore, starting with a 1735 Cape with an "off-center” chimney and backyard cranberry bog in Plympton.

That home — and its stormy past — is featured in the debut episode, airing at 9 p.m. Sept. 29 and also streaming on the discovery+ platform.

The series follows Plympton couple — designer Jen Macdonald and historian Mike Lemieux, owners of Full Circle Homes, and carpenter Rich Soares as they refurbish six historic —but dilapidated — homes on the South Shore, one of which was built in 1666.

“We look for old houses no one would ever take on,” Lemieux says in the series premiere, “The One with the Cranberry Bog.”

Filming for the six-episode series took place in Plymouth, Pembroke, Plympton, Kingston, Duxbury, Marshfield, Middleboro, Carver, West Barnstable, Sandwich and Bourne.

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In each episode, viewers will learn the origin and renovation stories of the homes, many of which “are hanging on their frames and balancing on their chimneys,” Lemieux says during the episode.

"We take all the old house problems out of the house," he says.

Macdonald, Lemieux and Soares aim to save as many homes as they can “before the bulldozer comes in” and then make them functional for modern families. Other episodes feature an 1800s Greek Revival home, a Dutch colonial and a 1666 Federalist-style home.

A Cape on Crescent Street in Plympton is the focus of the series’ first episode, and when Lemieux, Soares and Macdonald walk in, the walls literally talk to them. Original gunstock beams, a butler's staircase, finely crafted molding and Christian doors, offer clues to the home’s past.

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The team also finds copies of the New Bedford Standard Times newspaper from 1938 under the floorboards, which leads to a discovery that the dwelling was damaged in one of the deadliest hurricanes to ever strike the region. With help from the Pembroke Historical Society, it’s also determined the original owner was the town’s stonecutter and his legacy his honored in the final design of the home.

After each house is restored and renovated, Jonathan Knight, star of HGTV’s “Farmhouse Fixer,” will walk through the finished home for the grand reveal.

"We all love the craft and love older homes," Lemieux says.

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Reach Dana Barbuto at dbarbuto@patriotledger.com.

Standing on the old town green on Route 58, John Henry watched a small stream of cars and trucks pass by and frowned.

“I can’t believe how much traffic we have,” the Plympton selectman said.

Most people anywhere else in Eastern Massachusetts would happily take the road volume that Henry and others find worrisome. But that’s one of the things they say makes the small, historic community of Plympton distinct.

In this land of shingled homes, cranberry bogs and horse stables, the installation of the town’s first traffic signal a couple of years ago was fought by some and still mourned as the arrival of big-city ways.

The nearest MBTA commuter-rail station is five miles away in Halifax. The closest Dunkin’ Donuts shop is five miles away, also in Halifax. Crime is rare. There’s no municipal water or sewer service, and folks like John Henry and resident Debbie West think all that is just fine.

“You’re 45 minutes from Boston and 45 minutes from Providence – yet you’re in the country” said Henry, who has been in Plympton for three decades.

When West and her husband moved back from California 13 years ago, “East Bridgewater was almost too big,” she joked.

West likes Plympton’s friendliness – with a population of fewer than 3,000, there aren’t many strangers. For farmer Fred Schauwecker, the unhurried, low-key life is from another time, “like Cape Cod 50 years ago.”

Selectman Joe Freitas has savored those qualities since he came to town in 1956, when there were only 700 residents.

While he half-seriously frets that newcomers from places like Quincy and Weymouth don’t leave their urban attitude behind – “they think we’re supposed to have sidewalks and everything” – he said they seem to adapt within a few years.

Settled in 1662 and incorporated in 1707, the town was one of the first parishes to separate from the original “Pilgrim church” in Plymouth.

Named for the English town of Plympton – “the only one” in the United States, Freitas notes – the boundaries originally included what is now Halifax and Carver. It’s the smallest southeastern Massachusetts community.

The Revolutionary War’s most famous female soldier, Deborah Sampson, was born on a Plympton farm in 1760. Sampson enlisted in the Continental Army in disguise in 1782, using her deceased brother’s name.

The town of Sharon also claims Sampson, since she lived there most of her life. But folks in Plympton will direct you to her birthplace, a Cape cottage on Elm Street that’s still occupied.

In recent years, a stream of Boston-area transplants have moved here, partly thanks to the revival of the Old Colony commuter rail. But the lack of municipal water and sewer service has limited development – to support a septic system, new houses must be built on lots of at least 11/2 acres, with 200 feet of frontage.

Even without any dramatic growth, Henry and Freitas say Plympton is weathering the recession and slow recovery fairly well, partly helped by a hefty property tax increase this year.

“We’re scraping by,” Henry said. “But we’ve had no layoffs and no overrides. Fortunately, we have very little debt.”

Yet Henry isn’t the only one who is wary of a stealthy shift in the town’s country pace. Rocking Horse Farm owner Lillian Gilpin sees it, too.

In the early 1980s, she rode one of the family’s horses up to Route 58, when the road was a dirt track during construction. But no more.

“It’s gotten busier in the last 10 years,” Gilpin said. “But it hasn’t changed that much. I still like it the way it is.”

Lane Lambert may be reached at llambert@ledger.com.

READ MORE about news and events in Plympton.

And also check out the town of Plympton’s official website, at town.plympton.ma.us.