Millstone to mark entrance to village

To be installed in Heritage Park.

By: Matt Kirdahy
   The Township Committee has put the Parks Planning Commission in charge of moving a township-owned millstone to its new home south of Cranbury’s historic village.
   The committee voted unanimously to allow the movement of the stone to Heritage Park and to use township money for the project, as proposed by Judy Dossin and Joan Smith of the Parks Planning Commission.
   Township Administrator Fred Carr said specific costs have yet to be determined since the project is in the early design stages.
   The millstone is a large cylinder-shaped stone that was once used for grinding grain in a mill. Currently, it is sitting next to the township Public Works barn on Dey Road. The millstone is about 5 feet long and 7 inches wide.
   The stone would be set in what Ms. Dossin said looked like the foundation of an old house and placed at the corner of South Main Street and Old Trenton Road. The so-called foundation would be custom built for the millstone. It would run parallel to both roadways with the stone set facing oncoming motorists where the walls meet.
   In 1997, the township purchased two millstones from a company in Maine. One was used for the fountain in Heritage Park in 1998 and the other was kept for the project that the Parks Planning Commission has drawn up.
   She said the commission would try to complete the project by mid- to late-summer. Right now it is trying to come up with an official design and working construction plans. The money for the project will come from the capital improvement fund in the township budget.
   "I think it creates a sense of 200 to 300 years of history," Committeeman Michael Mayes said at the meeting on Monday.
   Parks Commission representatives presented the committee with two rough sketches depicting the millstone facing the road. Two possibilities for what could be etched in the stone were "Cranbury Heritage Park" or just "Cranbury" and the date of either township’s establishment 1697 or the date the stone would be set.
   "It’ll be a southerly welcome into town," Ms. Dossin said.
   She said the commission originally came up with 18 sketches of how it could be placed at the corner of Heritage Park.
   According to Township Historian Betty Wagner, the choice of a millstone, as opposed to any other type of stone, is appropriate because Cranbury was once primarily an agricultural town.