ENFIELD — Two one-room schoolhouses in Enfield have been added to the New Hampshire Register of Historic Places.

The State Historical Resources Council, part of the New Hampshire Division of Historical Resources, added Lockehaven School on Ibey Road and Enfield Center School on Route 4A to the register in late October. The former school buildings are owned by the Enfield Historical Society and its members hope the new designation will create new opportunities for grant funding.

Other than being exempt from property taxes as a nonprofit, the historical society doesn’t “get any support from the town,” said Linda Jones, vice president of the historical society. The Enfield Center School in particular is in need of a new roof, she said.

Each schoolhouse is open to the public a few days a year, Jones said. The Lockehaven schoolhouse, located off Lockehaven Road, features displays from when the school was in operation. The Enfield Center schoolhouse is the Enfield Historical Society’s museum. Neither building has running water or plumbing, which limits their uses, Jones said.

Lockehaven School, off Lockehaven Road, was built around 1820 and was in operation until 1921, according to the nomination reports put together by Andrew Cushing, president of Mascoma Valley Preservation, a Grafton-based nonprofit organization devoted to preserving historic buildings in the five Mascoma Valley towns.

The Enfield Center School was built in 1851, according to Cushing’s report. It was slated to closed in 1936 as part of a larger effort to consolidate the town’s schools, but after parents and other community members protested, it was kept “in operation through the 1940s,” the report said. In 1947, the town sold it for $500 to the Earnest Workers Club, a women-only organization that hosted events and raised money for disaster relief.

“Its second life after the school closed is really fascinating, to have a community group that was focused on just good deeds,” said Cushing, the community preservation services manager at the New Hampshire Preservation Alliance, a nonprofit organization that promotes saving and restoring historic structures throughout the state.

Cushing worked on both nominations at the same time, in part, because some of the information was similar, including the history of Enfield’s schools.

“I think the beauty of the state register nomination is that it compiles the building history and the architecture and the natural evolution and its significance into one central document,” he said.

In 1936, Enfield sold the Lockehaven School to former student Harry Nichols, who worked with Wilson Roberts, another former student, to turn it into a museum. After restoring the building and collecting artifacts, the two opened the museum to the public in 1947.

“It’s so rare for a group of pupils from that school to buy it and lead a restoration effort of it,” said Cushing.

Jones remembers visiting the Lockehaven School as a child and seeing the two former students chatting outside the schoolhouse. They would often share their memories with visitors.

“I was pretty young then so I didn’t think it was as charming as the adults I was with, but I do now,” said Jones, who also sits on the board of Mascoma Valley Preservation.

The schoolhouses are two of 42 schoolhouses listed in the state register, said Shelly Angers, public information officer for the N.H. Department of Natural & Cultural Resources. Among the grant programs the Enfield schoolhouses now qualify for are the Land and Community Heritage Investment Program, or LCHIP, and Conservation License Plate funds, according to the department’s website.

The Enfield Center School is one of three buildings that are part of the Enfield Center Triangle Historic District; the others are the Union Church and the Town House.

“It does not hurt the picture that the town cared enough to declare their own historic district so we would be able to apply for grant funding or matching funding in order to improve any of those buildings,” Jones said.

Visit mascomavalleypreservation.org/schoolhouses to read the reports about the schoolhouses. Liz Sauchelli can be reached at esauchelli@vnews.com or 603-727-3221.