Water Heater Installation in Norfolk, MA

Norfolk is a suburban town on the periphery of metropolitan Boston, located on an upper valley of the Charles River. The land was originally part of Dedham, which was incorporated in 1636. There were a half dozen small farms in the area after 1669, the result of a determined effort to populate the colonial frontier, despite the remoteness of the area. Wrentham separated from Dedham in 1673; what is now Norfolk was in the northern part of Wrentham. The farms were abandoned during King Philip’s War in 1675-76, but repopulated later that century.

As further settlement occurred in the late 17th and 18th centuries, agriculture and cattle grazing were joined by lumbering and planting of orchards. Small villages formed around sawmills and gristmills including City Mills (1680), Mann Pond/Highland Lake (after 1691), and Pondville (after 1730). The village center of North Wrentham formed in the late 18th century. After 1812, three cotton manufacturing companies were established at Stony Brook, and later in the 19th century George Campbell’s paper mill was opened at Highland Lake making heavy wrapping and building papers. The Norfolk County Railroad opened in 1849, with North Wrentham station near the village center. North Wrentham separated from Wrentham in 1870 and was incorporated as Norfolk.

The town saw a rapid increase in population after 1925 when a hospital and a state prison were built in Norfolk on the Walpole line. Major residential development took place before 1940 in the Pondville and Clark Streets section of town with scattered new housing along Seekonk and Main Streets, and suburban residential building has continued since. In 2014, Norfolk was the filming location for Ted 2, a comedy film starring Mark Wahlberg and Seth MacFarlane.