A house off Pond House Road sports three levels of living and a farmer’s porch.

The Providence Journal / Ruben W. Perez

North Smithfield High School and the town’s new $30-million middle school and athletic fields are in a complex at the center of the town’s rural Primrose neighborhood — where Routes 5 and 104 meet.

Primrose is a quiet, wooded spot north of the Bryant University area, and it includes a nature preserve, Primrose Pond and Todd’s Pond.

The village was named for the Primrose railroad station built on Greenville Road (Route 104) for the Providence and Springfield Railroad, which was chartered in 1853 and opened in 1873. The line traveled northwest from Providence to Pascoag, a village in Burrillville.

Today, there is little commercial activity in Primrose. Besides the high school and middle-school complex, a funeral home and the Country Primitives farm stand and antiques store are also at the Routes 5 and 104 intersection. Cullion Concrete’s North Smithfield plant is farther up Greenville Road. The Ironwood Golf Facility is on narrow, winding Iron Mine Hill Road. A short drive north, on Woonsocket Hill Road, is the popular Wright’s Dairy Farm and bakery.

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Primrose is also home to the Fort Nature Refuge, a 235-acre preserve, off Route 5 (Providence Pike) near the Primrose Fire Station. The Fort family donated the land to the Audubon Society.

Most of the neighborhood is either open space or single-family houses, many on lots of at least one acre.

According to Bob Ericson, the town planner, the minimum size for a new house lot in Primrose is 65,000 square feet, nearly an acre and a half, with 200 feet of frontage from the road. But Ericson said some of the neighborhood’s older houses don’t conform to this standard.

The most expensive house for sale in the neighborhood far exceeds the town’s lot size requirement. An estate at 125 Pond House Rd., on the market for $2,995,000, has “27 acres of rolling hills,” a shingle-style house with more than 6,000 square feet of living space, an 8-stall barn and a gunite pool surrounded by a stone terrace, according to the listing information.

Other houses for sale in Primrose range in price from $329,000, for a raised ranch built in 1970 at 220 Rocky Hill Rd., on a 2-acre lot with an in-ground pool, to $899,000 for a house at 2131 Providence Pike with three fireplaces, a hot tub and a barn, all on nearly 16 acres.

Ericson said the newest subdivision approved in Primrose is on Ponoma Street, where house prices are in the $600,000-range.

POPULATION:

(North Smithfield, 2000) 10,618

MEDIAN HOUSE PRICE:

(North Smithfield, 2008) $272,500

INTERESTING FACT: The Todd Farm, at 67 Farnum Pike, was built in 1740 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.

cdunn@projo.com