A house on Fenner Hill Road in Hope Valley.

There is no historic district in Hope Valley, a former mill village in rural Hopkinton, but many of the area’s historical housing and industrial buildings have been preserved and are still in use today.

Since 1984, the restored former Locustville Mill building on Main Street has been Ure Outfitters, which is South County’s equivalent of L.L.Bean.

The former Nichols and Langworthy Machine Company site on Mechanic Street is also in use, and one of the buildings is home to CRWW & Associates, a manufacturer of fiberglass rods.

Near both former mill sites are historical duplexes built for mill workers, and fancier single-family houses built for the mill managers and owners.

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Hope Valley, in Hopkinton

The historical Barber’s Hall on Main Street, for many years owned by the Washington Trust bank, is now a fabric shop.

“Hope Valley, in its day, was one of the up-and-coming places in the country. We had so many mills here, and so many people working here,” said Georgia Ure, who bought the abandoned Locustville Mill where her family business is located.

“It had been empty a long time. I liked it, and thought maybe I could do something with it,” she said.

Economic conditions at the time were bad, Ure added. “It was a lot worse than it was now, actually,” she said. “Mortgage rates were 18 percent ... .”

A former teacher, Ure was in real estate when she bought the mill building. Her son, Jon Ure, said his mother has bought, restored and sold many historical houses in Hope Valley and in the nearby mill village of Wyoming.

The Amos Nichols House sits at the top of the hill on a very steep road, Nichols Lane, in Hope Valley.

An inventory of the town’s historical houses conducted in the 1970s called the three-story house, a Victorian mansion with a mansard roof, “the most elaborate and pretentious house in the village.”

The house is situated to look out and over the valley below, including Mechanic Street, and the red-brick mill building that was the former Nichols and Langworthy Machine Company Works. Amos Nichols was the son of company founder Gardner Nichols.

In 1770, settler Hezekiah Car built a few small mills near the Wood River, including a sawmill and a gristmill.

Gardner Nichols and Russell Thayer bought the mills in 1824; Nichols began to manufacture textile machinery and Thayer ran a business carding wool and finishing cloth. Thayer sold his share of the mill property in 1835 to Joseph and Josiah Langworthy, and the Nicholas and Langworthy Machine Company was founded.

According to Hopkinton town historian Hope Andrews, Gardner Nichols renamed the village from Carpenter’s Mills to Hope Valley, “because all of his hopes were centered here.”

The area surrounding the former Locustville Mill was once considered a completely different village, but now Locustville is commonly considered part of Hope Valley, Andrews said.

Hopkinton is one of the few communities in Rhode Island that had an increase in the median house price last year; it was $302,000, up 6.9 percent from the 2006 median price of $282,500. But the number of houses sold plunged 23.4 percent, from 94 in 2006 to 72 last year.

There were 9 houses listed for sale this month in Hope Valley, ranging in price from $90,000 for an 1880 colonial at 974 Main St., described as a bank-owned property, to $528,900 for a 2007 Colonial at 15 Melinda’s Way.

POPULATION: (Hopkinton, 2000) 7,836

MEDIAN HOUSE PRICE: (Hopkinton, 2007) $302,000

INTERESTING FACT: In terms of population, Hopkinton may be one of Rhode Island’s smallest towns, but it has a fair number of villages and former villages: Alton, Ashaway, Barberville, Bethel, Brightman Hill, Burdickville, Canonchet, Centerville, Champlin Hill, Hope Valley, Locustville, Moscow, Potter Hill, Rockville, Woodville, Wyoming and Yawgoog.

cdunn@projo.com