Sparky and Ben graze in a field at Brigadoon Farm on Field Hill Road in Clayville. Only one property is currently listed for sale in the neighborhood: a lot with two houses, with an asking price of $319,900. Providence Journal photo / Bill Murphy

The post office in rural Clayville, a small village on the Scituate-Foster border, has devoted part of its public space to an exhibit of artifacts and photographs honoring the history of the area and the building, a former one-room schoolhouse built around 1845.

Many old photographs document the lost villages of Scituate, entire communities that were erased to create the Scituate Reservoir, a source of drinking water for the City of Providence and many other communities in Rhode Island.

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State legislators voted in 1915 to take 14,800 acres — 38 percent of Scituate’s land — to create the reservoir; the project was completed in the mid-1920s. Lost villages — places that disappeared or were almost completely eradicated — were small farming and/or mill communities: Ashland, Kent, Ponagansett, Richmond, Rockland, Saundersville and South Scituate. Almost 1,200 buildings were condemned.

The Joslin Manufacturing Co., which at one time was the country’s largest lace manufacturer, lost a legal battle to fight the eminent domain process.

Clayville’s mills were destroyed, but the one-room schoolhouse, on a high elevation on Field Hill Road, was spared. Despite its current use, the building’s exterior, with its two front doors [one for boys, one for girls] has retained its historic character.

Today, tall trees and historic stone walls mark the Clayville neighborhood. Just a short distance from the Clayville post office is the Clayville elementary school, one of Scituate’s three prekindergarten-to-grade-five public schools.

Johanna Sparling, a graphic artist, lives on Field Hill Road, in a house that was once the carriage repair shed for the Clayville mill.

Sparling created the post office display with a neighbor, the late Gilbreth Brown, about five years ago. Brown was the president of the Clayville Heritage Association, which formed in 1990 to fight a proposed widening of Routes 102 and 14 in the heart of the village. It also led an effort to restore the exterior of the former schoolhouse.

Brown’s widow, Nancy Brown, still lives in an 1850 farmhouse on 10 acres on the section of Field Hill Road that is a dirt road. Her next-door neighbors run a horse farm.

Nancy Brown said she and her husband lived on the East Side of Providence before moving to Clayville 36 years ago. The farmhouse was quite deteriorated when they first arrived, and the Browns renovated and added on, with the aim of retaining the character of the house.

Brown frequently travels to Providence, but likes the retreat of Clayville, even in the winter, when travel on the dirt road can be difficult.

Clayville residents have to go to North Scituate or Chepachet for grocery shopping, she said, so in the winter, it’s important to keep ample supplies on hand.

Brown said the neighborhood’s only drawback is the “deer problem.” In the late winter, deer from protected lands near the reservoirs — Clayville is also near the Westconnaug Reservoir in Foster — venture into the residential gardens, and will munch on almost anything they can find, she said.

“This is a quieter way of life here,” Brown said. “Pretty much, everybody does their own thing.”

There is no property listed for sale on the Scituate side, where most of Clayville lies. In Foster, at 2 Plainfield Pike, two houses on one lot are listed as a multifamily on the market for $319,900.

Sparling, who has lived in Clayville for 11 years, said she and her husband first saw their house when they were invited to a party there. It wasn’t on the market, and the Sparlings, who lived in Providence, hoped to buy a house very like it. Later, the owner moved out and rented the house to mutual friends, and the Sparlings waited; they moved in as tenants after the first tenants left. They wanted to buy the house, but the owner was reluctant to sell; the Sparlings were able to buy it when the owner decided to leave Rhode Island.

Alison Nugent, a friend of Brown, moved to Clayville about a year ago from within Scituate. Her previous house was on Route 6, and Brown said the quiet of Clayville makes a safer home for Nugent’s dog.

“This was quite a coup for me,” Nugent said.

cdunn@projo.com