Oasis.

The Reporting Project on Tannery Hill, a home that has stood atop a rise on Newark Granville Road for 220 years ...

He’s excited about living in this oasis surrounded by the village. Prieto has fond memories of spending summers there as a child, playing in the wooded lot and watching his grandmother bang out one of her columns on an old, manual typewriter.

“When she was typing, it sounded like machine-gun fire,” he said with a smile. 

He has big plans for the old place – to preserve as much as possible and return it to something close to its original look.

That means shoring up several foundational elements of the house – a split beam or two among the dozen or so of the old tree trunks that hold up the first floor and pushing a sagging brick wall on the southwest corner back into position.

While cutting down trees that had grown too close to the house, Prieto said he strategically left a large pine that he plans to use as a brace to push the front wall back into place – a wall made of bricks that were handmade on site 220 years ago.