Discover & Learn

The Infirmary, 1841

The Infirmary served as the Shaker's community hospital from the 1840s through the 1960s, and today is the oldest hospital building in New Hampshire. Although most Shaker communities operated such facilities, few survive; the Canterbury Infirmary is the largest and most complete facility of its kind. The building contains nine period rooms and exhibit areas, including patient rooms from different time periods, an apothecary, a surgical exhibit, a dentistry exhibit, and a kitchen with pantries.

Many of the objects in the Infirmary have been in the building since the time of the hospital operation. Obsolete chamber pots, for example, were simply moved to attic storage. Medicines and equipment were locked in cabinets. Many furnishings, like an original apothecary counter, have remained in place since the 1840s.

The Infirmary was built by the Shakers in 1811 as an adjunct visitors' house. It was used to accommodate non-Shaker guests, many of whom were merchants and traders who bought merchandise from the Shakers or sold goods to them. When the Shakers built a spacious, new brick Trustees' Office in the early 1830s, business guests began to be fed and housed in that facility. The old visitors' house was remodeled and outfitted as an Infirmary in the early 1840s to provide improved medical facilities for the rapidly growing Canterbury Shaker community.

In 1892, the Infirmary was expanded with the addition of a kitchen wing. The old kitchen in the basement was abandoned for a modern kitchen with a wood cook stove, a hot water heater, soapstone sink, pantries and closets, and a wood storage bin. This kitchen remains much as the Shakers built and equipped it.

Today the building is used as exhibit space and is open for guided tours.