Lampson Memorial Field

Lampson Memorial Field is the name kept for the main playing fields of the Peggy Hannon-Rizza Recreation Complex off Campbell Road and Ed Hayes Way: two full-size synthetic turf fields, lighted, used for football, soccer and field hockey by Pop Warner, youth and adult leagues and other groups that rent them. They were built in 2022 in place of the old grass football field and the practice field beside it. The field is named for Chuck Lampson, Charles L. Lampson, the town's football coach and athletic director for nearly four decades, who died in 1995.

The football field is the oldest part of the complex. Thomas S. Taylor, Roger H. Hildreth and Austin F. Perry, who had bought part of the old Mitchell Boys' School grounds on the 1935 "Mitchell Estates" plan, built an athletic field with bleachers there and deeded it to the town on August 3, 1950, after the town meeting of February 11, 1950 voted to accept "a deed of the Athletic Field and land adjacent thereto located on the Mitchell Estates, together with bleacher seats". Howe High School played its home football games at the Memorial Field from 1951, and under Coach Lampson the 1952 team won the state Class D championship. The high school last played there in 1972, and in 1973 the town meeting voted $10,000 to light "the football field at the Charles E. Lampson Memorial Field", which Pop Warner used for night games. The field was resodded and given an irrigation system in 1986, and a practice field and more parking were built beside it in 1987. The history of the land and of the whole complex is told under Peggy Hannon-Rizza Recreation Complex.

The spring town meeting of 2021 voted, with Community Preservation and borrowed funds, to rebuild the complex's athletic fields to a design by Warner Larson Landscape Architects. The contractor, Quirk, broke ground in March 2022, and the old grass football field and practice field were replaced by two multipurpose turf fields, with sports lighting, spectator seating and a central lawn mound built of soil from the site, from which spectators can watch the fields on all sides. The Recreation Department lists them as Turf Field 1 and Turf Field 2.

Deed References Expand all

Recorded is Book/Page at the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds unless noted.

References

1. Town reports 1950-1954: Feb. 11, 1950 town meeting, Art. 13, acceptance of the deed of the Athletic Field on the Mitchell Estates
2. Town report 1973: Art. 15, lights for the football field at the Charles E. Lampson Memorial Field
3. Town report 1986: the Lampson football field resodded and given an irrigation system
4. Annual Report FY2022: PHR renovation, Quirk breaks ground in March 2022; two full-size multipurpose turf fields
5. mmcite: Peggy Hannon-Rizza Recreation Complex renovation (2022), two synthetic turf fields, lighting, central lawn mound
6. Billerica Recreation: Peggy Hannon-Rizza Rec Complex (PHR), Turf Field 2, schedule of football, field hockey and soccer use