Mitchell Pond

Mitchell Pond is a small pond on Town Brook south of Billerica Center, between Concord Road and Boston Road, beside Kenmar Drive and Campbell Road. It lies in two parts, the larger of about two and a half acres and a smaller one of less than half an acre to the east, and forms the eastern edge of the town's Peggy Hannon-Rizza Recreation Complex, with Lampson Memorial Field and the Billerica Skate Park. Town Brook, for most of its history called Blanchard Brook, runs through it on its way south to the Concord River.

The pond takes its name from the Mitchell family and their Mitchell School, a boys' school on Concord Road founded in 1870, whose management, its catalog of 1926 says, "has remained in the family"; Alexander H. Mitchell was principal in the 1920s. The land around the pond belonged to the estate of M C. Mitchell by 1914, and his widow Mary H. Mitchell had the family land surveyed by R. M. Jacobs as the Mitchell Estates, on a plan dated April 28, 1935 and recorded on December 7, 1935 (Plan Book 59, Plan 16). The plan shows the pond, with a proposed Hall Street running south past it and the brook and the Blanchard land on the east. That November she divided the land between Alexander H. Mitchell and the Mitchell School corporation. The school closed in the 1940s, and the town took over its playing fields: under Article 13 of the town meeting of February 11, 1950 it accepted a deed of "the Athletic Field and land adjacent thereto located on the Mitchell Estates, together with bleacher seats," to be used "solely for athletic activities of the Town, preference and priority to be given to the High School athletics," and the lots conveyed in Block H were bounded north "by the shore of a pond."

The field became the high school's football field, later named for Charles E. Lampson, and the land around it the Peggy Hannon-Rizza Recreation Complex. The name Mitchell Pond does not appear in the town reports until 2017, when the complex received a state park grant of $400,000 and the town reported that "the Recreation Department plans on installing trails throughout the site along the shoreline of Mitchell Pond." The Conservation Commission's order of conditions for that work was recorded the same year, and the complex was rebuilt in 2021 and 2022.

Deed References Expand all

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

References

1. Annual Report 2017: PARC grant of $400,000 to the Peggy Hannon Rizza Complex, with trails planned along the shoreline of Mitchell Pond
2. OpenStreetMap: Mitchell Pond (way 29829974)