Topliff Street

Topliff Street is a street of The Pines, the neighborhood between Cook Street and the Shawsheen River in the Pinehurst section, running northeast across Pines Road from beyond Mosley Street toward Aberdeen and Endicott Streets. It was first laid out on paper on "The Pines, Billerica, Mass., owned by Frank W. Coughlin," a subdivision plan drawn in Boston in June 1912 by H. A. Millhouse, civil engineer, and recorded on July 19, 1912 in Plan Book 30, Plan 13. Frank W. Coughlin of Brookline had bought the seventy acres of woodland that became The Pines on May 18, 1912. On the plan Topliff Street crosses Pines Road about midway between Cook Street and the river, lined with narrow cottage lots, and runs east as far as Argyle Street. There was no road on this line before 1912, and the 1931 directory still describes it as running "from Argyle to byd Mosley (The Pines)."

The plan does not say where its street names came from. Most of them are British places and titles, several familiar from the novels of Walter Scott: Kenilworth, Ivanhoe, Montrose, Aberdeen, Argyle, Lamont, Edgbaston and Radnor, with Endicott, Ordway, Carlton and Sachem. Topliff is an old New England surname (there is a Topliff Street in Dorchester), but no Topliff appears in the Billerica records, and nothing ties the name to Coughlin or to anyone in town. The street has kept the name since 1912.

A water main of 910 feet was laid in Topliff Street in 1951, and more pipe was added in 1955. The Highway Department hot topped the street with bituminous concrete in 1979.

The town accepted the eastern part in February 1947, when the annual town meeting voted under Article 53 "that the Town will accept Topliff Street from Pines Road to Endicott Street." The town's list of accepted streets printed in 1956 gives the date as Feb. 7, 1947. The western part followed at the annual spring town meeting of May 13, 2004, which under Article 31 accepted "Topliff Street, Pines Road to 285' west of Mosely Street," about 930 feet, together with Mosley Street, Horton Lane, Knoll Street and Tom Grace Way in the same neighborhood. Topliff Street was not on the official town map of 1831 and was not among the roads accepted in 2016.

References

1. Billerica town report 1947: Article 53 voted, the town accepts Topliff Street from Pines Road to Endicott Street
2. Streets Accepted by the Town (1956 report): Topliff Street, from Pines Rd. to Endicott St., accepted Feb. 7, 1947
3. Billerica town report 1955: water main extensions including Topliff Street
4. Billerica town report 2004: Article 31 accepts Topliff Street from Pines Road to 285 feet west of Mosley Street (930 ft.) and other streets in The Pines

Deed References Expand all

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