Webb Brook

Webb Brook is a brook of about a mile and a half in the south-east part of Billerica, a tributary of the Shawsheen River. It rises in wet ground near Handel Road and Whittier Road, on the east side of Boston Road, and runs south past Bear Hill Road and Bertha Circle, passes under Webb Brook Road near its west end at Mason's Corner, and keeps along the east side of Boston Road to the head of Everett Farmer Road. There it turns east, passes under Allen Road, and winds through the Riverdale section, past Garden Brook Road, Bennett Circle, Battcock Road, Dell Hollow Road, Ravine Road and Riverdale Road, to the Shawsheen below Marshbrook Road. A small wooded swamp lies along it near Battcock Road, and its last reach crosses the river meadow that is now Sellew Park.

The brook almost certainly takes its name from Christopher Webb, one of the first settlers. He came from Braintree, was granted a six-acre privilege on September 29, 1659, and had a house lot of "thirty and two acres of land lying on the East side of the country road that goeth from Woburn to Chelmsford," bounded by the Cambridge Church farms southward, by the commons east and west, and by a highway on the south. The country road was the present Boston Road. In December 1662 (the record is dated "8: 10: 62") Webb asked the town for about two acres "on the brook aboue his house, Next brother Foster's fence," but the town declined to grant it. He went back to Braintree, probably by 1665, and died on May 30, 1694; David Meades bought his Billerica lot in 1680. Henry A. Hazen does not say in so many words that the brook was named for Webb, but the request for land on the brook above his house and the name itself point that way. By the Revolution the name was settled: Hazen placed Ebenezer Richardson in the tax list of December 1776 on the "East Road, near Webb's Brook," the East Road being the present Allen Road, where the Richardson farm stood at the corner of Webb Brook Road until the Thomas Richardson House was taken down in the 1990s. An 1840 deed of the Carr place on Boston Road, as the registry index summarizes it, names a road "crossing Webbs Brook."

The brook gave its name to Webb Brook Road, which the Historical Society's street list adopted at the annual town meeting of March 27, 1899, and later to the Webb Brook Country Club at the corner of Allen Road. From 1903 on, Edgar P. Sellew laid out the Riverdale farm, camp and garden lots on both sides of its lower course: his plans show Riverdale Road (1903), Hillside Road, now Marshbrook Road (1908), and Garden Road and Dell Avenue (1910 to 1912) crossing Webb Brook between Allen Road and the river. In 1925 Sellew gave the town the meadow at the mouth of the brook as Town Forest Area No. 25, whose easterly line ran "on the center of the Shawsheen River to Webb's Brook" and whose northeasterly line was "on the center of Webb's Brook."

The town reports record the crossings. The culvert on Webb Brook Road was rebuilt in 1909, and in 1935 the road was given a new headwall 26 feet long and an extended culvert. After heavy spring rains in 1954 the highway department had to replace a stone culvert on Webb Brook Road, and the town engineer worked on the Webb Brook Road culvert again in 1981. The brook held trout: in the drought of 1934 it was one of the brooks, with Jones Brook and Poor Farm Brook, from which the trout were netted and moved to the deep water of the river. Garden Road, which crosses it, was renamed Garden Brook Road in the street renaming of 1988 to 1991, after the brook.

As the land along it was built up, the brook became a concern of the Conservation Commission. In 1973 residents of Tower Farm Estates met with the commission several times over the effect that a proposed Boys' Club would have on the environment and on Webb Brook, and in 1974 the Middlesex Conservation District (Soil Conservation Service) was making a hydrological survey of the Webb Brook watershed for the commission at no cost to the town. In May 2008 Town Meeting authorized borrowing $2,000,000 for "a new gravity sewer main along Webb Brook" to do away with the Bertha Circle and Poe Road pump stations; the engineers reported the design of the project complete in the following years. The lower brook still runs through woods and the open meadow of Sellew Park to the Shawsheen.

Title References Expand all

Recorded is Book/Page at the Middlesex North Registry of Deeds unless noted; Probate # is a Middlesex probate case, Ctf a Land Court certificate of title.

References

1. Hazen, History of Billerica (1883): Christopher Webb asks in December 1662 for land "on the brook aboue his house"; the town declines
2. Hazen 1883, Genealogical Register: Christopher Webb of Braintree, his house lot on the east side of the country road from Woburn to Chelmsford
3. Hazen 1883: tax list of December 1776, Ebenezer Richardson on the "East Road, near Webb's Brook"
4. Annual Report 1909: building new and repairing old culvert, Webb Brook Road
5. Annual Report 1925: Town Forest Area No. 25, Sellew meadow bounded on the center of Webb's Brook
6. Annual Report 1934: trout netted from Webb Brook, Jones Brook and Poor Farm Brook in the drought
7. Annual Report 1935: Webb Brook Road, new headwall 26 feet long, culvert extended
8. Annual Report 1954: stone culvert on Webb Brook Road replaced after heavy spring rains
9. Annual Report 1973: Conservation Commission, Tower Farm Estates residents concerned over the effect of a proposed Boys' Club on Webb Brook
10. Annual Report 1974: Conservation Commission, Soil Conservation Service hydrological survey of the Webb Brook watershed
11. Annual Report 1981: town engineer, drainage work including the Webb Brook Road culvert
12. Annual Report 2008: Town Meeting, Article 22, $2,000,000 for a gravity sewer main along Webb Brook to eliminate the Bertha Circle and Poe Road pump stations
13. OpenStreetMap: Webb Brook headwater reach near Handel Road (way 1046971810)