Lordship is a small, waterfront neighborhood situated on Connecticut's Gold Coast in Stratford,

Connecticut Connecticut ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York (state), New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. ...

, United States. It was listed as a

census-designated place A census-designated place (CDP) is a Place (United States Census Bureau), concentration of population defined by the United States Census Bureau for statistical purposes only. CDPs have been used in each decennial census since 1980 as the counte ...

prior to the 2020 census. Lordship was an island bounded by salt marshes to the north and Long Island Sound to the south, The neighborhood currently extends, by man made fill, as a peninsula on

Long Island Sound Long Island Sound is a sound (geography), marine sound and tidal estuary of the Atlantic Ocean. It lies predominantly between the U.S. state of Connecticut to the north and Long Island in New York (state), New York to the south. From west to east, ...

and is bounded from the rest of Stratford by Sikorsky Memorial Airport to the north and Short Beach to the north east. Lordship is accessible by only two roads, both parts of Route 113. Lordship is home to the Stratford Point Light.

History

The first inhabitants of Lordship were the Paugussetts who had a large village at Frash Pond and smaller encampments at Stratford Point and at Indian Well (areas in Lordship). Indian Well was a fresh water pond where the old trolley line crossed Duck Neck Creek just north of the rotary near the firehouse. When the first settlers arrived in 1639, they found that Indians were using this area to plant corn, so there was little clearing necessary. Lordship, originally called Great Neck, was a “Common Field” worked and owned by settlers who returned home to the safety of the palisade fort at Academy Hill at night. Richard Mills was the first to build a farmhouse in Great Neck in the western end near present-day Second Avenue. He sold his estate to Joseph Hawley (Captain) in 1650 and moved. It is in connection with his name that the term ''Lordship'' is first found, as applied to a meadow on what is still known as the Lordship farm. It is said in deeds of land - 1650 to 1660 – several times, ''Mill’s Lordship'' and the ''Lordship Meadow''. Richard Beach came to Stratford with a family and in 1662, he purchased one of five acres ''on west point of the Neck'', butted south upon the meadow called ''Mill’s Lordship''.

Gustave Whitehead Gustave Albin Whitehead (born Gustav Albin Weisskopf; 1 January 1874 – 10 October 1927) was a German–American aviation pioneer. Between 1897 and 1915, he designed and built gliders, flying machines, and engines. Controversy surrounds publish ...

is reported to have used the windswept sandy areas of Lordship during some of his early powered flight trials in the early 1900s.

References

External links

Lordship History
Stratford, Connecticut Peninsulas of Connecticut Landforms of Fairfield County, Connecticut Populated places in Fairfield County, Connecticut Neighborhoods in Connecticut Census-designated places in Fairfield County, Connecticut Census-designated places in Connecticut {{Connecticut-geo-stub