Rev. Joseph Eldridge describes the erection of the first meeting house in Norfolk in the History of Norfolk (1900):
In dimensions it was fifty feet by forty, and of suitable height for galleries, without a steeple. In 1759, two years previous to the settlement of Mr. [Ammi Ruhamah] Robbins, [Norfolk’s first minister, who also served as an army chaplain during the Revolutionary War] the house was raised and covered. In 1761, the year of his ordination, it was underpinned and the lower floor laid. Such was its condition when he was ordained in it. In 1767 the gallery floor was laid; 1769 the lower part of the house and the pulpit were finished. January 2, 1770, it was, in the words of the time, dignified and seated; that is, the places to be occupied by those of various ages determined, and individuals located in them, as is done now. The next year the galleries were completed, and a cushion for the pulpit procured. The outside was painted the color of a peach blossom.
This meeting house, which was painted white in 1793, was taken down in 1813 and a new meeting house, designed by David Hoadley, was constructed. As Frederic S. Dennis explains, in The Norfolk Village Green (1917):
in 1814 the second Meeting House was finished, 60 by 45 feet in dimensions, and with a steeple and bell. This was built near the site of the original and was erected under the supervision of Michael F. Mills, who was appointed as agent by the society to build the best house he could for $6,000. It is still in existence; but after the death of Rev. Joseph Eldridge [in 1875] the interior was beautifully decorated and painted, a new platform and pulpit erected, electric lights installed, a new organ donated, Munich stained glass windows placed behind the pulpit, all through the great generosity of the Eldridge and Battell families.
The Meeting House as it now stands is a model of colonial church architecture. Its symmetry, its proportions, its graceful steeple, its artistic Sir Christopher Wren spire, its site on the knoll overlooking the Green, its beautiful interior decoration, its magnificent organ, make it one of the most attractive and beautiful in New England. One feature is most unusual to find in a Congregational church, a cross at the apex of the spire. It is “the only Puritan Meeting House whose spire from the first was surmounted by a cross and the same cross still points skyward.” This cross was evidently placed on the steeple in [1814] according to dates found in Rev. Thomas Robbins‘s diary.
Nineteenth-century Italianate alterations to the front facade of the Church of Christ Congregational of Norfolk were removed in 1926 and replaced with the current two-story pillared front porch, the gift of Alice Eldridge Bridgman, completed in 1927.
The Rev. Thomas Robbins was in error when he said it is “the only Puritan Meeting House whose spire from the first was surmounted by a cross and the same cross still points skyward.” It is not a cross but a comet weathervane which became common throughout New England and the NY Hudson valley after the fear of the Great Comet of 1680. In New Hampshire, NewYork and Massachucetts it resulted in Fast Days which survived in NH till 1991.