Number 8 Langsford Road in Cape Porpoise is getting a new identity. Farm + Table has closed. Complements, which has been in Dock Square in the Dora’s Beauty Salon building for some forty years, will soon move into the red livery stable building.

A grocery store, built in 1867 by Allison B. Huff used to stand next door to Church on the Cape. Civil War Navy Captain Thomas W. Bell bought half of the business in 1886. A year later, 25-year-old Luman E. Fletcher bought the remaining Huff share and added a small livery stable across the street. Capt. Bell took charge of the store.

Luman ran the stable, which proved successful. John Seavey was engaged to build a15 x 38-foot addition onto it in 1889. Trucking was added to the livery business. Luman delivered 12-14 barrels of Cape Porpoise Lobsters to the Kennebunkport train depot every morning.

By 1892, Bell & Fletcher was out of stable space again. An announcement in The Open Sea read, “next fall they will erect stables much more commodious than the present one. The new building will be forty feet by sixty feet and contain nearly three times as much floor space as the old one upon whose site it will be built.”

Building mover John B. Maling moved Bell & Fletcher’s old stable out of the way and carpenters began working on the new stable in September 1892. The current building was completed by spring 1893. The Langsford House guests at the other end of Langsford Road were Luman’s best livery customers.

Luman Fletcher sold out to Capt. Bell and started building his own variety store in 1897 right around the corner to appeal to promised trolley riding customers. L.E. Fletcher’s Store still stands as part of Bradbury Brothers Market. Capt. Bell leased Bell & Fletcher livery stable to Pharoh Perry, but the Langsford Road grocery/stable retained the name Bell & Fletcher until 1909 when Frank and Richard Nunan bought the business. They extended Pharoh Perry’s lease of the stable.

Pharoh Perry’s grandson Emery H. Huff bought the livery stable from the Nunan heirs in 1953. The store was sold to the church in 1956 and torn down.