Mecox Road

Mecox Road is the spine of the old Hayground and Mecox farm districts. They are two historic settlements that today fall partly in Water Mill and partly in Bridgehampton, in unincorporated Town of Southampton territory. The road runs through field country north of Mecox Bay and meets Ocean Road, Bridgehampton's main road to the ocean.

The Town's 2014 draft historic survey placed ten Mecox Road properties in a potential Hayground-Mecox Multiple Resource District. That is a group of scattered historic properties studied as a set rather than a single bounded district.

A farm road with a long record

Hayground was named for haying. The survey explains that the marshes around Mecox Bay supplied salt hay, and the higher ground nearby gave farmers room to dry it. Duck farming came later, then potatoes. Mecox Road's buildings record each phase:

• 78 Mecox Road (Box Farm): a two-story vernacular house in at least three sections. Earlier surveys suggest the oldest part may date to about 1690.
• 163 Mecox Road (Hay Ground House): built about 1723 as a saltbox on Montauk Highway, altered in 1832 and moved to this site in the 1960s.
• 206 and 265 Mecox Road: early half-Cape houses. The survey dates 265 to about 1785.
• 433 Mecox Road: an early-to-mid-twentieth-century potato barn banked into the hillside beside the road.
• 693 Mecox Road: a bracketed front-gable house from about 1870.
• 855 Mecox Road: on the Bridgehampton side, a late-nineteenth-century farmhouse the survey ties to a dairy farm established by 1894.

All of these are potential landmarks. None is designated, and the Multiple Resource District has not been adopted, so no Town historic review applies today. The survey still shapes how the Town reads these houses. A buyer planning a teardown or a major addition to a surveyed house should expect the history to come up.

Fields and the bay

Mecox Road runs through some of the most open farmland left on the Water Mill and Bridgehampton line. Open does not mean protected. Some fields here may carry purchased development rights or conservation easements and others none. The Research Desk did not find a recorded instrument specific to Mecox Road in the sources reviewed. Each neighboring field's status should be pulled from the Town Community Preservation Fund records and the county clerk before a view is priced as permanent. The agricultural-reserves guide explains the difference.

The Town has noted shoreline erosion around Mecox Bay from adjacent farming and hardening from nearby roads and houses. The bay's level rises and falls with the Trustees' opening and closing of the inlet to the ocean. Lower Mecox Road parcels and the lanes off it, such as Horsemill Lane, which the survey places near the bay, need flood-zone and wetland mapping. Parcels on higher ground near Montauk Highway may not.

Buyer diligence

• Confirm the parcel's hamlet (Water Mill or Bridgehampton) for mailing, school district and fire district. Zoning is the Town's in either case.
• Check whether the house or barn is in the 2014 survey and what the survey says.
• Identify the protection instrument, if any, on each neighboring field.
• On lower parcels, get the flood zone, wetland lines and septic record.
• For farm buildings converted to residential or accessory use, confirm certificates of occupancy.

Nearby lanes

Ocean Road meets Mecox Road on its way to the beach. Halsey Lane, Pauls Lane and Bay Lane cover the rest of the Mecox grid. Jobs Lane leads to Mecox Beach.

Considering a Mecox Road property?

Request a private pricing review from The Roebling Research Desk for the specific Mecox Road parcel: hamlet and position on the road, historic-survey status, field protection on each side, bay and flood conditions and the recorded sales that genuinely compare.