A small inn called the Castner Inn (owned by a Z. Castner owned the Polo Field land in 1848 (1), and maps show a house on it.

( Neighbors remember this old house being torn down about 1980. In 1777 the Continental Army took that road out of Philadelphia towards Lancaster Anthony Wayne used it to go to Paoli and Washington came that way to stay at the Buck Inn ( razed in 1964, now the Lexus dealership ).įor at least 140 years a house stood near what is now the Polo Field parking lot. The Revolution literally passed by on the Old Lancaster Road. ( Rees Thomas’s newly restored log house (ca.1704) stands on County Line Road and Mondella Avenue, just beyond the hospital parking garage.) By the early 1700s, Rees Thomas likely owned the land. William Penn had promised the north Haverford Township borderlands to members of the Llewelyn family (Morris, John, and David) in 1681, when he was still in the Old World, and before he signed treaties with Lenape sachems for the lands. Thousands of Lenape hunted, fished, and camped nearby over the centuries, and who knows what artifacts may lie beneath the earth. The old path evolved into parts of what are now Montgomery Avenue, Old Lancaster Road and Conestoga Road, and it wandered from near Philadelphia into Lancaster County. The area bordered a path used by indigenous peoples for millennia before the European settlers appeared. Those acres have seen a lot of history during their struggle to survive. (You can still find one of those springs near Railroad Avenue.) The green space that covered the northern-most corner of Haverford Township over 300 years ago is now down to about 18 cleared acres.

Stand in the center of the Polo Field today and imagine a dense forest with a small stream and several natural springs.

Haverford township historical society