One of the more interesting houses up-Island is 231 State Road in Chilmark. It is an unusual house for Chilmark: a Queen Anne style Victorian, painted yellow, with a turret.

I don’t know of any other such houses in Chilmark, whose charm lies in its serene and lovely rolling hills, hidden houses and beaches. It is a very common type of house elsewhere in the United States, the reflection of the prosperity of the late 19th century. Prosperity that had passed Chilmark by and which it was not to achieve until well past the midpoint of the 20th century.

A late 18th-century home has been on the move in Edgartown. The historic Warren House, which usually fronts North Water street beside the Edgartown library, has been temporarily relocated as part of a major restoration effort.

The Denniston House will remain standing for now, after a vote by the Oak Bluffs historical commission stalled a request to demolish the former African American church. The commission hopes to negotiate a compromise with the property owner.

A historic downtown Edgartown property that housed a women’s clothing store for nearly three decades has been sold. The new owners said they plan to open a year-round pedestrian food market there sometime this summer.

At the end of a long dirt road in Chilmark, a huge white tent arches above the meadows at Quansoo Farm. Inside the tent is the historic Mayhew-Hancock-Mitchell House, under renovation since last year.

Today the weight of history is more apparent than ever at the Mayhew Chapel, with its moss-covered roof, peeling white paint and crumbling ceiling. New efforts are underway to restore the chapel, clear out the underbrush in the burial ground and take inventory of the ancient fieldstones that mark the graves.

Once located on Beach Street in Vineyard Haven where the Stop & Shop now stands, the Great House served for years as a tavern before being moved to its present location on West Chop.

Twelve years in the making, the complicated deal with the town, the land bank and the Howard B. Hillman family will create affordable housing, add conservation land and save a historic home in Chilmark.

Terry and Marcia Martinson began to move into an old house looking down on the Edgartown harbor this week. Unlike most people who live on the Island waterfront these days, the Martinsons will live there year-round. But taking the whole history of the place into account, their time in the home will be short.

With the much-discussed big-house bylaw now a fact of life in Chilmark, discussion at the town planning board this week turned to preservation of historic houses.

Pamela Goff, who owns a pre-Revolutionary house off Tea Lane, asked the board to consider an amendment to the bylaw approved by voters last year to regulate very large houses. The first-of-its-kind bylaw could have the unintended consequence of actually encouraging people to demolish old houses instead of preserving them, Mrs. Goff said.