NORWAY – An early-morning fire destroyed a 200-year-old farmhouse at the top of Pike’s Hill on Saturday.

The cause of the fire was undetermined hours later, and the state Fire Marshal’s Office was called to investigate.

Owners Dr. Brian Nolan of Oxford Hills Internal Medicine and his wife, Yami, a second-grade teacher at the Guy E. Rowe School in Norway, were not home when the fire was discovered at around 4 a.m.

The house was in the process of being remodeled, and the Nolans were renting elsewhere while the work was being done.

Assistant Fire Chief Frank Staley was driving by the home on his way to work when he saw light coming from the home. “At first I thought they left their lights on, but then I thought, that’s strange,” he said.

Backing up to take a closer look, Staley saw flames coming from the back side of the house.

It took approximately 50 firefighters from Norway, Paris, Oxford, West Paris and Hebron three hours to knock down the blaze. Staley said the flames were burning out of control by the time the first firetruck arrived.

Having a farm pond beside the house helped firefighters considerably, Staley said. Otherwise, water would have had to be drawn into tankers from a site several miles away at The Lake Store, he said.

Firefighters never attempted to go inside the home to fight the blaze because of the intensity of the flames, Staley said.

“We couldn’t even put packs on and go inside. It was all surround and down,” he said. The house was insured, said Yami Nolan, as she and her husband talked to an insurance investigator in the driveway. All that was left of the post-and-beam home was one wall, part of the front wall, the large center chimney and a few charred posts. The barn, however, escaped all but minor damage.

The farmhouse is beside the cable television tower and is on the highest point of land on Pike’s Hill Road. The Nolans bought the property five years ago from James and Deborah DeShon, who had lived there for years.