DANVERS, MA — The town, preservationists and cemetery commissioners are taking steps to preserve the brick receiving crypt in Walnut Grove Cemetery. Such crypts, which are rare nowadays, are also known as a "winter crypts," once used for temporary storage of bodies when the ground was frozen and graves could not be dug, according to a letter from Town Archivist Richard Trask. The crypt's brickwork and new wooden roof will cost $10,000, and contractor Colonial Remodeling began the job last week, said Susan Fletcher, assistant director of Planning and Human Services.

The repairs, including the masonry, should not take too long and will depend on the weather, Fletcher said.

This winter, Town Meeting may be asked to approve a maintenance easement so the town can take care of the crypt in perpetuity.

Walnut Grove Cemetery at 30 Sylvan St. is not a town cemetery but a private, nonprofit one, and its Cemetery Commission had proposed tearing the crypt down due to concerns someone might get hurt climbing around it.

The crypt is set into an embankment, and someone had jumped on its wooden roof, collapsing it.

In the spring, the town's Preservation Commission and the nonprofit Preservation Fund met with Walnut Grove's commissioners to see if the crypt could be saved.

To do so, the Preservation Commission pledged the $1,200 it gets from the town budget each year. The rest of the money may come from fundraising or from the Preservation Fund, Fletcher said.

The Department of Public Works would maintain the crypt. The brick structure, which has no heat or electricity, will probably require little maintenance from the town, Fletcher said.

Walnut Grove's first receiving crypt was built in 1845, according to Trask. The structure, about the size of a one-car garage, was expanded around 1875. The metal door was most likely salvaged from the original 1845 crypt.

Winter crypts and so-called hearse houses were common in 19th-century cemeteries, but most were torn down when they were no longer needed.

Trask said Danvers' receiving crypt, the only one like it left in town, may have played host to the remains of George Jacobs, a victim of the Salem witch trials who was hanged in August 1692.

In 1956, what were thought to be Jacobs' skeletal remains were unearthed at a housing development in town. From 1956 to 1967, the remains were kept at the crypt. They were later stored at the town's Archival Center, and then reburied in 1992 during the 300th anniversary of the witch trials, Trask said.