Hatley Castle

Emily Carr’s $5.5 Million Cabin

by Eve Lazarus on July 20, 2024

Emily Carr’s 100-year-old Oak Bay cabin could be yours for $5.5 million dollars! The good news is that it comes with a 10-bedroom heritage house designed by Samuel Maclure.

825 Foul Bay Road. Emily Carr's cabin — Emily Carr’s Oak Bay cabin on Foul Bay Road, 2011

In 1913, Emily Carr paid $900 for a plot of land on Victoria Avenue in Oak Bay. According to a story,* she built a 12 by 20 foot cabin the following year, “nail by nail” at a cost of $150 with the help of “one old carpenter.”

Assessment records show that the builder was Thomas Cattarall, the same “old carpenter” who built Craigdarroch for the Dunsmuir family and later worked with architect Samuel Maclure on Hatley Castle. By 1914, he was 70, retired, and living not far away on Beach Drive.

Story from: Sensational Victoria

Emily Carr's cabin, 825 Foul Bay Road — 825 Foul Bay Road, Oak Bay, photo courtesy Amit Khathar, Saga Homes

Emily wrote extensively about James Bay and her family home in The Book of Small, about her time as a landlady in The House of All Sorts, and about selling that house, her family home, and her later houses in Hundreds and Thousands. Yet with all these books, including her biography, there is not one mention of the Oak Bay cabin.

Probably the cabin was a much-needed refuge from her hated landlady duties, a place she could escape to in summer.

Sold in 1919:

In 1919, both her sisters Clara and Edith died, and Emily sold her cottage to Ellen Hodgson Phipps, the wife of a local farmer. The little cottage went through a series of owners and renters—mostly single women—as well as a number of alterations. In 1995, new owners wanted to build a house on the property but didn’t want to destroy the cottage. They tried to give the cabin to the provincial government which runs Carr House, but officials said no thanks.

At this point Terry Tallentire stepped in. She paid the city $1.00 and then spent another $4,000 to move it to her house at 825 Foul Bay Road. An artist herself, Terry used Emily’s cabin for her studio. She moved years ago, but the cabin remained.

New owners were renovating the house into suites when I was researching this story in 2011 and I was able to get in and have a look around. According to the current real estate listing, it has a 3,600 sq.ft. owner’s suite, five private suites, and one “historic detached cottage.”

Emily loathed being a landlady, but somehow, I think she would have liked this house.

*Mention of the “story” was in Emily Carr: The Untold Story, by Edythe Hembroff-Schleicher (1978)

Tags 825 Foul Bay Road, Craigdarroch, emily carr, Hatley Castle, Samuel Maclure, Sensational Victoria, Thomas Cattarall

The Story of Brock House

by Eve Lazarus on November 8, 2012

I’m a huge fan of Samuel Maclure, a BC-born architect with an incredible design range. Maclure designed almost 500 houses in his 40-year career including the audacious Hatley Castle in Victoria, Gabriola on Davie Street, and Brock House at Jericho Beach.

There are several books about Samuel Maclure, but my favourite is Janet Bingham’s.

It’s been out of print for years so I was delighted to see that she has contributed a section to Thorley Park to Brock House: from family home to heritage landmark 1912-2012, a book that celebrates the house’s 100^th anniversary.

The book is filled with archival photos and has undergone some skilful editing by Jo Pleshakov who was also involved in the Story of Dunbar in 2009. But what I enjoyed most was reading the different points of view from family members who either lived there at some point or had some other personal connection to the house.

Richard and Andrew Gilman, descendants of the original owner Philip Gilman kick off the first section. Gilman commissioned Maclure to design his house in 1909, although according to Bingham, he was exceptionally hands on and his attention to detail was “intensive.”

Gilman came to BC to work as an assayer for the government of BC after spending his early school years in Paris, Rome and Madrid, and studying mining and metallurgy at an English university. He became part of a land syndicate and by 1910 had land holdings worth more than $2.5 million, and is said to have told his wife that “only Armageddon could damage our progress at this point.”

Armageddon hit BC in 1913, and like many others Gilman lost his fortune. He managed to hang on to the house until 1922 when it sold to Mildred Brock for $40,000.

Peter Brock takes over the story and tells us that for the next 13 years, Mildred and Reg raised four sons, and entertained a bunch of interesting people including Bertrand Russell, Sir Percy Sykes, Lord and Lady Allenby and Lady Baden-Powell. In 1935, she and Reg died in a plane crash near Whistler.

In the 1930s mansions were not in demand and eventually the Brock’s children sold the house for the fire sale price of $11,000 to mining executive David Tait. Tait’s grandson Robert McConnell takes the story of the house up until 1952, when it became offices for the RCMP and the story is handed over to Staff Sgt. Major Bob Underhill.

By 1971, the RCMP had left the building and it stood empty. Jericho Tennis Club and the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club pooled their resources and offered $300,000, the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation offered $1. Neither offer was accepted. As the years passed the house was broken into and vandalized, was turned into a movie set for the National Film Board. It is now a senior’s activity centre.

Tags Brock House, David Tait, Gabriola, Hatley Castle, Janet Bingham, Jo Pleshakov, Mildred Brock, Philip Gilman, Samuel Maclure, Thorley Park

Three Houses of Samuel Maclure

by Eve Lazarus on September 13, 2010

Chances are if you live in Vancouver or Victoria you’ve either been inside a Maclure house or at least walked by one. Sam Maclure has his fingerprints all over dozens of houses in Shaughnessy, Oak Bay and Rockland, many with grand central halls and lots of wood panelling, as well as more modest houses in New Westminster and James Bay. In total he designed almost 500 houses during his 40-year career.

825 Foul Bay Road — Designed by Samuel Maclure in 1910, Photo from Sensational Victoria, 2011

I wrote a lot about Maclure in both At Home with History and Sensational Victoria. The architect shook up both cities using early Tudor, Queen Anne, Arts and Crafts and Chalet styles and turned them into his own West Coast style using native woods—he even designed the gardens.

Born in New Westminster in 1860, Maclure started out as a telegrapher, taught himself architecture and began designing homes in 1890. In 1892 he hung up his shingle in Victoria and advertised in The Colonist that “S. Maclure, architect, also designer of artistic furniture and interior decorations. Address room 13, Five Sisters’ block.”

Unfortunately the Five Sisters’ Block and Maclure’s own homes – two in James Bay and a third on Beach Drive in Oak Bay are all gone.

But Maclure fans can take in three of his Victoria houses on Saturday October 16. The tour, put on by the Vancouver Heritage Foundation is led by Martin Segger, an expert on Maclure and the author of Victoria, An Architectural History (1979) and The Buildings of Samuel Maclure: In Search of Appropriate Form (1986).

Segger will give the introductory lecture at the Legacy Gallery before the tour which will take in three houses, one in Rockland and two in Oak Bay. The Charles Fox Todd house on St. Charles Street was built in 1907 at a cost of $16,000. Called Illahie (meaning ‘our land’ in Chinook), it is a massive Arts and Crafts house that was converted into six suites in 1943. Maclure designed Tor Lodge, the second house on Foul Bay Road in 1907 for J.J. Shallcross and it’s described as a “fine example of the Arts and Crafts/Chalet architectural style.” The owner of the third house built in 1910 for W.H. Churchman-Kirkbride has just completed a massive renovation. It’s a nice example of an American Arts and Craft, and since 1992, has housed Emily Carr’s 1914 cottage in the back. The cost of the tour is $150 plus tax and includes bus, ferries, lunch and lecture. You can sign up at www.vancouverheritagefoundation.org.

403 St. George Street, New Westminster. New Westminster Heritage, 1902.

Some other Maclure houses:

The flamboyant Queen Anne at 403 St. Georges Street, New Westminster (1890)

Gabriola, 1523 Davie Street, Vancouver (1905) and now Romano’s Macaroni Grill

Hatley Castle, now Royal Roads University in Victoria (1908)

Brock House, 3875 Point Grey Road, Vancouver (1911)

W.C. Nichol House, 1402 McRae Avenue, Vancouver (1913)

Tags Brock House, Five Sisters Block, Gabriola, Hatley Castle, Illahie, Martin Segger, Tor Lodge, Vancouver Heritage Foundation

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