See the full story in Sensational Victoria: Bright lights, red lights, murders, ghosts and gardens
When I was mapping out a walking tour of James Bay for Sensational Victoria not too long ago, I came across the Coach House, an early carriage-style residence tucked away at the point where Marifield Avenue runs into St. Andrews Street. It’s built on land that was once owned by Emily Carr’s father Richard, and a stone’s throw from Carr House on Government Street where Emily was born, her own house and the subject of her book “the House of All Sorts,” and the two houses owned by her sisters. I couldn’t find any mention of the house in any of the heritage inventory books, so decided to do a bit of research of my own.
Current owners Jackie and Martin Somers named it the Coach House and Jackie says that she’d always thought of it as belonging to a coachman because the story went that it was used as the coach house for a mansion on Douglas Street—in those days Douglas was called Katherine Street. As Jackie notes, what you see from St Andrews Street was originally the back of the house. The front has a pretty Tudor-style trim, which is now hidden by an ugly parkade. When the house was built pre-1900, Marifield Avenue didn’t exist—it would have been the driveway to Bishop Cridge’s house of the same name.