Home, James

Here's a Markham Heritage Estates story to help you plan your visit. The lovely brick (warm, soft, handmade) Georgian style house with the excellent doorway and the "Gothicized Palladian window" under its low pitched central gable is just one of the resurrection stories in the 'hood. From the plaque in the parkette in front of the house (from which the archival photo is copied), we learned that this house is one of the few examples of this mid c19 regional style peculiar to Markham, Pickering and Scarborough.

The house sat abandoned near the corner of Highway 48 and Major Mackenzie Drive, no place for a nice girl like this. Fortunately, someone saw her hidden virtues and brought her to live in the estate in the 1990's.

The house was built about 1856 by James Thomas, from England. During his lifetime he was an innkeeper in Box Grove and a successful farmer north of Mount Joy. I saw enough 'rescued' buildings originating from these two communities in my visits to Markham to doubt that they are even detectable today, their identities lost in the rapid growth of the area. Go on, surprise me.