Your Purlins are Showing

Trethewey! Bless you.

Yesterday I was travelling back in time to our 2017 visit to dear friends and places in B.C. I've written a few posts about the time (and the architecture to be sure.) Victoria. Here's a link to one. If you're at all interested, use the search box on the blog. It's amazingly good. I find it useful, prevents me from blathering on all over again about a favourite place. And, Vancouver. Here's one I like.

I have been thinking about what an architecture friend said recently. He's based in Peace River, Alberta, and is doing a survey of  the heritage properties in the area. The oldest is 1904.

I did note that in a post (damn, that search engine is good, searched 'Edwardian Classical' and it tactfully, without judgement, reminded me I was thinking of Melville, Saskatchewan.)

 In Ontario it is our conceit to think our few late 1700 buildings (like Fairfield House - 1793) are old, yet in the west, even the earliest of those that endure (not the indigenous architecture, or settler structures of log and frame, which dissolve eventually) are mostly from the early twentieth century.

Of course, in a week, I shall be knocked off my proud Ontario perch, when we land in England for a look-see. First stop, Chatsworth.

This is fun. I've just spent several weeks within the discipline of writing for a literate editor, who raises eyebrows at the kind of verbal wandering that I've been doing here with impunity.

 So. About this house. It's a fine Craftsman Bungalow style home, built in 1920. It's name is Trethewey House. Its builder/owner, Joseph Ogle Trethewey, owned and operated the Abbotsford Lumber Company on Mill Lake.

The house is a Heritage Abbotsford Society municipal heritage site. Their  website contains a lovely black and white photo of the family who lived well here, enjoying the garden as did we, on our early spring visit. Sadly, the house was not yet open for tours. Next time.



I'm going to save us both time, and add in a link to a post I created seven years ago (good grief) about Craftsman Bungalows. Trethewey House displays so many of the characteristic details that I might have suspected it of being a kit house from the good folks at Sears Modern Homes, were it not for the fact that Mr. Ogle didn't need to bring in lumber from anywhere else, thank you.