The rectory was built in 1884, and has been the home of a succession of priests until very recently. It was a Second Empire building complete with a Mansard roof and a tower. It sat a little back from the street. I was interested in the fact that it did not face the street. Instead, it fittingly faced the church, just down the hill.
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The face of the rectory with its splendid tower.
Visually balanced despite the porch to one side, it has a really appealing form. It is easy to see the "haunted house" stereotype in the features, but the yellow paint and a history of tidy upkeep completely dispelled that while I was there.
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St. Mary's Church.
This is a busy place. I wanted to take some shots of it, but I was in a hurry to get adequate coverage of the rectory before I had to leave. Not only was I working on borrowed time for the field trip itself, but while I was shooting the house, people were dismantling it around me. Whatever angles, rooms or details I missed were going to be gone forever in a matter of hours.
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Speaking of haunted house stereotypes, the rectory sat in front of the graveyard. There was no real division between the house yard and the grave yard, in fact. But it wasn't a particularly scary graveyard (as they go), either. I took this shot in the morning, intending to take others later.
If you look at the backhouse, you can see the odd shape of the roof caused by renovations that added a room or two, but utterly messed with the Victorian features.
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The Main Floor
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The Porch Room.
I have no idea what they called it. It was a room made partially from a porch. It is hard to choose images from the backhouse that describe both what it was supposed to look like and what the renovations did to it. This shot was looking up what used to be the outside of the backhouse. There was a large closet right behind me here, but I do not think it was a bedroom.
The door at the end led to the main hall. It was directly under a point on the veranda roof where a door should go, and it balanced the hall. It just does not seem likely to have been placed there to the side of the stairs.
The door on the side led to the kitchen. There was a third door out of the shot on the left that led to the back entryway.
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The grand stairs.
Actually, the only stairs. One assumes there was another set somewhere lost to the renovators. I was told the rectory had been renovated in the fifties and the seventies. Neither were particularly good eras for paying attention to style, and these renovators did not.
The newel post and rail were gone by the time I got to the house. Luckily, one of the Rectory Committee Members (Kenny Murphy) had taken a few shots inside before the auction. The three white pages on the wall below the molding were there for bids, I believe.
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This beautiful bay sat at the bottom of the stairs in the hall on the street side of the building. There are other shots that show its features and mood, but this one from the floor caught all of it. To the left is the door to what I decided was the parlour. To the right, the door to the porch room.
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Detail of the arch above the grand stairs. There were not so many details left for me to shoot. This was still there because it was plaster, not wood.
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Modern french doors in the Back House.
This is another shot taken by Kenny Murphy. The doors were in a room that took up most of the entire downstairs of the backhouse. It was a modern, open concept space that included a kitchen and a living room area. The ceiling above the kitchen had been dropped by several feet, creating a raised effect in the living room. I believe the tin ceiling had been left intact there until the high bidders took it out after the auction. All that I saw of it was a single dangling rectangle of metal. I am sure this was a lovely space to live, but I gritted my teeth the entire time I was back there. What did they remove to create this? There were few clues, and only the assumptions of Victorian layout as a guide.
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Crown molding in the parlour.
I am a fan of making ceilings beautiful. We ignore them these days, or worse, swirl oatmeal-like goop on them. These folks knew how to treat a respectable ceiling.
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The tower entryway.
This is another shot given to me by Kenny Murphy. The door to the right in the shot leads to a tiny, dark porch, and then the front door. The whole thing was definitely not pre-renovations, but ignoring the modern accoutrements, this is another beautiful space.
I thought the room looked like it could have been the central hall in the design, rather than a room. The stairs could have been here. It was the builders who altered that, not the dreaded renovators. As it is, this is one of three rooms at the front of the house, and the least square (a big rectangle). Toward the end is a chimney. I saw no fireplaces in the entire house, but there was a flew attached to that chimney at one point. In the basement, beneath the third front room, I found the remains of another chimney that had been completely removed.
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More crown molding. A detail of the corner of the front room just past the tower arch.
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The tower window, it's trimming removed, is still a beautiful element.
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The Upper Floor
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This is another shot compliments of Kenny Murphy. The rail and the floor were both gone by the time I got in there. Also (importantly), the upper flight of stairs. Going up on the central riser was not so difficult, but I found that stepping down through mid air onto a two inch wide piece of wood a little unnerving.
The door at the far end leads to the backhouse. Not far beyond it is the upper floor space created by the renovations that threw off the design of the backhouse. One must guess at how this was originally handled.
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This space felt really nice, but it is wrong for the house. The post (one of two) marks the outer wall of the backhouse.
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The upper area of the tower.
Knotty pine walls and ceiling and a fan…lucky for me, they were gone by the time I got to the house (this is another shot taken by Kenny Murphy). I'm sure it was stunning. It is too bad it completely ignored the Victorian style of the tower and upper hall.
I will add my shots to this eventually. The space itself was quite beautiful.
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Dormers and roof lines.
Here is one of my shots from the tower. The line of the roof is called a "bell cast" profile. I have clearer shots of it to come.
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Windows and doors.
It is part of the Mansard roof design that the walls of these upper rooms are angled. People tend to like their windows upright, and the result is this quaint shape. I have seen this type of window without the casement woodwork and much prefer this.
You can see the door beside it: flat on one side and angled on the other. It is built into the wall between the front and back house. If the backhouse did not exist, the wall that door sits in would follow the line of the roof.
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I really love these arched windows. I see a lot of them in French settled areas more so than English, it seems. I have always wondered if it was coincidence or a cultural taste for them.
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The Cellar
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We managed to avoid the demolition crew's noisy, crowded shift down here. But that meant no light, either. It was down there, in the windowless backhouse, that I discovered the effectiveness of twirling a flashlight to get enough light for a shot.
The window under the tower is casting that daylight glow on the furnace. The single brick structure was the one remaining chimney.
The walls of the foundation were sandstone here. I am used to seeing the Fredericton fieldstone cellars, and was really impressed.
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The many holes that fed the water system they used to heat the house made for an interesting face on the furnace. Behind it, you can see the archway that led to the backhouse cellar. The stone walls were different back there. They were smaller. There was a storm door entrance to that area that had been sealed for years. A third cellar made of cement was built under the addition to the backhouse.
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Looking through the doorway between front and back house.
The cement half wall protects twinned oil tanks. In the closest corner, the stump of the removed chimney can't be seen because it was barely the height of the wall.
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Beneath the tower.
I liked this shot. There were clearer shots, but I like this one.
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The stairs leading up to the main house.
These are directly below the grand stairs.
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A last goodbye
The tower, one of the most iconic elements of this era.
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