Point Ellice - the O'Reilly House ...

Learning more about the pioneers (on the Canadian west coast) of what I would call 'our age' ... ie Victorian life onwards - we'd recognise houses, tea parties etc ... earlier than that it'd have been pretty rustic and rough ...

Water colour by Kathleen O'Reilly - showing the drawing
room awnings to protect the textiles from the sun
(the house today is protected with sun blinds)

 Point Ellice house built in 1861, bought six years later by the O'Reilly family ... and as Peter and Caroline's family expanded the house was altered, the gardens developed ... with meticulous records being kept ...

Boating celebration for Queen's Birthday late 1800s

Access to the house was either by the water ... the Gorge Waterway was one of the many fjord-like inlets that abound in this part of the world ... or a rough track ... yet Peter O'Reilly insisted the gravelled driveway was meticulously raked and graded .... 

Cottage Garden Border

... it would have been quiet, surrounded by nature, yet easily accessible from Victoria, by then capital of British Columbia ... 'invasion for the gold, by the Americans, was to be avoided at all costs!' ... being here kept control of this part of the west coast ...

Love the stained glass - reminds me
of some we knew as kids down in Cornwall

The industrial nature of their surroundings started coming to the fore in the late 1800s ... sawmills and rail-yards arrived ... but family and guests could boat down the quieter waters of the Gorge.

Part of restored vegetable garden

The family owned the house for 108 years before selling it in 1974 to the Provincial Government - leaving everything, except their personal possessions, behind ...

Fremontodendron ... clambering around the front door

The cottage altered in those beginning years to accommodate their way of life ... but by the 1880s became a rambling asymetrical home in the popular Italianate style of that era ...

Lots of old perfumed roses, and foxgloves
were out for us to enjoy

Restoration has been possible through the archives available to house and garden conservators ... 

Croquet set ... a fielder was needed
to make sure the balls didn't
disappear into the gorge!

... original wallpapers, paint colours, locations of pictures, clothing, earlier layouts of rooms, garden plants and seeds ... 

Restored wallpaper by the
front door

... so much could be faithfully reproduced to bring the house back to its earlier glory - and give us an overview of life for those pioneering settlers ...

Dining room ... or warm winter room

Guests had wicker shields fitted over the dining chairs - so they didn't get the intense heat from the fire ... 

I didn't find out who these were ... but just liked them -
they were in the kitchen!

...while the warmth from the chimneys kept the table linens dry by means of the narrow cupboard fitted into the sides of the chimneys above the fireplace.

The family Bible

Ingenious - those early settlers .... that dining room as it was warm in winter from the fire - became the family's room for 'working in' ... hence the Bible, writing table, piano etc ...

Joseph Trutch's desk - which Peter used

Remember that WEP challenge we had in February last year - Back of the Drawer ... the family in the 1960s found letters from the first Prime Minister of Canada (1867 - 1873; 1878 - 1891), Sir John A Macdonald, to Caroline O'Reilly's brother, Sir Joseph Trutch, when he was appointed British Columbia's first Lieutenant Governor ... the O'Reilly's bought his desk when he decided to move back to England.

Peter and Caroline O'Reilly

The exterior walls have been scored to make the stucco material appear as though the house was built of stone blocks.  It was painted in pale rose, dark brown trim and with red detailing round the window sashes - faithfully restored.

A quick note to other points of interest I spotted or appear in the guide book ...

Kitchen range on which the Chinese cook made their meals

The kitchen was very modern for the 1880s ... a cast iron French range (coal and wood-burning) ... a copper hot water tank, heated by the tubes running through the stove (an earlier one had exploded).  

There's even a ceramic water filter ... a block of charcoal inside purifies the drinking water!  Made in London by the Silicated Carbon Filter Co. Patented Self-Aerating Moveable Block.

Butler's Pantry

A 154 piece of Minton china, King's Border is on display in the dining room ... along with other sets of china in the butler's pantry ... including large serving platters and what looks like a cake plate - which is actually a dark blue Wedgwood covered cheese plate decorated with a raised white fern motif.

The curators have secured the china ... so it hopefully doesn't get damaged in one of the many small earthquakes we get here ...

The drawing room ... with the piano and harp given
to Kathleen by Lady Trutch

A Victorian drawing room's overcrowded arrangement was common at that time ... Kathleen O'Reilly was very talented and simply decided she did not want to leave Point Ellice ... staying on after her parents died ... devoting herself to keeping the house and garden going as her parents had aspired to.

Jerusalem Sage - drought resistant plant ...
but I loved it - Phlomis Russeliana

Rudyard Kipling visited Victoria, but not Point Ellice house, however he remarked that the city was 'more English than the English' ...

... the house reminded me of my early home ... particularly the garden with the borders, roses, and hollyhocks - which weren't out ... but the guide book shows them ...

Kathleen, Frank and John

Point Ellice is a true historical record of the life and times of a family home and garden at the end of the 1800s ... not many properties are able to boast this sort of accurate history ... a lovely day out and visit ...

Back of the Drawer Bloghop post ... linked here ... 

Hilary Melton-Butcher

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