ARCHITECTURE:
Herbert Shade was the plumbing and sewer inspector for the City of Victoria, and, in the days before the concept of conflict of interest, approved his own plumbing plan. On it, he described this pleasant house as “a mansion and garage.”
This is a cross-gabled, 1½-storey, Arts & Crafts Craftsman Bungalow with wide bracketed eaves. On the Queens Av façade, there are two shallow, shed-roofed, cantilevered box bays on large brackets, one now enclosed below, and a gabled entry porch on the far right. There is a shallow gabled bay on the left side of the house. An offset gabled entry porch on the left front has paired and tripled heavy square posts on concrete caps supported on brick piers. Brackets between the posts support the gable wall with its small window. The porch and step balustrades are brick. The house, which was once shingled with stucco and half-timbering in the porch gable, is now stuccoed to the water table; the foundation and chimneys are brick. Many windows retain their art glass leaded lights. The original random rock wall and klinker brick gateposts remain.
ORIGINAL OCCUPANTS:
1910-51: Herbert Francis Shade (b. Victoria 1875-1953, p277) left Victoria for the Klondike in 1898; when he returned in 1901 married Annie “Nancy” Elizabeth Cobley (née Carter, Guisborough, Yorks, ENG 1880-1951).
Herbert resigned from the City because he was refused a raise from $75 a month to $125. Herbert’s step-brother Henry Harman (1888-1971) lived at this residence until he married Katherine “Katie” Maud Jackson (1889-1963) (619 Avalon St) in 1914. [He, along with Roy Brethour began the Sidney Freight Service in 1919. Later he was proprietor of Shade Bros Fuels in Sidney, BC. Parents David Shade (c.1823-1880) and Ellen (née Knight, c.1839-1908), married in Victoria in 1865. Daughter Margaret Mary Shade (b. Victoria 1869-1938) married William A Sprinkling (b. Montreal, PQ 1863-1936), a well known tailor (1347 Vining St)].
OTHER OCCUPANTS:
1952-55: Retired plastering contractor Alfred Robert Frewing (b. Caistor, Lincs, ENG 1886-1957) married Alice (née Norman, b. Croydon, Sx, ENG 1886-1954) in Croydon in 1906 and came to Langford, BC in 1907. With them were unmarried sons Donovan Esson (b. Victoria 1913-71) of AR Frewing & Sons, plasterers [managed by brother Alfred Joseph Ellice Frewing (b. Langford 1918-2002)]; and Robert Norman (b. Victoria 1907-1991), meat cutter with J.C. Stewart, then a plasterer.