ARCHITECTURE:
The many renovations of this home by several owners has created a complex architectural history. New research has confirmed the original cottage built for Campbells was designed by Maclure, who called for tenders in 1903. Thought to have originally been a small, low, hip-roofed cottage, the three windows with unusual sash at the front were a favorite of Maclure’s from this pre-1905 period. He used them on his own home, 641 Superior St and a few cottages. The Heisterman renovation designed by Maclure in 1907 raised the roof line and put a large gable over the original walls, which gives it its unusual proportions. In 1913 Burke-Roche engaged Maclure to do some minor work.*
The completed house boasts many distinctive design elements for which Maclure’s Arts & Crafts homes are famous. Camsona is a front-gabled, 1½-storey Arts & Crafts house with oversized bargeboards and drop finials. There are gable- and hip-roofed dormers on the left side over two cantilevered and bracketed box bays. There are two gabled dormers on the right over one box bay. A small attic window in the upper front gable, surrounded by stucco and half-timbering, sits above a wide, shallow box bay on small brackets. The main floor has a recessed porch right of three small windows with wooden muntins. To the left is a wide cantilevered and bracketed box bay. The shingled house sits on a stone foundation.
ORIGINAL OCCUPANTS:
1902-06: George Allen Campbell (b. Montréal 1854-1928) married Mary Halsnod (née Ward, b. Bombay, India 1856-1927) in Barford, QC in 1882. They came here in 1894. She bought the property in 1902-3 and they moved to their new home in 1904. He was a commission agent in Trounce Alley for Hermann H. Wolfe & Co Montréal and Perrin Freres Co, Grenoble, FR. They moved to Vancouver in 1906.
OTHER OCCUPANTS:
1907-13: Bernard Sigismund Heisterman (b. Victoria 1873-1947) and Margaret Farabee (née Arbuckle, b. Memphis, TN, USA 1886-1979) married in 1907 and moved into Camsona, the name they gave the house. He was the son of Victoria pioneers Charles Henry Frederick Heisterman and Laura Adams (née Haynes) (1521 Shasta Pl), an early school teacher at the mainland settlement of Moodyville. His father started one of the city’s earliest real estate businesses in 1864, eventually taken over by Bernard who later formed a partnership with James Forman (1000 Terrace Av, 609 Toronto St) as Heisterman, Forman & Co. He retired in 1945. Both were long-time members of Victoria Golf Club. Margaret was YWCA president during WWII.
1913-47: Hon. Edmund Burke Roche (b. Cork, IRL 1859-1948), a member of one of Ireland’s most prominent families, immigrated to the United States and took up farming in Wyoming in the late-1880s. He came to BC as a prospector in 1898 and to Victoria 10 years later. In 1912 he married Elizabeth “Blanche” (née Clapham, b. QC 1864-1935) who came to BC in 1905. Her mother Leonora (née Paterson, b. QC 1832-1914), widow of John Greaves Clapham, lived in the house until her death. Blanche and Edmund lived the rest of their lives in this house.
*Researched & written by Jim Wolf