Heritage Register
Fernwood

1260 Denman Street (ex-12 North Rd)
Bandon Cottage

Built 1890
Heritage-Designated 2004

For: William & Mary Maslen (Maslin)

ARCHITECTURE:

This single-storey, hipped-roof Vernacular Italianate house has a symmetrical façade with two angled bays flanking the entry. A flat-topped hipped roof covers the bays and the porch. There are eaves brackets on the corners and above the bays. The house is clad in drop siding. Similar houses were built nearby at about the same time at 1347 & 1444-48 Pembroke St, Fernwood. In the 1990s Shirley-Anne Williams restored much of the exterior, removing upright boards, replacing aluminum windows with appropriate wooden windows and casings of the right size in the two front bays, replacing eaves brackets, and painting in a period colour scheme.

ORIGINAL OCCUPANTS:
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Owners: 1890-1902: William John Maslen (b. Bishopsgate, London, ENG, 1830-1893) and Mary Stewart (née McCorkle, Londonderry, IRL, 1834-1902) married in 1869 at the old St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Victoria. Throughout the 1870s, William worked at Stuart & Keast’s Lion Brewery Tap, a brewery and saloon which existed from 1862-c.1888 at the corner of Queens Av and Chambers St, Fernwood. William was listed as a labourer, employee, and finally a brewer for Lion Brewery. From 1880 on he farmed at least nine acres in the Fernwood area. In 1884-87 the Maslens lived at Spring Villa in Spring Ridge, in 1889-90 at 185, now 2221 Fernwood Rd with Walter Nathan as their tenant (1252 Denman St). The Maslens had one daughter, Jane Ann (1872-1947), who worked as a dressmaker. She married Albert George Crick in Revelstoke in 1909.

OTHER OCCUPANTS:

1903-06: Emma Williams.
1906-10: The widowed Annie Morrissey Sleuter (née Russell, b. Plymouth, ENG, 1861-1929) married cigarmaker Victor Sleuter (b. Belgium, 1861-1952) in New Westminster in 1904. They lived in Vancouver and this was rental property; Annie had it plumbed in 1907.
1910: Joseph and Alice Mary John were retired farmers from Glamorgan Farm, North Saanich. They came to the Saanich Peninsula in 1872 and 1884 respectively. They were living at 2201 Spring St when Joseph died.

Tenants: 1904: James Thomas and Louise Fahay married in 1900 in Nanaimo, where James worked as a tailor. In Victoria, James was assistant supervisor of Metropolitan Life insurance. Their five-month-old daughter Olive Emily died of cholera in this house in 1904.

1912-18: Tenants, then owners William Vickery Harte (b. c.1873) and Hester Ann (née Heron, born c.1877) were from Bandon, IRL, and gave the house its name: the present owner found a board with that name in the crawl space under the house. The Hartes married in Victoria in 1909. Harte was a teaming contractor: there remains in the back yard a concrete foundation that is believed to have been from a stable, very possibly for his business.

1924-83: Charles Ernest Watson (1890-1963) and Minnie Alice (née Taylor, 1890-1983) were born in Saffron Walden, Essex, ENG, and came to Victoria in 1920. Charles worked as a gardener until his death. Minnie was a member of Knox Presbyterian Church and a life-long member of the WMS.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION & IMAGES:

• Fernwood History

• Fernwood Heritage Register


• This Old House, Victoria's Heritage Neighbourhoods,
Volume One: Fernwood & Victoria West