Heritage Register
Fernwood
1621 Fernwood Road
(ex-75 Fernwood Rd)
Built
1904-05
Heritage-Designated 2004
For: Jane & John Creed
Builders: attributed to the Creed Family
ARCHITECTURE:
This is a working class example of an Edwardian Queen Anne. It is a 1½-storey, front-gabled house with a wide two-storey hexagonal turret on the right rear. To the right and rear of the turret is a wrap-around back porch, part of which is glazed. On the left side is a small gable at the rear, behind which is a lower gabled addition. The front gable is divided horizontally by a pent roof on shallow brackets. There are two windows on the right above a wide bracketed cutaway bay, and a single on the left above a narrow porch. The front porch is inset and has a peaked hipped roof. Both it and the rear porch have Tuscan columns. The gable above the pent roof, the turret, the front entry porch and balustrade, and the front bay are all shingled; the rest of the house is clad in drop siding. It has a brick foundation on a rubble footing.
ORIGINAL OCCUPANTS:
1904-37: This house was constructed in 1904-05 to the north of a house built on the same property in 1888 (ex-67, 1615, now 1613 Fernwood) by John Creed’s parents, John Creed Sr (b. Ashford, Kent, ENG, 1832-1916) and Penelope Hannah Anne “Annie” (née Colpman, b. Foxton, Leics, ENG, 1832-1902). The Creeds came to Victoria c.1883 via San Francisco, where they had lived for 10 years. John Sr. was a janitor at Victoria City Hall for many years. After Annie’s death, he married widow Sarah Ann Wagg in 1907. Sarah’s first husband Edwin Wagg was a miner.
In 1884 John Creed Jr. (b. London, ENG, 1860-1934) married Sarah and Edwin Wagg’s daughter Jane (b. Halifax, Yorks, ENG, 1865-1937), who came to Victoria c.1882. They first lived with John’s parents at 67 Fernwood, then at 203 Johnson St before building this house. John Jr. was a building painter and an artisan in art glass and leaded lights. He worked for Robert Lettice (1120 Faithful St, Fairfield) and then for Melrose & Co, in which Lettice was a partner. John Jr. and Jane lived in this house until their deaths.
1914-21: John Jr and Jane’s daughter Edith Evelyn (1888-1965) married carpenter and Dockyard shipwright Reginald Charles Anker in 1914. They lived in the house with John and Jane until 1921.
1920-52: John Jr and Jane’s daughter Winnifred Kate “Winnie” (1896-1979) worked as a stenographer and then with Turner Beeton & Co during WWI. She married carpenter Albert Lee Jordan (b. Ladner, BC, 1895) before he signed up in 1918 to fight in WWI. The Jordans lived in the house with John and Jane from then on. By 1931 the Jordans owned the house; they lived in it until 1952. When Elmer E. Wescott of 1702 Fernwood Rd died in 1952, Albert was his executor. The Jordans sold 1621 Fernwood, bought 1702, and lived there until 1967.
From 1926, John Jr and Jane’s eldest son, John Arthur owned John Sr’s house at 1613 Fernwood, which was rented out for 10 years after his grandfather’s death. John Arthur married newly arrived Alice Holden in 1910. John Arthur was a gardener for some years, several for the City of Victoria Parks Board until retiring in 1950. He and Alice lived at 1613 Fernwood until their deaths.
Albert Jordan and John Arthur Creed both worked for Pacific Construction Co during the 1920s. Albert was a carpenter with the city in the mid-1940s, and by 1951, with contractors Thomson Lambie & Son. John Jr and Jane’s middle son, painter Clarence “Walter” Creed married Harriet Hampton in 1911 and moved into a house just behind 1621 Fernwood at 1325 Fisgard, which became 1325 Balmoral Rd. They were still living there when Harriet died in 1943. Walter then lived and later died in the Stadacona Guest House at 1402 Stadacona Av / 1480 Fort St, Fernwood. The Creed family was a very closely-knit family, like many others in Fernwood, and helped to stabilize the neighbourhood for decades.
