Heritage Register
Fernwood

1140 Fort Street

Built 1907
Heritage-Designated 1980

For: John & Louise Haggerty

Builder: John Haggerty

ARCHITECTURE:

This is a 2½-storey, hip-roofed Edwardian Queen Anne residence with a large gable on its left side. There are modillions under all the flat eaves. On the left side is a two-storey angled bay beneath a jettied gable. An octagonal turret on the right front forms the roof of a three-storey angled bay. A full-width, hip-roofed verandah has turned balusters and paired Tuscan columns which sit on stone piers. The stairway’s stepped stone balustrade is continuous with the stone foundation of the house. The third floor of the turret is shingled, and the body has beaded double-bevelled siding. The Edwardian taste for the Classical Revival is evident in the Tuscan columns and the modillions. Rehabilitated for office use, the house figures prominently in the Fort St conservation grouping. In the early 1980s, owners Ben and Germaine Vivian removed the asbestos covering the original siding, rehabilitated the woodwork and gave it a heritage colour scheme. In 1977 they had won a Hallmark Society Award for the restoration of 1161 Fort St, Fairfield.

ORIGINAL OCCUPANTS:

1907-13: Housebuilder and contractor John Haggerty (b. SCT 1858-1919) built this house for $6,000. In 1879 he had married Clara Ollena Brown (b. ENG c.1862-1896) in North Wellington, BC. John came to America at the age of nine with his parents; by 1870 they were in Canada. In 1881 John and Clara were farming in Metchosin. In 1891 they had a boarding house at 195 Yates St. Five of their six lodgers were young single hackdrivers, and they had two female servants who had come from Iceland and Sweden. Clara died at 34 in 1896 in premature labour; a newborn baby had died the year before. In 1903, John married Louise Alice Whittle (1867-1922) from Portland, OR, and four years later they moved into this house. In 1914 the Haggertys moved to a grand new home in Rockland, at 1385 Manor Rd on the Craigdarroch Castle estate. Louise was a member of Island Temple Lodge, No.8, Pythian Sisters.

OTHER OCCUPANTS:

1915-17: Miss Sarah A. Chamberlain.
1921: Miss Emily Florence Roberts (b. ENG, 1873-1957) may have been running it as a boarding house. In 1924 Miss Roberts was principal of Sefton College, a residential and day school for girls at 256 Menzies St, and resided at the school. By 1931 the school was at 615 St Charles St at Rockland Av; she closed it in 1938. Miss Roberts came to Victoria in 1911, retired in 1942, and resided here until her death.

1924-32: Thomas Henry Kelway (b. Liverpool, ENG, 1882-1978), proprietor of Kelway’s Cafe, later Kelway’s Black Horse Cafe at 1111 Douglas St, and nurse Yvonne Roma Kelway. Yvonne married labourer Herbert James Moore in Sidney in 1931; Herbert later became foreman of Victoria Wineries. In 1936, in New Westminster, Tom married Sarah Jane “Sally” Graham. Tom’s father, seaman Thomas Henry Kelway Sr came to Victoria in 1911.

1933-34: Hudson’s Bay Company store department manager Arthur E. Johnson.
1936: Logger and labourer Ralph Edward and Thelma Henrietta Anderson who in 1937 lived at 1190 Fort St.
1937: Frances Gwladys Combe, widow of county and supreme court registrar Harvey Walter Henry Combe (1490 Fairfield Rd, Fairfield, and 1564 Rockland Av, Rockland). Harvey and Frances married in Victoria in 1916. [Harvey, his first wife Margaret and their daughter were many times champion golfers.] [Note: Frances’s father Brian Halsey Tyrwhitt-Drake was also a supreme court registrar. Her grandfather, the Hon. Montague William Tyrwhitt-Drake came to Victoria from England in 1859. Montague represented Victoria in the BC Legislature 1868-70. He was Mayor of Victoria 1876-77, MPP for Victoria City 1882-86 and a member of the BC Executive Council 1882-84. In 1883 he was named Queen’s Counsel and served as a justice in the BC Supreme Court 1889-1904.]

1939-44: William Hemus (b. Worcs, ENG, 1871-1957) and Ann Louise (née Guy, b. ENG, 1876-1960). William had been a house decorator in Calgary in 1927-37, then retired here. They ran this as a rooming house. 1945-50: Retired farmers Frederick William Heard (b. Singapore, 1885-1954) and Agnes Eliza (née Collins, b. London, ENG, 1876-1965) managed the rooming house.

1951-58: Civil servant William Arthur Wigley (b. Worcs, ENG, 1884-1975) and Margaret (née Barnett, b. Manchester, ENG, 1882-1971) came to Victoria in 1950, and owned and managed the rooming house. William volunteered in 1916 for the CEF in WWI. His attestation papers state that he had spent five years in the voluntary field artillery in Worcester and was a railroad car inspector living in Saskatoon, SK.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION & IMAGES:

• Fernwood History

• Fernwood Heritage Register


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