Heritage Register
Rockland

937 St. Charles Street
Linden Cottage

Built 1909-10
Heritage-Registered

For: Walter & Bessie Burton

Architect: Samuel Maclure

ARCHITECTURE:

This 1½-storey, Chalet-style, Arts & Crafts Bungalow is front gabled with narrow bargeboards, vestigial finials and wide side eaves with simple brackets. There are low shed-roofed dormers on the sides. The left one is a wall dormer with diamond-paned leaded lights; the right one is above a cantilevered box bay. On the left front is a small gabled porch leading to a recessed entry. The porch has a Tudor arch supported on brackets and square wooden posts on short, stone-capped, granite bases. To the right is an angled bay with diamond-paned, leaded-glass windows. The front gable has a row of three windows with leaded glass transoms. The main floor is shingled, the gables are stuccoed and half-timbered. The cost was $3,000.

ORIGINAL OCCUPANTS:

1910-46: From 1902-10 the Burton family had lived in Lynden, designed by Maclure at 933 St Charles (now 1501 Laurel Lane); they then moved into 937. Walter Francis Burton (b. Lincoln, ENG 1861-1940) and Elizabeth Audley (née Paterson-Fox, b. Co Kildare, IRL 1865-1942) came to Victoria in 1890. Walter was retired when this house was built, but an 1898 voters’ list indicated that he was a “capitalist.” He was perhaps better known for his hobbies which included hunting, golfing and bird watching. In 1930 son Eric Audley Burton (1897- 1971) married Mary Rattenbury (1904-1982), the daughter of Victoria architect Francis Mawson Rattenbury and his first wife, Florence. In 1940 Eric and Mary moved in with his widowed mother, and stayed until 1946. Eric was president of Burton & Williams Motors, agents for Nash, La Fayette and Morris cars, and later a real estate salesman for 20 years; he retired in 1970.
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OTHER OCCUPANTS:

1947-49: Canadian Bank of Commerce assistant manager Charles Whitton Tummonds (b. Middlesex Co, ON 1905-1973) and Helen Elizabeth (née Oland, b. Halifax, NS 1901-1988). Charles was a Cmdr. in the RCN Pay Corps in WWII. Helen’s son by her first marriage, Edmond Judson “Ted” Canavan (1922-2008), a highly decorated WWII soldier, spent the last six weeks of the war in a POW camp.

1950-82: Mab Aherne Harvey (née Pemberton, b. Victoria 1901-1982) was the daughter of Frederick Bernard Pemberton, and granddaughter of Joseph Despard Pemberton, who laid out Victoria’s townsite, among many other pioneering activities. Joseph and Frederick formed J.D. Pemberton & Son, engineers and surveyors. This company still exists as the real estate firm Pemberton Holmes. In 1928 Mab married Alfred Laird Harvey, a civil engineer born in London, ENG. Their wedding notice stated that they intended to make England their home. It is thought that Alfred died there and Mab came back to Victoria as a widow.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION & IMAGES:

• Map of Victoria's Heritage Register Properties

• Rockland History

• Rockland Heritage Register


• This Old House, Victoria's Heritage Neighbourhoods,
Volume Three: Rockland, Burnside, Harris Green,
Hillside-Quadra, North Park & Oaklands