2309 Quadra Street

ARCHITECTURE:

This 1½-storey, bellcast hip-roofed Colonial Bungalow has hip-roofed dormers on the front and both sides. There is a piano window on the right side and a cantilevered box bay towards the rear. The left side also has a piano window. A cantilevered, angled bay sits to the right of the recessed front porch. The porch, which has been glassed in, has two turned columns, and a solid balustrade. The original wood siding has been covered with asbestos shingles. The foundation is concrete and there is a very low stone garden wall at the front. There are two corbelled brick chimneys.

ORIGINAL OCCUPANTS:

Original owners Thomas (1859-1929) and Mabel Kate Fieldsend (1885-1965) Gough lived here until the mid-1930s. Thomas came to Victoria from Manchester, England, in 1888. He lived with his widowed mother Susannah on Bay St in the early 1890s, and was a boilermaker at Albion Iron Works. In 1911 Thomas married Mabel Harmston, born in Comox. He was a tobacconist by this time, eventually becoming proprietor of Empire Cigars at 1413 and 1427 Douglas St. After Thomas’s death, Mabel lived at this house until at least 1935. She was residing at 1161 Rockland Av at the time of her death in Comox in 1965.

OTHER OCCUPANTS:

This house became a rental property for the next few years. James Melville and Minnie Helen (Reid) Laird were the occupants in 1937. They married in Victoria in 1935. James was a stoker with the RCN. By 1939, B. McIntosh was the resident. Mary Alice (McMillan, 1875-1949) Haslam, widow of Victor George (1876-1929), was living here by 1943. Mary was born in Cardiff, Wales, and came to Harrison Hot Springs, BC, in 1889; she came to Victoria after her husband died, and lived here until her death.

Adolf and Mary Burkhard were the listed occupants by 1951. Adolf was a meat cutter at Spencer’s, and later a caretaker there after it became Eaton’s in 1948. Mary was the listed occupant of the house until 1994.