ARCHITECTURE:
Oak Crest, a 1½-storey Arts & Crafts house, is unusual for Victoria in that it is built almost completely of granite and brick. The steep front-gabled roof, with wide eaves and exposed raftertails, is broken on the right side by a through-the-cornice wall dormer over a square bay. The dormer has a semi-circular, multi-paned window with a dressed stone surround and a keystone inset into the brickwork above. On the left side is a very small shed-roofed dormer. On the front above a wide brick belt course, two colours of diapered brick culminate in a lunette attic window above two multi-paned windows with brick casings. Ground floor windows are multi-paned-over-one and have segmental stone arches, as does the recessed front porch. The porch has its original front door with half-length side lights and a massive, battered stone pier. The rear has somber grey brickwork, topped by stucco and half-timbering, and no stonework. Street widening truncated its gracious front steps. Opposite, on the brow of the hill at 2906 Cook St (Hillside-Quadra), is Spencer Castle, also built of granite but on a much grander scale.
Desginer Richard Rice was a draughtsman for E&N Railway, then for BC Department of Public Works. In 1920 he teamed with architect Karl Branwhite Spurgin to design the Saanich War Memorial Health Centre at 4353 West Saanich Rd.
ORIGINAL OCCUPANTS:
Owners: 1917-36: Arthur John Coleman (b. ENG 1885-1979) came to Canada in the early 1900s, and worked his way from Ottawa to Victoria on construction projects, including banks in Winnipeg and University of Saskatchewan buildings in Saskatoon. When he arrived here he joined Parfitt Construction, later working with them on Christ Church Cathedral (1926-29). In the 1950s he did the stonework on the early-1950s John di Castri-designed Robin Dunsmuir home at 2979 Seaview Rd in Saanich. In 1913, Arthur married Alice Rose Hook (1888-1939) of Glamorganshire, Wales. Arthur laboriously collected all the granite himself, some from the road allowance, and they lived in the house while he was building it. In 1936 their mortgage was foreclosed and they lost the house. After Alice’s death, Arthur married Nellie Carter.
OTHER OCCUPANTS:
Renters: 1937: Charles Victor Embleton (1892-1964) and Sybil Ellen (née Richardson, 1888-1961) came to Canada from England c.1911 and arrived in BC some time in the 1920s. Charles retired from the RCMP in 1952.
1939-44: Eva and David Richard Campbell (1891-1946), president of Campbell Surgical Supplies on Fort St.
Owners: 1945-52: Noel A.H. and Carolyn A.E. Hutton; Noel was still on WWII active service in 1945 when Carolyn moved to Victoria and this house.
The house was auctioned off in 1952-53.
1953- 63: Arthur Geydon Hemming (b. Leamington, ENG 1901-1963) and Beatrice Ethel (née Harris, b. Pietersburg, South Africa c.1903) married in Victoria in 1925 at St. Barnabas Anglican Church (1112 Caledonia Av, Fernwood). Arthur came to Canada with his family c.1907, and to Alberni in 1909. He had a sawmill there until it was lost in a fire c.1930. He and Beatrice moved to Victoria where he worked as a stationary engineer with Crowe Gonnason Lumber Co (3010 Quadra St, Hillside-Quadra) and then the Department of National Defense. They moved to Mill Bay in mid-1963, just six weeks before his death by drowning during a boating trip off the Mill Bay shore.
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