The Long and Winding Road

To commemorate and participate in the renewed Beatle-mania that Itunes resurrected this past week, Tim and I took the long and winding road from London to NOTL. We were in London to celebrate Tim's birthday, he turned the big 2-8 on Friday. After a fun whirlwind trip and repacking the car with all of Tim's gifts, it looked as though we'd been on a two week holiday. But we hadn't. So we thought we'd do the long and leisurely Sunday ride home taking all the old highways instead of the boring and often ridiculously scary 400 series.

We took Highway 3 because I love going through Tillsonburg, ON with all of it's grand tobacco-money houses. It's also just a pretty drive with all those outdated tobacco drying sheds that dot the landscape (an example of an evolved relic cultural landscape - for all my Willowbankers out there). 

I have to admit that I had an ulterior motive for going the back way this week, as I've been wanting to go to Ruthven House in Cayuga, ON. It keeps coming up in all of our classes as one of the only other Classical Revival homes built in Ontario. Not surprisingly it was designed by the same architect as Willowbank, John Latshaw. John Latshaw was from Pennsylvania, and brought the American influences of the Greek Revival style to Canada. (There are a few of his buildings [institutional] in the Niagara region, but the only homes of this style are Ruthven and Willowbank.)

On our way to Ruthven, we made an exciting detour. Just as we were coming into Balmoral, ON (Tim's favourite, I'll let you guess why) we saw a sign for a Historic Place named Cottonwood. So we turned around, because of course I didn't decide I wanted to go until we had already passed the intersection, and made our way down Haldimand County Road 53 towards Selkirk, ON. And we came upon the beautifully restored Cottonwood mansion. It is an Italianate-style home built by a local entrepeneur between 1865-1870.

This is what we came upon on the lonely country road:

Isn't it just adorable? Just.

If you go to their website, they tell you all about it and there is a great picture taken before the restoration. It was in quite the state of disrepair. But they've done a lovely job restoring it. It was getting late in the day and we hadn't yet gotten to Cayuga, so we didn't go in but we looked in the windows (if you look closely you can see Tim on left side of the porch peering in, while Ulli is distracted by "field things.")

After that we jogged back up to highway 3 and over to Cayuga, where we thought we were lost but finally came upon Ruthven park, with this cute little welcome building off the road.

Super cute. I'd be happy with just this little guy.

Then we came up through the picturesque landscape and the beautiful Ruthven, situated on the Grand River. Talk about blown away. It is absolutely gorgeous, and it's setting is fabulous.

Now this is what I'm referring to when I go on and on about proportional columns! Look at that lovely pediment and the triglyphs of the entablature and those awesome Doric columns. Also note the fantastic stone-work. The guy who built this place had a whole lotta money to spend on beautifully cut stone.  My only thought is about the square columns on the outside. They look nice, but might be replacements?

Of course, Tim's favourite part was not the grand home on the Grand, but the carriage house. He's always admiring that next step in just-too-much-ery - multiple outbuildings. And Ruthven did not disappoint. There were outbuildings galore.

The incredibly delightful English-y carriage house (of course Tim loved it!).

So that was our trip home. Pretty cool huh. Tim has proposed that we should go to heritage homes every time we make a trip.

Apparently my evil master plan has taken root. Muahaha.