Houses faced with stone are rare in East Gwillimbury. Most houses here -– even new ones today -- are faced with brick. But stones are cheap building materials for a farmer clearing his fields of myriad remnants from the last the last Ice Age.Although the price of the stones was right, it must have been costly time-wise. It would have taken forever to collect enough to face the building, and another forever to embed each one in limestone mortar.
Looking closely, you can see these are NOT cobblestone -- smooth, round stones. Typically, cobblestones were laid in horizontal bands, however these are set in higgledy-piggledy fashion.
11 comments:
I think they are really pretty. It must take a lot of skill or something to lay the stones like that.
higgledy-piggledy fashion, now I know what THAT looks like. :-) thanks for sharing. great blog here, I look forward to reading more.
In the old days they used what they had. Nice building.
Thanks for the neat picture you posted on Picture This. I really like it!
What an interesting house. that must have taken forever to do but worth it and got the land rid of rocks so they wouldn't chip the plow. MB
Please snd me an e-mail when you get a chance. I just cleaned my mailbox out and am thinking I shouldn't have done that. Need to ask you something.
I like this style, using what was about and natural to the area.
Amazing stonework - I'm impressed!
PS For the seagulls of today - look here !
I'd love to live in a house like that, sure must have taken a lot of time to put all those stones in place.
That's a pretty cool effect! Most older houses (80+ years) here are stone, as are the churches etc. Bricks are generally only seen on modern houses, i.e. 60s onwards. Is quarried stone available in S. Ontario, or is it just the architectural style?
1&2,
Most mines in this area contain sand, gravel or clay. In fact Toronto is built on clay. On the other hand, most of East Gwillimbury is built on sand and sandy loam.
Toronto was settled first, since it's on the shore of Lake Ontario. So perhaps they set the style for the rest of the area.
At the turn of the 20th century, it's said that York County (which included Toronto and stretched northward to Lake Simcoe) had 30 brickyards, which together manufactured 100 million bricks in a summer. As older buildings made of logs and and wood were upgraded or modernized, they were faced with brick veneer.
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