Echoes of Christmases past
Family celebrates the season and tradition in their refurbished century home
As the Winchell family makes new holiday memories with their three young children, they are surrounded by echoes of Christmases past.
Their Halton Region house — fully modern on the inside — has a cut stone exterior that dates back to 1860, when families celebrated Christmas by lamp- light and adorned their tree with homemade decorations.
Known as the Featherstone Farmhouse, the refurbished home is the work of Sedgwick Marshall Heritage Homes, a company founded in 2004 by Mandy Sedgwick and Mirella Marshall, who bonded over their mutual love for older houses while working on a volunteer project restoring an 1865 blacksmith shop in Halton Region. Marshall had been running a country shop on her farm; Sedgwick was working as a quarry dispatcher. They both lived in century homes and were concerned about the region’s old houses being torn down to make way for new housing developments.
“We decided to pool our money, buy an old house, redo it and sell and move on to the next, saving one house at a time,” Marshall recalls. “We knew we weren’t going to be rich, but we were restoring
houses and putting them back into circulation,” Marshall says.
Since then, the company has restored about a dozen old houses. It’s expanded into consulting and design, renovations and custom home building, with a team that includes an architectural technologist and carpenter. Segwick and Marshall now restore old properties for builders who buy sites with heritage-designated structures that must be preserved.
“We love doing this and want to make sure houses are saved and someone else can enjoy them for another 100 years,” Marshall says. “It’s a lot of fun and interesting stuff happens. These houses become our babies.
“We want to sell to someone who loves and appreciates the homes.”
The Featherstone farmhouse was historically and architecturally important as a rare example of a five-bay, a design with five openings, Regency Cottage built with cut stone. It was set along a creek on land planned for a park but because the structure was in such poor condition, it couldn’t be moved. The heritage authority recommended it be deconstructed and rebuilt. When the builder who owned the land offered it to Sedgwick Marshall, they accepted and bought a lot in a new subdivision and rebuilt its shell.
“A stone mason took it down, numbered the stone and put it back up to replicate the original. Inside, it’s all new,” Marshall says.
They used new doors and windows, but recreated the front door detail and used wood windows to match the old house’s era.
The original house was built around 1860 by William and Lexey Kennedy. In 1865, it was bought by W.L.P. Eager, deputy clerk of the Crown and clerk of the Surrogate Court for Halton County who, in 1885, sold it to Emerson Featherstone. It remained in the prominent farming family for 122 years.
“The Featherstone farmhouse is one of my favourite houses we’ve worked on,” Sedgwick says. “I love the Regency Cottage style and seeing it brought to life is very satisfying.”
Sheila and Brett Winchell fell in love with the replicated house at first sight three years ago.
“We’ve always loved heritage homes, with their beauty and so much charm,” Sheila says. “My husband and I would drive around older neighbourhoods looking at heritage plaques on the homes. We never thought we’d own one.”
When their second child was on the way, the Winchells found they’d outgrown their first home in Oakville. Sheila found the stone cottage during an internet search.
“We got an appointment to see it the next morning and made an offer the same day,” she says. “It was breathtaking and has such history. The builders did an incredible job on it.
“It was so easy to fall in love with it. I had tears in my eyes as I went through it.”
Now, the family is looking forward to enjoying their third Christmas in their home with their brood that includes son Lennox, 4, and daughters Pearl, 2, and infant Neve, 2 months.
There’s a year-round tradition the Winchells enjoy: making the short walk to the park and the site to where their house’s stone structure once stood and passing the plaque that tells its history.