Erchless Estate in Old Oakville
On a peaceful early spring day, Erchless Estate in Old Oakville rests serenely on it's hilltop position overlooking Oakville Harbour and Lake Ontario.
The garden paths are now empty of the many generations of Chisholms who once wandered the grounds in the spring and summer months and a city has grown up around it, where once there used to be forests and farms.
Erchless Estate, built for Oakville's founding family, the Chisholms, was completed in 1858 by Robert Kerr Chisholm. It was named after the Chisholm clan seat in Invernesshire, Scotland.
From 1866 to 1918, Robert and his son Allan renovated and improved the house and grounds and Erchless Estate stayed in the Chisholm family until the 1960s. After being sold and made into apartments, the old house lost some of it's charm and the distant echoes of the many generations of Chisholm children who had played in it's halls slowly left the tired old building.
The Town of Oakville bought the property in 1977 and continued to use it as a multi-unit rental building until 1989, at which point the last tenants moved out and the work of restoring it to it's original grandeur began.
Erchless Estate was opened to the public in 1991 as Oakville's museum.
©2010JoSmith
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