By Anya Shor // Photography Anya Shor
When Heather Reid and her late husband John first came across an old dilapidated school house in 2001 — on a sleepy and bushy stretch of Ninth Line near Beaver Valley — they hadn’t thought of ever owning one. But the price was right and the building had history and charm, and loads of potential, along with a few surprises.
“There were animal carcasses in the basement!” says Reid, laughing.
Now it’s a warm and cozy, lofted, three-bedroom home, with a spacious entrance hall featuring two separate bathrooms, a grand stone fireplace in the living room, and a roomy and bright enclosed porch built onto the original structure within the last decade. “You can only build forward or back,” says Reid. “Or else you compromise the character of the building. Some of these schoolhouses have been completely lost in building extensions. You drive by and you would never guess there’s an original schoolhouse somewhere in there.”
You can only build forward or back, says Reid. Or else you compromise the character of the building. Some of these schoolhouses have been completely lost in building extensions.
Grey County is dotted with schoolhouses dating back to the 1850s, when a series of acts were passed in Upper Canada calling for a more uniform school system. The buildings are similar in setting — close to the road, usually on a corner across from a church. All sit on lots under two acres. They were the hub of the community. In the late 1960s, growth — and the need for modern facilities — left most of the buildings abandoned and at the mercy of extreme weather. Without interior heat, the mortar crumbled.
“All that stone around the doorway just came apart,” says Reid, pointing to the original stonework, which now makes up the interior wall of the enclosed porch.
“The guys were real artisans, putting it all back together,” she says of the local team of workers assembled for the project.
For Ben Sykes and Erin Connor, it was that sense of community and place which charmed the young couple into buying a picturesque 1870s stone school house perched atop rolling hills, twenty minutes outside of Thornbury. “We really liked the idea of something rooted in place instead of a new build,” says Sykes. The couple admits to being “extremely naïve” about the challenges of fully restoring such an old structure. They enlisted the help of architect Brian O’Brian of Works Office in Toronto, and local stone mason, Chris Hunt — whom O’Brian refers to as a “Stone genius.”
One of the many distinguishing features of the Schoolhouse Grey (as the couple calls their country retreat), is a striking cedar and glass dining pavilion which cantilevers off the back of the building and overlooks the dramatic landscape. “We were building out of a single-room, single-cell building, trying to turn it into something it wasn’t intended to be,” says O’Brian of the many challenges involved in the project. Temperature was a key factor in reconciling the 18” thick fieldstone “thermal envelope,” as O’Brian called it, with the modern glass extension. The result, however, is an elegant, spacious home, which thoughtfully integrates the old with the new.
There are plenty more schoolhouses standing vacant around the county, and many in various stages of restoration. With the right research and a thoughtful approach, going back to school can be rewarding.
