The Marylake stone gatehouse on the north-west corner of Keele Street and the 15th Sideroad, on the edge of King City, is between 75 and 80 years of age, I think. Like some of the other Marylake structures from the time Sir Henry Mill Pellatt, the now apparently empty gatehouse is starting to fall apart. In the photo above, Harold Westbrook, a butcher shop owner in Nobleton, back in the first half of the 1900s, and his wife Eva (Cairns) Westbrook are seen on a visit to Marylake.
Photos above and below by Barry Wallace
The Marylake gatehouse is pictured today (above and below) showing the robust construction of fieldstone, which was likely sourced locally in King Township in the 1930s. The broad expanse of the attractive, greenish-blue slate roof was constructed of materials imported from England. The stonework of the rest of the gatehouse, along with the slate roof and impressive overall scale of the design, makes almost as big an impression as the great barn, also in structural decline, elsewhere on the property.
Above, fieldstone detail
Aemon Burchill, researcher and writer of a "History of Marylake" wrote: "In the early 1940s, Archbishop McGuigan decided to have established a shrine to Mary to be a spiritual centre and place of pilgrimage for the Archdiocese of Toronto. On August 25, 1942, negotiations were opened for the purchase of Marylake by the Augustinian Order. The Reverend Athanasius Pape acted for the Order, and on September 17 the first Augustinians arrived".
Please comment if you wish.
Barry Wallace
I shudder to think what might of gone on behind all those walls!
ReplyDeleteHope the buildings will receive some care. It is sad should they fall apart.
ReplyDelete