Set back from the road, the massive farm house at 429 7th Concession Road, with its classic Georgian symmetry is one of the finest stone buildings in East Flamborough Township.
In 1842, John Blagdon, his wife and their family of seven children settled on property in neighbouring Nelson Township that was purchased from the Canada Company for £50. Born in Strabane, County Tyrone, Ireland in 1780, John Blagdon came to Nova Scotia in 1814 and a year later married Mary Thomas at St. Paul’s Anglican Church in Halifax.
Edward Blagdon, their eldest son, married Eliza Newell in 1849. A year later he purchased from Andrew Thornton Todd, an absentee landowner, 100 acres of Lot 4 in the 7th Concession of East Flamborough for £125. For twelve years Edward and Eliza lived in a two storey squared or hewed log house where their children were all born. To reflect his success as a farmer and to house a growing family, Thomas Le Mesurier, a stonemason who lived nearby on the 8th Concession was engaged to build a new home in the style of an English Manor House for the Blagdon family in 1862.
The great size of the house and its striking five bay front facade makes it almost unique in East Flamborough. Clever and unusual use of the building stone has produced a patterned effect, for not only are quoins used at the corners, as in most fine stone buildings, but for this house, the builder also placed them around each window and the front entrance too. The central doorway with its original mullioned transom and sidelights is mirrored above by the larger central second storey window, also with sidelights, that presents the appearance of a “suicide door”. The “suicide” or “mother-in-law door” on the second floor was a common feature of farmhouses after tax laws changed in the 1850s. The inclusion of this feature was meant to indicate to the taxman that a porch with a balcony would be added at a later date, placing the house in the unfinished category. Such features were often deliberately unfinished, for until the house was completed, the owner did not pay taxes.
The rear section of the house, which may have been constructed slightly later, originally contained the traditional summer kitchen, with a pit for butchering and scalding pigs and a winch for raising the animals. The small cupola that sits on top of the roof contains a bell that was rung by the Blagdons to call farm help in for meals or to summon field workers in an emergency.
Six children were born to Edward and Eliza Blagdon, four sons and two daughters. The family tradition of using the christian names of John and Edward in each generation was continued. John, the eldest son born in 1849 married Margaret Tansley and settled near Carlisle. He was taught to drive a motor car at the age of 80 years by his granddaughters, Evelyn and Jeanne Blagdon behind the Carlisle United Church for his job as an inspector for the township, but he never drove alone on the road.
Edward Blagdon Jr. the third son married Jenny Beeforth in February 1893, the same year that he inherited the house and property. In 1910, Frederick and Grace Beeforth, Jenny’s brother and sister-in-law bought the stone house and farm from the Blagdons. On the night they moved, Beeforth’s frame house on nearby Beeforth Road was destroyed by fire and the deal to purchase the Blagdon property was cancelled. Frederick and Grace moved into the stone house briefly until a new brick farm house was built for them on their old property in 1911. During these years of ownership, Edward Blagdon rented almost his entire property as grazing land to area farmers such as the Gallaghers of the 6th Concession for their sheep and was very much a “gentleman farmer”, well-dressed and the owner of one of the earliest motor cars in the area, a Model T Ford.
After the Beeforths returned to their old property, Edward and Jenny continued to live in the house alone as they had no children. In 1923 they moved to Waterdown and lived in a frame house at the corner of John and Main Street North, caring for Jenny’s sister. This house was later moved to Kelly Street and Edward Blagdon built a fine red brick house as a replacement that today is known as Crimson Maples. He and his wife never returned to live on the 7th Concession and in 1942, the property passed to John Blagdon’s son Ray.
© The Waterdown-East Flamborough Heritage Society 2009, 2024.
