There needs to be a sentence or two at the end of this writing to wrap it all up. I have not come up with that yet. Maybe later…
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Abandoned Homesteads (continued)
Some of these homesteads are built well. The ones made of stone are all still standing. At 120 years old or older, these amazing fieldstone structures are just now starting to crumble. Most every fieldstone building (house, school, church, business) in Saskatchewan are well documented. One such reference is Margaret Hryniuk and Frank Korvemaker’s Legacy of Stone: Saskatchewan’s Stone Buildings, with photography by Larry Easton. This has been a great reference to me as many of the local Stone buildings are mentioned in this book.
The Wright Farmhouse has its own chapter. Paul and I discovered this famous landmark by pure accident. It’s on a fairly well traveled grid road. But we had biked in from the back of the property, via a road allowance. When we started that trek across a farmer’s unseeded field one early April, the horizon was bare. Stereotypical Saskatchewan scenery. But slowly this building emerged. Then, it grew larger. And eventually, it was massive.
“What…IS…that? A Castle?!?”
According to Hryniuk & Korvemaker, this 5 bedroom mega house was built in 1905 by a single man named Wright. Shortly upon completion, Wright was married. I’m sure it helps to find a mate when you own a mega mansion.
It had it’s own generator in the basement: state of the art home technology for the early 1900s on the prairies. It even had an upstairs bathroom, requiring a pump to lift the water needed. Unheard of in that era.
As a former construction worker and home builder, all I could think of were the logistics. Materials would have needed to be brought in by train to Balcarres, the nearest town. Then it would have to be moved to the job site several miles away by horse and cart. I assume labourers would have had to camp out on the location for weeks on end, not returning home to their families every night. There would not have been any power on sight. So all materials were cut and assembled by hand tools.
Then, the stonemasonry itself: that is a work of art. The Legacy of Stone book will often name the stonemason for each structure if known. Many were Scottish or German immigrants with this trade brought from their homeland.
The sad story of the Wright Farmhouse: after the Stockmarket crash of 1929, Farmer Wright and his wife left the farm and moved to Regina in search of work. The house sat empty and unused until their return ten years later. They tried to make it their home all over again. But it was not the same. Children have grown and moved. The basement generator no longer worked. And it became rough living in that grand home from then on out. After they died in the late 1940s or 50s, the house remained empty, until this day.
But most abandoned houses are not made from fieldstone. Common dimensional lumber, much like all of our houses today, was the material used.
A few of these houses in Stage III have shown how well built they are, standing straight and very square. No sagging or leaning. This is usually due to steep pitch roofs or some kind of roofing material that can last for decades, such as cedar shingles, preventing water damage.
Many of these appear to have once been fine homes. Or as realtors like to say, “pride of ownership”.
Numerous houses Paul and I find are tiny one or two room shacks. Obviously, resources or perhaps time was limited to the landowner to create a dwelling. The farmer may have had one single summer to build a house in-between plowing the fields with animal driven machinery. I’ve always imagined a farming couple raising six kids in some of these modest homes we find.