Maplelawn

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Maplelawn in winter 2006 now a Keg Restaurant.

Maplelawn is an historic house and former estate located in Ottawa, Canada. The house was built between 1831 an 1834 as the centre of a farming estate by the Thomson family. In 1877 the Cole family bought the estate and lived there until 1989. The house is now owned by the National Capital Commission and it is a designated national historic site. It is particularly noted for the well preserved and rare walled garden next to the house, The Maplelawn Garden. Since 1999 the Maplelawn has been the location of the Keg Manor restaurant. Today the house is located in Westboro at 529 Richmond Road.

The architecture of the house reflects a taste for British classicism, but some elements, such as the windows, are in a more local style, favoured in Quebec and the Ottawa Valley. The walled garden is a very rare feature for a Canadian farming estate. Although highly prized in Europe, they were never wide spread in Canada. It was intended to be both ornamental and useful.

[edit] History

Around 1818 William Thomson, a gentleman of Scottish origin, retired from the British army and settled the 200 acre farm on the road leading from Bytown to the village of Richmond. Thomson and his sons focused on the farming operations of their estate, but also invested peripherally in the lumber trade.

In 1877 the Thomsons sold the farm to the Thomas Cole, who had made a fortune in the lumber industry. The Cole family and their descendants retained possession of the house until the death of Frances Rochester, the granddaughter of Thomas Cole in 1989. Frances and her husband, Lloyd Rochester, lived at Maplelawn and raised their children there (the Rochesters were another old Ottawa family). The most important renovation was conducted in 1936, when the original summer kitchen and field hands' dormitory was replaced by a stone addition to the house at the rear. At this same time the garden was redesigned by a horticulturalist from the Central Experimental Farm. The Federal District Commission, forerunner of the NCC, had bought the house in the 1950s to ensure its preservation.

For some years the house remained empty and the garden began to deteriorate, but in 1993 a group, the Friends of Maplelawn Garden, a volunteer group, began to work on the garden. The NCC renovated the building. Shortly thereafter, Peter Fallis leased the property and created a restaurant in the house. In the late 1990s a couple of different businessmen took over the lease and created a franchise of The Keg restaurant, to be called the Keg Manor in the house.