Have you ever opened up a wall during a renovation and found some vintage newspapers, or a child’s toy? Imagine peering up into the rafters of your basement and finding a lieutenant-colonel’s scarlet military jacket from the War of 1812.
That happened to Barry and Linda Coutts in the early days of renovating Nelles Manor, their Grimsby, Ont., mansion, one of the oldest continually inhabited homes in the province. The fact the manor was built between 1788 and 1798, at a time when other pioneer families in the Niagara Peninsula were slapping up log cabins, makes their home that much more special.
It’s so special to the Coutts family, in fact, that they’ve been renovating for 39 years. And while Barry estimates the project is 90 per cent complete, he’s not sure when – if ever – it will be done.
“We’ve gone through a lot of tense times, learning to live with constant renovation,” says Linda. “There’s many a day we’ve stood in that front window and said, ‘who wants this place? Ten cents and it’s yours.’”
Barry and Linda, now in their 60s, have eschewed “cutesy Victorian” in favour of a style that reflects the home’s Georgian-era roots. They say if Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Nelles returned to the place he built and inhabited until his death in 1842, they would want him to feel right at home.
To achieve that, the Coutts knocked down 1950s partitions that were thrown up when the 7,000-square-foot house was converted to eight apartments, uncovered original flooring, plaster and woodwork, and opened up fireplaces, including an immense cooking fireplace in the cavernous old kitchen.
“We’ve listened to what the house tells us,” says Linda. “And we followed those instructions as closely as we could.”
That includes replicating original paint colours – often blue, beige and a deep burgundy red – and using scratches on floorboards to place doors in their original locations.
Their pride and joy is the drawing room where Colonel Nelles kept his study during his years as a British military man, storekeeper, mill owner and justice of the peace. The room is refurbished with a masculine panache that conjures up cigar smoke and fine, golden whisky.
“We’ve set up dinner parties in there,” says Barry. “One night we had 60 candles lit and a guest chef preparing dinner for 10 people. It put you back 200 years.” Adds Linda: “It was magical.”
But while aspects of the house resemble a museum – except older than you’d find at Upper Canada Village – this is a family home. The couple frequently host school groups and historical societies keen for a glimpse into Canada’s pioneer days, but when the visitors leave, Nelles Manor is the Coutts’ home.
Theirs has been a four-decade odyssey, which began in 1970 when an ad in The Globe and Mail caught Barry’s eye. The next year, the couple was summoned for an audience with the elderly owner, a Nelles descendant. They passed muster, and she sold it to them for $75,000.
As chief contractor, Barry, whose background includes technical sales and more recently operating a powder paint company, “drew where everything should be. I did schematics. Then we got to work on one room at a time.”
They moved into one of the apartments and, as other units came available, incorporated them into the project. Today, the main part of the house is all theirs, with just two apartments – one in the attic and one in the carriage house – remaining. Their goal is to turn the manor back into a single-family dwelling.
The original home consisted of Robert Nelles’s drawing room, a parlour, dining room and kitchen on the main level, three second-floor bedrooms, plus servants’ quarters over the kitchen. The attic might have been used for storage, a play area or extra sleeping.
