The Globe and Mail

It's not that unusual for new home buyers to run across a few things they hadn't anticipated, but not too many people discover what Joanne and Fred Lewis did.

The empty nesters were on the hunt for a smaller place in 1985 when they set out on Canada Day to look around. They were interested in either an older home within the city of London, where they were living at the time, or a place in the country. Ms. Lewis had always wanted a country home and so far the dream had eluded her.

The last of six places on their list was in the middle of farm country in a little hamlet called Anderson, about 42 kilometres north of London, just west of the town of St. Marys. The house was completely hidden from the road, down a long, weed-whacking laneway, more or less in the middle of a farm field. "I was tired and rather discouraged and halfway down this endless laneway I said to Fred: 'Turn back, there's no place here." Mr. Lewis pressed on anyway and, just around a bend and up a gentle slope, there it sat.

"The house was in rough shape but it was love at first sight," Ms. Lewis recalls. She knew then and there this was the place. They went home and made an offer.

It wasn't until they came back for a second look and to finalize the deal that the owner told them the news: This rustic, old stone house they were buying was the birthplace and homestead of Canada's ninth prime minister, Arthur Meighen. Nobody, not even the real estate agent, had said a word about it before that. "I was quite impressed," Ms. Lewis recalls, "but it was the house and the location that I fell in love with."

Meighen was a Progressive Conservative PM from 1920 to 1921. He was also considered one of the country's top orators. His grandfather, Gordon Meighen, got the deed to the land in 1840 and first built a log cabin on the property. He began clearing and tilling the fertile farm land and the rocks he unearthed in the process eventually formed the stone house that became the Meighen homestead. By most estimates it was built in the mid- to late 1840s.

The couple bought the house and the three hectares that came with it, then spent the next 10 years restoring it. "It's been a gradual process and I think that's a good thing. You make fewer mistakes that way," says Ms. Lewis, a retired nurse.

"We had never done a restoration before but we were lucky enough to find the people in the area who knew how to do the work," explains Mr. Lewis, an independent wine importer with his own company, School House Wines.

In many ways it was amazing the Meighen homestead was still there at all. It had sat empty for over 20 years before an ambitious couple bought it in 1976. It was in terrible condition, there was a hole in the roof and the farmer who owned it previously was using it for storage. It was even without plumbing and electricity until 1945. The farmer made it known he was seriously considering tearing it down. A few successive owners each did their part in repairing the house, but there was much work yet to be done when Mr. and Ms. Lewis arrived.

Once they realized they'd bought a PM's homestead, the couple got researching. They discovered that Meighen was buried in nearby St. Marys and a local park was named after him. They also learned Meighen's pursuit of knowledge surfaced early: He was known for working in the fields as a lad, steering the plow with one hand, reading a book in his other. In fact, his parents eventually sold the house and moved into town when he was an adolescent, to ensure he'd have ready access to high school, since there was nothing closer at the time. Since the couple bought the place, Senator Michael Meighen, Arthur's great-great-grandson, has twice been to the house with his own sons and left a note complimenting them on their restoration work.

And needless to say, there's been plenty of it.

Shortly after buying the Meighen homestead, they discovered the foundation to the summer kitchen was unstable and had to be torn down and redone. Preferring not to say what they paid for the house, they will concede they spent multiples of that sum rebuilding the summer kitchen, adding a screened-in porch and a small, crawling-room-only sleeping loft above it. They also had to rebuild a coach house which burned down a few years ago after some hay caught fire.

Neither of them has any idea how big the house actually is, in terms of square footage. The 1½-storey house is on the small, cozy side -- as pioneer houses tend to be -- yet there's ample room for the couple, their dog and two cats, plus their two grown children when they come to visit. There are three bedrooms in all, plus the sleeping loft. The painted steps leading upstairs are original and worn down in the middle from the boots worn by hired hands over a hundred years ago, since that's where they slept. The ceilings upstairs are all sloped and downstairs they're predictably low -- less than seven feet. The stone walls are strong, built to last and a full 18 inches thick, which means they soak up and retain the heat the wood stoves generate in winter and keep the heat from coming in during the summer.

Overall the house feels warm, welcoming and very British; not surprising considering Ms. Lewis was born and raised in England. The living room wall is checkered with dozens of small framed prints and there are books, collectibles and mementos everywhere. Jars of fresh preserves sit in the small but functional country kitchen where a wood-fired cook stove acts as the room's centrepiece, as well as the primary source of heat for the entire house during the winter months (although there is a propane furnace for back-up.) The couple have replaced all the leaky old windows with custom-made, pine-framed windows. They've also torn down the rotting wooden porch that flanked the front of the house and replaced it with a more weather-resistant flagstone version, complete with new pillars and gingerbread trim. "We've tried to do everything top-notch and as much as possible in keeping with the original house," Mr. Lewis says. "Every year we tackle something else."

Ms. Lewis has planted all kinds of trees, shrubs, rose bushes and assorted perennials around the property and included inviting places to sit and rest. An arbor down by the natural, spring-fed pond below the house is the couple's favourite place to have breakfast when the weather is warm.

The house is encircled by farm fields, which are alternately planted each year with corn, wheat or soybeans. "When the wheat grows high enough and it moves with the wind it feels like you're surrounded by an ocean," Ms. Lewis says

"I love this place more than I think you should love a thing," she confesses. "One of the reasons I don't travel much any more is I find it hard to leave.

"Finding this homestead in the country has been a dream come true."