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Crazy little fox. Half sticking out of the hedge separating the tennis court from the pool, if he were any more relaxed, he'd be wearing his best whites and holding a Head Flexpoint Radical. Stirred by the sound of a homeowner at the barbecue, he looks up, decides there is no threat, and closes his eyes again.
In the early 1990s, had you seen how deteriorated and directionless this once-majestic 1843 Georgian home and its 1970 addition had become, you may have closed your eyes, too. Had you been friends with Kiloran German and Elizabeth Fowler and they'd confided to you that they were seriously considering buying the place to use as a summer home, you probably would have called them crazy.
Seeing their creation, "Bloomsbury," 14 years later, you'd no doubt let out a long, low whistle and say: "Crazy like a fox!"
Sitting poolside, the fox within earshot and the long, low whistle of Port Hope's trains in the distance, the ladies talk about their renovation journey, Bloombury's quirky layout, its sometimes scandalous past, and the battle between Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer, currently in its final throes on the television inside.
Kiloran German and Elizabeth Fowler in the backyard of their 1843 Georgian home. (YVONNE BERG FOR THE GLOBE AND MAIL)
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Burst pipes, dirty shag carpet, a musty closed-in porch (where an airy verandah had been) and a kitchen threatening to slide into the ravine were just some of the things to worry about when they bought the home, power-of-sale, from the bank.
But before addressing all that, they gave their place an identity because, Ms. German says, "We knew the lifestyle we wanted here." And because that lifestyle had much in common with author Virginia Woolf and her gang of aesthetes known as the Bloomsbury Group, the name was obvious.
"They'd be in London doing their thing, but they'd go to their country houses and have friends over and have conversations [about] design and literature and politics and economics," says Ms. German.
The name Bloomsbury also made sense because the home would house the couple's collection of Virginia Woolf first editions (with dust jackets designed by the writer's sister, Vanessa Bell), letters and related tomes.
And speaking of tomes, the home's history has all the makings of a real page-turner. On a characteristically small lot, the original 1843 house was probably built and inhabited by the British military, as the section of Port Hope it's in was a garrison area.
By the turn of the 20th century, the home was owned by Nicholson File Co., which operated a big mill (and was a big employer) on the Ganaraska River — hundreds of used grindstones can be seen shoring up a retaining wall. It's thought that it was during the company's stewardship that the 20 lots to the east that now make up the expansive property were assembled. (This was possible because the street, Baldwin, was never extended past the house.)
The couple was fortunate enough to meet an elderly man who was raised in the house; he lent them paintings from the 1930s depicting the exterior, which they laser-copied.
There were a few minor renovations made to the house during that period, but its history gets fuzzy again in the mid-20th century.
In 1970, however, lawyer Claude Fitzgibbons bought the home and added a great hall — a fantastic room with a 30-foot ceiling of crisscrossing beams and a massive stone fireplace (and a large master bedroom above and games room below). He also added the pool, cabana and tennis court.
Unfortunately, because of some questionable real estate deals, he lost the property and spent time incarcerated in another province. After that, a member of the Bronfman family purchased it, power-of-sale, but a messy divorce caused him to walk away from the mortgage.
After Ms. Kiloran and Ms. Fowler had paid to have burst pipes fixed and the electrical system updated, Belgian architect Claude Liger-Belair — who had done work for the couple in the mid-1980s in Cabbagetown — was handed the problem of how to better marry the old and new sections.
His solution was simple yet brilliant: A windowless dining room smack-dab in the middle of the home was turned into a library with multiple openings — to the 1843 foyer, the garden room with its new veranda, the newly stabilized kitchen (with exquisite Heartland appliances), the 1970 great hall, even the laundry room.
The library is the "hub" of the home now, says Ms. German, a director of the Ontario Heritage Trust, and because it leads to so many places, it's used often.
Circling the walls near the library ceiling is a quote from Woolf's A Room of One's Own, painted by local artist Amy Quinn: "Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind."
The home has a real freedom of "flow" now, Ms. Fowler says, and all of its seemingly incongruous spaces have been sewn together like odd pieces of cloth on a crazy quilt. "This impossible house," says Ms. German simply. "Nobody would have designed a house like this."
It's true. Steps from Port Hope's picturesque downtown yet its setting pastoral enough to encourage lazing by furry friends, the home is, impossibly, a heritage-lover's dream, a gardener's delight and a modernist chalet all rolled into one.
Crazier still, the couple has decided to concentrate on travel, and as a result, plan to put Bloomsbury on the market.
For more information, go to www.c21briscoe.com and click on "featured homes."
