Heritage Register
Rockland

1075 Verrinder Avenue
Twin Oaks

Built 1908
Heritage-Registered

For: Robert & Edith M. Verrinder

Designer/Builder: David Herbert Bale

ARCHITECTURE:

This 1½-storey, front-gabled house is a variation on the Edwardian Vernacular Arts & Crafts style. It has the symmetrical upper floor over the asymmetrical lower floor, but the right side of the house has two large gabled dormers over a hip-roofed extension. There is also a gabled dormer on the left side of the house with an enclosed sleeping porch and a shed-roofed extension. A full-width shed roof between the floors on the front façade shelters a wide angled bay on the right and a recessed entry porch on the left with side-facing steps. The porch posts are supported on capped fieldstone piers. A denticulated string course in the front gable separates shinges in the apex from roughcast stucco and half-timbering below. The rest of the house is clad in double-bevelled siding.

D.H. Bale (1402 Stadacona Av, Fernwood) was a prolific Victoria designer-builder; good examples of this house plan are found at 1017 Catherine St, Vic West, and 1127 Fort St, Fairfield. Bale also designed 1077-79 Verrinder Av with the small tower and witch’s cap, which, before recent alterations, closely resembled the house at 1125 Fort St. The Verrinders built the houses as rental properties in Victoria’s pre-WWI boom. They lived from 1896-1930 at 1032 McGregor Av, up the hill behind these houses.

ORIGINAL OCCUPANTS:

1909-12: William James Hanna (1854-1941) and Ida Preston (1861-1943) (28 Douglas St, James Bay).William, a graduate of the US College of Embalming of NY was a funeral director and house builder.

OTHER OCCUPANTS:

1913-15: Pauline (née Eckle, b. New York 1870-1948) married Dr. Ludwig Rissmuller in Philadelphia in 1897, but they separated in 1912. Ludwig was a chemist brought to Victoria by Pacific Whaling Co. Failing health forced him to go to California in 1916, where he died. Pauline remained in Victoria, and lived in a suite here in 1929.

1917: Jane Finlayson, widow of William Finlayson.

1918: C.N. Maywood, a salesman for Heintzman & Co.

1921: Real estate agent Claude Hamilton. 1925- 26: George P. Mitchell, manager of P. Lyall & Sons Construction Co, the general contractors for the new Federal Graving Dock in Esquimalt.

1929: The house was converted to three suites, known as Twin Oaks.

1930-48: Edith Matilda Treherne (née Burpee, b. NB, 1884) was the widow of Reginald Charles Treherne (b. Aldershot, ENG 1886-1924), Dominion Entomologist for BC. He was the son of Surgeon-Gen. Sir Francis Treherne, KCMG. Edith worked at the Combetree Gift Shop on Fort St in the early 1930s, operated by widow Edith Combe and her daughter Vivien, who lived at 1079 Verrinder.

1930: Brig. Frederick Norman Cabeldu (1015 Gillespie Pl, Rockland).

1931-36: Lionel Albert Hansard (b. London, ENG 1890-1966) and Winifred White (née Clements, b. Co Antrim, IRL 1890-1964) came to Canada in 1914. Lionel was a steward at the Union Club during the 1930s and from 1940-53 he worked at the dockyard.

1937-48: Minnie Katherine Parry (née Dickson, b. ENG 1864-1949). Her husband, Arthur Norman Parry (b. New Zealand c.1867-1945) was not listed at this address and resided in Vancouver at his death. Minnie came to Canada in 1894, BC in 1899 and Victoria in 1937. She was a resident of St. Mary’s Priory Guest House, now the Glenshiel, 606 Douglas St, James Bay, when she died.

1939-50: Adelaide Beatrice Marshall (née Oliver, b. Perth, SCT 1884-1970) (1916 Belmont Av, Fernwood). Her husband, Edward Caleb Marshall (b. USA 1878-1958), a CPR locomotive engineer, was not listed here. Adelaide came to BC in 1905. She spent many years in Ladysmith, BC, where she was one of BC’s first female aldermen in 1924-25. She lived in Nanaimo from 1967 until her death.

1949-51: Arthur J. Davey, BCCSS timekeeper.

1949-51: Post Office clerk J. Rowland Inglis and Joan.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION & IMAGES:

• Map of Victoria's Heritage Register Properties

• Rockland History

• Rockland Heritage Register


• This Old House, Victoria's Heritage Neighbourhoods,
Volume Three: Rockland, Burnside, Harris Green,
Hillside-Quadra, North Park & Oaklands