By Phil Egan – Special to The Sarnia Journal
(2015) If houses could talk, this one could spin captivating tales
It sits in stately and understated grandeur in a park in Bright’s Grove. Its two-storeys are clad in the distinctive Wawanosh yellow brick fired in the Telfer Road brickyard kilns.
Located just metres from the blue waters of Lake Huron, Faethorn House, once the very essence of gentrified country living, is now the Bright’s Grove Library and the home of Gallery in the Grove.
Its first residents were cut from the very fabric of Bright’s Grove’s earliest history. When rebellion broke out across Upper Canada in 1837, Robert Faethorne was commissioned as a Lieutenant-Colonel of the local troops of the Essex, Kent and Lambton Militia.
Faethorne subsequently married Elizabeth Jones, the daughter of Captain Henry Jones, a retired Royal Navy paymaster. Captain Jones, a follower of Scottish social reformer Robert Owen, was the founder of the failed experiment in communal living known as Maxwell that was established in Bright’s Grove in the 1820s. Maxwell was the first commune in Canada.
The Faethornes built their five-bedroom home in 1855 on their 120 acres of the 600 awarded to Jones as a retired naval officer. Faethorne House was built for entertaining and for raising the couple’s family. It soon became recognized as one of the finest properties in the area.
In 1862, Faethorne was promoted to full Colonel of the Militia. He mobilized forces to guard the area during the Fenian raid scares of 1866 to 1868. He lived happily on the property until his death in 1894 at the age of 95.
The house, now known as Wildwood on the Lake, was sold to Angus Jamieson. The game of golf had soared in popularity during the 1890s, and six holes were added to the property. Bright’s Grove’s famous Cull Drain Bridge was also built around 1910 while Jamieson owned the home.
H.F. Holland was a Sarnia broker and realtor who bought “Wildwood on the Lake” in 1921, completely restoring the home and grounds. Holland began renting the house out to cottagers. One of his most distinguished clients was London beer baron John Labatt. Leaving the property one morning in 1934, Labatt was kidnapped along the old Errol Road. It was Canada’s first known kidnapping for ransom, and it briefly made the home notorious.
In 1938, Wildwood was purchased by Herb Crabbe Sr. Under the name of Wildwood on the Lake, it began a long career as a summer resort and golf club, expanding on the six-hole course which had been part of the estate. When the new Lakeshore Road was built, it cut right through the golf course, which now moved to the south side of lakeshore Road, becoming Huron Oaks Golf Club, the home course of 2003 Masters winner Mike Weir.
By 1978, the Faethorne House was badly in need of repairs when it passed into the hands of Sarnia Township. It was restored to its present condition and started a new life as the Bright’s Grove library and Gallery in the Grove, which it remains as, to this day.