The property is located at the southeast corner of Walker’s Line and Britannia Road and has a view to Rattlesnake Point. The landscape is rural agricultural. The property supports a one and one-half storey red brick clad farmhouse built in a bungalow style that is oriented to Walker’s Line. There is also a drive shed, a timber frame bank barn with concrete silo, modern metal clad barn, and small windmill on the property. The bungalow, circa 1910, is believed to have been built atop and around an earlier wood clad Ontario vernacular farmhouse.
Physical Value: Built in 1907, the unpainted timber frame barn, with fieldstone foundation and gambrel roof, is an excellent, intact example of an early 20 th-century bank barn. In the absence of a hill, an earthen ramp was created to permit access to each of the barn’s two levels from the ground. The bank side entrance enabled easy access for wagons bearing hay or grains to the threshing floor and hay loft. Fodder could also be dropped to the stabling floor below. Typical to traditional bank barn construction, the Richardson barn was built with its long side parallel to, and on the south side of, the man-made bank. This orientation creates a sheltered south facing barnyard for livestock. A later concrete silo is also located along the barn’s southerly elevation.
A central double width opening with tracked sliding doors provides access to the hay loft. There are two access points to the stable floor, which now houses horse stalls. The original iron bull enclosure remains. Window openings in the fieldstone foundation remain with some of the original wooden single hung divided light sashes intact. Openings for ventilation remain in the upper reaches of the timber frame cladding. Windows within the gambrel portion of the hay loft have been closed. A single storey L-shape extension has been built onto the southerly wall of the barn. Within the interior of the hay loft, mortised, tenoned and pegged beams arranged in an H configuration with a columned central aisle (threshing area) remain in excellent condition. Similarly, a double wheel pulley system remains. The north wall of the barn was recently braced in a traditional Mennonite barn raising.
Historical Value: The property, deeded to Frances Annie Richardson (nee Powell) from her father, H.H. Powell remained in the Richardson family until 2004. The original parcel has been twice severed, but the farm assembly remains intact and continues in agricultural operation. The barn is known to have housed a range of livestock including cattle over its lifespan. The barn is now used as a horse and hay barn.
Contextual Value: The property has contextual value as a farm assembly comprising the dwelling, the bank barn, the well and the fields to the east. The arrangement of the farm assembly, specifically the relationships between the location of the dwelling, the well and the barn and the fields to the east, is important to our understanding of life on the farm in Burlington.
