Interventions to Protect

Forbes House (formerly the British Hotel), c. 1840

BRANCH:
Not part of an ACO Branch
ADDRESS:
401 Draper Street
Norval ON
L7G 4B6
UPDATED:
August 10, 2021

Designated May 20, 2014. Heritage plaque attached December 6, 2015.

ACO Halton Hills Chair Pat Farley, supporting request in 2014 by owner Tom Pettingill to Halton Hills Council that Forbes House be designated, noted that the house had been the British Hotel between 1857 and 1888, that it is also reputed to have been a brothel and that her previous request for designation had been a church. She also noted that Forbes House “is an excellent example of an early village home that reflects a vernacular interpretation of Georgian-style architecture.”

Previous owners: Major Armitage Forbes, Royal Army Medical Corps, 1948-1973; John Miller, who later became one of the directors of the Toronto-Guelph Plank Toll-Road; James Forster (grandfather of Canadian portraitist, J.W.L. Forster); Robert Colgan, proprietor of The British Hotel (when it was reputed to have been a “house of ill repute”).

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