This ongoing series from Barrie Historical Archive curator Deb Exel shows old photos from the collection and one from the present day, as well as the story behind them. The following is a second instalment. You can find part one, 'Diaries capture daily life of early Oro farmer,' by clicking here.
The Raikes (Part 2): George Raikes – The Pleasaunce (Concession 1 Oro)
If the word ‘pleasaunce’ seems strange or misspelled, it’s real and it means ‘a pleasant rest or recreation place usually attached to a mansion’ or a ‘garden, especially that of a medieval castle, manor-house, or monastery’.
‘A large garden estate’ is the dictionary reference the family used to describe the Pleasaunce, the magnificent home of George Raikes on Concession 1 of Oro.
George, Walter Raikes’ eldest son, born in 1854, took over management of his father’s farm in the 1880s.
On Dec. 1, 1883, George married Amy Francis Day at the Holy Saviour Church, in Surrey, England.
A witness to the event was Ernest Barkley Raikes, his cousin. Ernest, who studied at Oxford, worked as an advocate for the High Court in Bombay, India, serving on the staff of Lord Harris, governor of Bombay. India is also where Ernest made his debut as a first-class cricketer, playing for the Europeans cricket team.
Amy was the daughter of Rev. Edwin Horatio Day and Anne “Annie” Elizabeth Kendall. Rev. Day and Annie had five children: Mary Eleanor, Walter Henry, Amy Frances, Alice Ursula and Charles Edwin. Amy would lose her mother in 1861, when she was just three years old. Her father remarried in 1863 to Ellen MacNaghten with whom he would have four more children: George, Edward, Constance and Gertrude.
In 1870, the family immigrated to Canada, settling in Toronto where Rev. Day was rector of Holy Trinity Church. The girls attended the Bishop Strachan School and the boys were enrolled in Upper Canada College.
Amy was 14 when the Day family was completely shattered by the most horrific incident. Her brother Walter, who had recently returning from a sporting outing in the country, was sick in bed, his gun standing in the corner of his room.
Earlier in the day, a friend of Walter’s had loaded the gun with the intent of firing it out the window for amusement. As it was a Sunday and knowing the noise it would make, Walter put a stop to the plan.
That evening, Mary Eleanor moved her ill brother Walter to her own room. While making Walter’s bed, younger brother Charles, who was in the habit of playing with the gun and snapping it at people, not knowing it was now loaded, picked it up, saying to his sister, “Do you want to see me shoot you?”
Mary Eleanor was struck in the head, dying instantly.
The matter was deemed an accidental shooting and the devastated family returned to England after staying only five or six years in Canada.
It was Walter Raikes, George’s father, who in 1882, designed the large, imposing home that George built for his bride, Amy.
Construction began in 1883 and the Pleasaunce, sitting 100 feet above a sandy beach on Kempenfelt Bay, was completed in 1884. The two-storey home on the hill, with its towering windows that opened to the beautiful verandas, was an impressive sight to behold.
Inside, 11-foot ceilings, large bay windows, fireplaces in the living room and dining room, and a staircase to the second floor, greeted those who entered the front double doors. A kitchen, scullery, dumbwaiter and servant’s stairs were located at the back of the house.
Upstairs were six bedrooms and a sitting area at the top of the main staircase. The master bedroom had a fireplace and an anteroom which was used as a nursery and dressing room. The bedroom at the rear of the house led to the back staircase. The fireplaces and cook stove in the kitchen heated the house until a wood furnace was later installed.
A pump house at the lake, fed spring water to a cistern in the attic, using gravity to distribute water to the house. Gas lighting was supplied by a carbon gas generator.
George and Amy’s son, Walter George, was born in 1886. They adopted Edward John “Jack” Vessey, one year younger than their Walter, as a companion for their son.
The Raikes were busy, active people: as a farmer, George was involved in agricultural interests, presiding as president of the Georgian Bay Fairs Association, Oro Fair and as a director of the Barrie Fair.
He was also a commissioner on the County Council, representing Oro and Barrie for a period of time.
Both he and Amy served their church, St. Thomas’ Anglican in Shanty Bay – George was a warden and lay reader, and Amy designed the Alpha and Omega lettering of the reredos in the sanctuary.
A shocking incident rocked the Raikes family at Christmastime 1894. Amy, George’s wife, ventured out onto the bay in front of their home on Boxing Day, accidentally drowning at the age of 38.
The family could only speculate as to what she was doing alone on the ice that day, a mystery that was never solved.
The stained glass windows in the chancel of St. Thomas’ Church in Shanty Bay were given in her memory.
In 1898, George Raikes remarried. His second wife, Annette Grace Saunders, was the daughter of Guelph’s police magistrate and lawyer Thomas Willcocks Saunders and his wife Jemina.
George and Annette had three children together: Elsie Georgina, Campbell Dyce and Christobel Catherine.
In another cruel blow, Annette Raikes died as the result of a miscarriage in 1906, at the young age of 35. George was left a widower and his children motherless, once again. George’s unmarried sister Georgina (China as she was called) immediately moved in and took over the rearing of the children, living with the family until her death in 1930.
George’s other unmarried sister, Frances, would also split her time between Toronto and life at the Pleasaunce, until her death in 1918.
The attic of the Raikes home, once servant’s quarters, was renovated, adding rooms and dormer windows, to make more living area, as George’s spinster sisters’ home, the former Walter Raikes house on the next hill, was destroyed in a fire in 1909.
One family source claims the attic was occupied by George and Amy’s son Walter. Walter, a divinity student, was in his third year of study for the Anglican ministry, at Trinity College at the University of Toronto.
In the summer of 1908, Walter, active in local cricket and tennis clubs, played in a regular cricket match on a Monday night. Not feeling well the next day, the doctor diagnosed him with typhoid fever. Taken to the hospital on the Thursday, where he seemed to be improving, he was unexpectedly stricken with edema of the glottis, and was dead the following day, at 21.
The attic of the Pleasaunce was sealed off after Walter’s death, leaving his rooms intact and untouched for many years.
The harsh days continued, when George and Amy’s adopted son John Vessey, a Rhodes Scholar, fought and lost his life in the First World War. Private secretary to Sir Frederick Williams-Taylor, general manager of the Bank of Montreal, in Montreal, Vessey left to serve with the 60th Canadian Battalion and was deployed to England.
He wrote to his sister Elsie Raikes from the trenches, describing, with good humour, the reality of life on the battlefield.
In June 1916, George Raikes received a letter that his son had been killed in action. Capt. Vessey died in the Battle of Mont Sorrel and was buried in West Flanders, Belgium.
George Raikes would not endure any more losses.
In the fall of 1919, after an evening in Barrie, George returned home, apparently in good health, but during the night, suffered uremic convulsions, passing away the next morning at his home, the Pleasaunce.
George Raikes’ remaining children, Elsie, Campbell and Christobel buried their father in the cemetery at St. Thomas’ Church in Shanty Bay.
Elsie attended Ovenden College in Barrie before receiving her degree from the University of Toronto, later training as a nurse at Toronto General Hospital.
In 1930, Elsie had a cabin built near the lake on the Raikes property and took a job teaching English and history, as well as running the infirmary, at Ovenden College.
Else taught there for 17 years until the school closed in 1950, then became a public health nurse until she retired.
As a member of the newly formed Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) party, in 1943 she was the first woman to run for the Simcoe County riding. She was later active in the Simcoe East NDP.
Elsie’s sister, Christobel, also attended Ovenden College, then U of T as well. Living in Toronto until 1936, she and her husband, Ian Welsman, built a home on the site of the former Walter Raikes farm.
It was George’s son, Campbell, who would carry on the family tradition. After high school at Barrie Central Collegiate, Cam went on to the Royal Military College in Kingston, then the Ontario Agricultural College in Guelph, before returning to run the farm.
While busy raising beef, swine, sheep and chickens, Campbell was active in local militias. Somehow, Capt. Campbell Dyce Raikes managed to find time to marry. His bride, Norah Fletcher, attended Toronto’s Branksome Hall private school, followed by Rosemary Hall in Greenwich, Conn., then the Margaret Eaton School.
Their wedding in Trinity College chapel was said to be a pretty affair – certainly Norah must have looked quite fetching in her three-piece teal suit trimmed with grey squirrel and her rose wine hat and accessories.
After a quick motor holiday, Cam and Norah returned to their home, the Pleasaunce. In 1940, Cam was promoted to major, with active duty in Canada and Great Britain until 1943, then back to reserve status in 1947.
After the war, Cam held a number of municipal reassessment positions in Simcoe County.
Cam and Norah had three children, Rodney, Rosemary and Norah, and what a marvellous place for them to grow up!
The Pleasaunce, was full of nooks, alcoves and hiding spots, perfect for all manner of play and ‘ghost games’ as Rosemary called them. The property itself provided endless opportunity for adventures and exploration, as well as other benefits of farm life.
When Rosemary acquired her horse, Maruha, from Ovenden College when it closed, it was easily stabled at the Pleasaunce.
Rosemary, who was born at the Pleasaunce, recalls some of the changes to the old home over the years, such as the foundation work that led to the removal of the verandas in the 1990s.
When her parents died, many treasures of the Pleasaunce, china, household effects and Norah’s fabulous furniture collection, were offered up at a huge yard sale in 1992.
One memento that was not in the sale was the 1925 King’s Plate cup, once of the prize of her great uncle, James Clarence Fletcher, owner of Fairbank, that year’s winner. It sits in the home that she and husband John Dunsmore built on their land that lies to the west of her old family home.
The Dunsmores raised beef for many years, reforesting the property with the help of Trees Ontario when they downsized their farming.
In the 1920s, among the memorable and notable ‘summer’ homes along the north shore of Kempenfelt Bay, such as Parklands and Woodlands, George Raikes’ home, the Pleasaunce, was always included in the list of attractive mansions.
The handsome home with its elaborate and decorative brickwork is just as appealing as ever.
The current owners, who purchased the Pleasaunce from the Raikes family, have put great effort into the care and preservation of this stunning, historic home, including cultivating showy gardens and beautiful grounds befitting such a breathtaking country estate.
