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Ashcroft Manor |
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Ashcroft Map |
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It’s easy for us living here today to take the
wide open spaces, beautiful grasslands, towering
mountain peaks and the majestic rivers and
streams for granted. But for many other people,
in the past, present, and hopefully the future,
B.C’s landscape is considered very exotic. Tales
of the open plains, the gold rush and the new
territories set many people in both the upper
and lower classes of society to dreaming. Around
the turn of the 19th century, this
exoticness attracted English aristocrats to come
and try their hand at being a pioneer. |
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For a time, it was fashionable for the
upper-class families in England to encourage
their younger sons to immigrate to the new
colony, and try their hand at ranching, which
was an acceptable occupation. The settlement at
Walachin attracted the “upper class” and the
titled aristocracy in the early 1900’s. However,
they weren’t the first members of the English
upper class to make their way to the area near
Ashcroft. |
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Clement and Henry Cornwall were the sons of the
Reverend A.G. Cornwall of Ashcroft House, and
direct descendants of a British aristocratic
family. While studying law in London in the
1860’s, their imaginations were caught up by
tales of a fabulous “gold rush” in the distant
colony of British Columbia. Like many others,
they packed up their belongings and headed off
to seek their fortunes in far-off Western
Canada. |
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Arriving in the Ashcroft area in 1862, the
brothers settled on their property (purchased
several years before in 1859) and began
construction on a roadhouse, a cattle ranch and
farm encompassing over 6000 acres of land and
1500 head of cattle, a market garden, and even
its own sawmill (later turned into a grist
mill). Soon after construction of the Ashcroft
House, they decided to build a larger house
beside the wagon trail which passed by their
property. If they weren’t going to be gold
prospectors, at least they could supply the
prospectors traveling to and from the gold
fields. Over the next 2 years, the “Lower
House”, later known as Ashcroft Manor, was
built, opening in 1863. Ashcroft Manor included
a saloon, and spots for travelers to spend the
night. |
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By 1865, the ranch and the roadhouse had
established themselves to such a point, that the
brothers began to import the social life which
they had enjoyed in England. They built a
racetrack on a field beside the roadhouse, and
held Fall Races with the Arabian horses also
imported from England. They also introduced fox
hunting to the area, although substituting local
coyotes for the foxes. The brothers also
insisted all of the proper English terms for all
phases of the hunt were used. With the other
“upper class” emigrants and the curious ranchers
in the area, Ashcroft Manor soon was the centre
of Ashcroft’s social scene. |
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Ashcroft Manor provided British Columbia with
several key figures in the early days of British
Columbia. Clement Cornwall became the Lieutenant
Governor of BC in 1881. One of the hired
managers of the roadhouse became premier of B.C.
in 1898, Charles A. Semlin.
With the railway replacing the horse-drawn
traffic, Ashcroft Manor genteelly faded into the
sunset. While the manor house was destroyed by
fire in 1943, the roadhouse still survives, and
is now a teahouse and gift shop by the highway,
carrying on the tradition of the Cornwall
brothers 140 years later. |
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