C O N T E X T 1 3 4 : M A Y 2 0 1 4 33 and plaster. The interior wall lath was accordion lath, used to save on hand-forged nails. A large shingle-like, hand-split board about 1 x 2 was split alternately on opposite ends, then spread open as it was nailed to the studs. This used only half as many nails as individual laths which would each need a nail at each end. The Loyalists brought in Acadian (French colonists) workmen to help with the original construction. Their techniques produced a style much resembling the Quebec style of log cabin with vertical corner posts and squared log infill. The house stood on Rideau Street in Kingston for 200 years, home to a succession of uses and families. In its final years in Kingston, it was owned by a lumber and oil company and was surrounded by large oil tanks. It was a neighbourhood far different from what it had been in 1783, with leafy open spaces and a view of the Cataraqui River. It was that company which was having it torn down in the spring of 1983 when we bought it as used lumber. Far from being raw lumber, it was a 200-year-old kit, ready to be reassembled. When we examined the kit, we found it complete except for the flooring for one floor which was in poor condition and could not be re-used.What we had were all the posts, beams, rafters and flooring for one floor.The posts were originally two storeys high, but the demolition contractor had cut all except two in half before we got there.We patched them back together with metal plates. In the summer of 1983 our primary consideration for the reconstruction was to rebuild the house exactly as it had been on Carleton Island in 1783 and then in Kingston for the next two centuries. It was not lost on us that we were moving the house for the second time exactly 200 years after its first move.Againwe made use of the Roman numerals carved into the posts and beams when it was first built, reinforced by our own numbers, inscribed by our sonMark as the house was being demolished in Kingston. We were not unaware that the house had historic value, and that it probably should have been considered for designation in the City of Kingston Heritage Register as a Property of Cultural HeritageValue but it was on its way down when we bought it.There was also clear precedent in the province of Ontario for moving houses of historic value. Upper Canada Village near Morrisburg, not far from Kingston, is a museum made up of houses moved from villages which were flooded during the construction of the St Lawrence Seaway.Although the buildings in this museum village are much younger than those of British museum villages such as theWeald and Downland Open Air Museum in West Sussex, for example, the idea of The house under construction in the summer of 1983.The posts were originally two storeys high, but the demolition contractor had cut all except two in half before they were delivered.The Sorensens patched them back together with metal plates. Some of the Fort Haldimand chimneys seen in a drawing made by Benson Lossing in 1869. The timber houses had long since been removed.
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