[thistleclub]

Heritage-themed boutique hotel coming to Ancaster’s Wilson Street
(Hamilton Spectator, Meredith Macleod, Dec 20 2013)

The two partners behind plans for a new boutique hotel in a historic stone building in Ancaster hope to host their first guests in spring 2015.

The site is believed to have once been a barracks for soldiers during the War of 1812. There are reports army uniforms were found within the walls, but there is no definitive proof soldiers slept there.

Nonetheless, owners Robert Wilkins and Bill Walker plan to call their 19-suite hotel the Barracks Inn.

"I just love old," said Wilkins. "Modern doesn't appeal to me like old does. To fix something up gives me great pleasure."

The oldest parts of the building date back to 1800, and there were two additions over the years, says Wilkins.

But much of that structure, then serving as a drug store, was lost to a fire in 1868.

According to Ancaster history books, the present building was reconstructed from the ruins.

Over the years, the stone was stuccoed over and different parts of the building have served as apartments, a car dealership, a body shop and a tool-and-die operation.

Around 1940, a central section coming out to the road burned down. When work crews started an excavation for the hotel, they discovered mounds of buried rubble from that fire. It's all been cleaned and will be reused and a cornerstone from 1851 has already been remounted.

Wilkins and Walker have exposed a massive stone wall in what will be the lobby, and will build a one-and-a-half storey addition on top of a concrete block building that was attached to the rear of the structure sometime around 1960.

They decline to say how much they will invest in the project, beyond that it will be "significant."

The partners have secured a minor variance to allow for a hotel and have three building permits in hand, including one for a large porch running the length of the second floor and extending out over a central entrance.

Wilkins says that porch is inspired by the one on the Newton Inn at Jerseyville Road and Wilson Street, which burned down.

When Ancaster was a thriving village in the 1820s to the 1860s — the biggest in Ontario in fact — there were plenty of hotels to lay a weary head.

But the Barracks Inn will be the only one in Ancaster now. Wilkins figures there will be plenty of business from weddings at the Ancaster Mill and local golf courses, people trekking along the Bruce Trail and those looking for something quieter and quainter than a towering hotel downtown.

The hotel will have an on-site bakery but no restaurant.

The partners, who own numerous properties along Wilson, want to see patrons head out for meals.

Councillor Lloyd Ferguson said he is excited by the prospect of a hotel and a bakery and that they will play a crucial role in the goal of making Ancaster into a retail destination area.

"This is something that is desperately needed in Ancaster," he said.

"These guys have demonstrated to us by their restorations of many buildings that they are not only big supporters of heritage but big advocates of it."


Read it in full here.