Located in Sandwich, just to the west of Assumption Church, along Huron Church Road. It was built in 1861 by Bishop Pinsonneault as his residence, when he moved the seat of the diocese from London to Sandwich. Of course the see was moved back to London and the building quickly fell into disrepair. Despite its grand appearance, the structure was poorly built, and after only 35 years, it was demolished in 1896.
Probably one of Windsor’s grandest, and least known buildings from the past…
That is one interesting structure. Great post Andrew.
That’s an interesting one. I’ve often wondered, do many of the old buildings around here suffer from poor construction, compared to Europe? They hardly ever knock anything down, there. Here, we’ve built it up and knocked it down more than once on a property, it seems. Were some of them just too poorly constructed to save? St. Mary’s Academy comes to mind. I’ve read many accounts that it was in bad shape when it came down. Was that due to disuse, and failure of upkeep, or is it due to poor construction?
This is the most amazing of your many amazing finds, Andrew. I grew up in Windsor from 1945 to 1965 and yet had never heard a word about the bishop’s palace. Sad about it’s quality and destruction. I must echo Uzzy’s question about the quality of major buildings in Windsor. Certainly this is was major building and one would have expected it to stand as long as the Church of the Assumption but it did not. Why? We need a good investigator to look into this cold case.
Wow…these guys lived like kings.
Wonder if any scandals involving young children came up back then?
This did have shoddy construction and needed to be leveled.
If the limestone is from the Amherstburg quarry it isn’t very good for use as a building material as the type of limestone in that quarry is subject to split and spald.
According to “From The Vault”, the new Windsor Star book by: Craig Pearson and Daniel Wells, “An L-shaped structure built out of stucco due to the bishop’s inability to acquire enough limestone, it was poorly constructed, and needed extensive rebuilding within it’s first twelve years.”
We never learn…. Bishops palace with stucco?… Poorly built… How many of the few historical buildings we have left, that have had brick covered in stucco. What about the new buildings that use stucco? I have seen with my eyes, pieces of stucco chipping and peeling off, give it another 10yr…..it will look ratty!