Living at Todmorden

As industry grew in the Don Valley, settlement followed.  Temporary camps and rough log houses were replaced by more permanent dwellings of local stone or sawn lumber. Later – especially after the Brick Works opened in 1889 – brick houses became more common.

The designs of the two surviving residences at Todmorden – the grand Helliwell House and the single-storey wooden cottage – reflect the social and economic status of their residents.  Although both houses had fine features, such as fireplaces, wall paper and woodwork, neither had running water or bathrooms.  After Todmorden became the property of the Taylor family in the 1850s, both houses were rented to Brick Works employees and other tenants until 1950.

Helliwell House, built 1838.

Helliwell House 

The large, extended Helliwell family, described as the "great colony of Helliwells" by a neighbour, operated the Todmorden brewery from 1821 until 1847. Of several houses they built on the property, only Helliwell House survives. Built in 1838, it is a rare Toronto example of an adobe or 'mud brick' house. The single storey frame portion of the house represents an earlier, more modest family residence.

 Adobe construction is sometimes called 'mud brick' because it uses sun-dried, rather than kiln-fired bricks. A mixture of clay, sand and straw is pressed into a wooden mold, and the block-sized bricks are allowed to dry in the open air. Once the adobe wall is stuccoed, it is impermeable to rain.

Demonstrating adobe brick manufacture.

Adobe construction provides good insulation, retaining heat in winter and keeping an interior cool on hot days. Helliwell House's wide eaves also provided protection against the elements, shedding snow and shading the upper windows against the summer sun.

 
Todmorden’s frame cottage reflects the Regency style of the early 19^th century, with sidelights and a transom at its central front entrance. Legend has it that the house was originally built elsewhere and later moved to this spot. Archival maps and archeological evidence point to an 1850 date for cottage’s construction, or possible relocation.

Unusual for its time, the cottage has its own well in the basement, providing spring water to its tenants. During the 1940s, the central hallway was dominated by a large woodstove, the only ‘central’ heating in the house.

 



Bellehaven, built 1887, demolished 1950s

Archival photographs of other Todmorden houses, now demolished, record the stark contrast in lifestyles between mill owners and their employees. Perched at the top of the ravine at the corner of Pottery Road and Broadview Avenue, the powerful Taylor family lived in a lavish 19-room mansion called Bellehaven. The Taylors owned the Brick Works and several paper mills in the Don Valley.

Worker's cottage on Pottery Road

Tar paper shack in the Don Valley

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Don Valley became dotted with the makeshift homes of hundreds of unemployed men who arrived by rail looking for work. These “cave and shack dwellers”, as they termed themselves, assembled a kind of hobo town called The Jungle.

During the winter of 1930, the Don Valley Brick Works allowed the homeless to sleep inside the brick kilns, after the bricks were fired and left to cool slowly overnight.

By June of 1931 one hundred men were living in the Brick Works, and two hundred more said to be sleeping in the open by the Don River.

In the fall of 1931, many of these homeless were employed by the Canadian government in a make-work project to construct the Trans- Canada Highway in Northern Ontario, and their Don Valley shantytown was demolished.

During World War II, Todmorden was the site of a small prisoner-of-war camp. Most of the camp’s inmates were German merchant marines. The camp consisted of a dozen wood frame cabins located in a fenced-off area on the ‘flats’ where the current Todmorden parking lot lies.

Some of these prisoners-of-war were put to work in the Brick Works during their confinement and repatriated after the war. It’s said that at least one of them, apparently enjoying life in the valley, later returned to Canada and found work once more in the Brick Works, where he was recognized by one of his former coworkers.