Bowes Mill & Residence

Location: 693 Bowes Road

Legal Description: Lot 17, Concession 1 Bathurst Ward

History of the Bowes (Tay View) Mill and Private Residence  

The Property and Mills

The Deed for this property was acquired from the Crown in 1823 (confirmed in 1831) by Archibald Fraser, who erected the first dam, and a sawmill on the north side of the river.  In 1835, Fraser sold the property to Abel Mott (for £50) who had an extensive lumber and timber business.  Mott is listed as having sold the property nine months later to Henry Glass (for £343).  However, a Courier adv, on October 10, 1839, still lists Mott as the owner, offering the property for sale (consisting of Lot 17, Cons. 1 and 2, and a sawmill) so perhaps the sale fell through.   

In 1839, Joshua Adams acquired the property, for £400, rebuilt the sawmill (no mention of a grist mill), and operated until 1844, when he sold to Adam Scott Elliott (£650).  Adam Elliott and his two brothers ran the mills – apparently adding the grist mill and barley mill – until 1856, when they sold to John Allan (for £3,000).  John Allan held the property from 1856 to 1867, during which he is said to have built the fine Bowes residence across the river (described later).

John Chaffey owned the property between 1867 and 1878 (possibly as late as 1891), when his estate sold it to James Laurie and Peter McLaren.   Laurie operated it until his death and in 1892 his estate sold to Louis Badour.  Badour apparently owned it for only a short time, cut the oak and pine in the area, and in 1896 sold the four-acre mill lot (of Lot 17, Concession 1), with water rights, to the Canadian Electric & Water Power Co.  The power company converted the old grist mill to a hydro generating plant, rebuilt the dam and installed a 250 H.P. 50” water wheel, to supply Perth with electricity, in 1898 (one of four mills along the Tay to do so, including the Adams, Ritchie and Haggart mills).

The Town of Perth operated the plant, until June of 1922, then it lay idle until 1929, when Anson Bowes rented it, and set up a grist mill.  Anson purchased the property in 1932, with all the water rights.  It was operated, 24 hours a day, as a grist mill successfully through the difficult 1930s.  In 1952, the mill and machinery were destroyed in a fire, but the building was promptly restored.

The mill building is now preserved by the Bowes family as an historic site and private museum.

The Bowes Home

The Bowes residence was built by John Allan, in 1856, who owned of the mill property between 1856 and 1867.  The house’s wall construction is ‘board-on-board’ – emblematic of the burgeoning sawmill industry of that era in eastern Canada.  In this system, boards, normally of pine, are nailed flat, building up the wall, providing both the structure and an early form of insulation.  Only an area having a low-cost supply of sawn lumber could afford it.  

The home has retained its original roof and first floor windows, and the charm of a classic mid-19^th Century, vertical wood-sided farm home.  It was featured in a recent Christmas Home Tour, by Perth’s Canadian Federation of University Women

This information is drawn from Arthur Bowes’ history of the property, and the book “The Mills of the Tay Watershed and Area”.