Rockwood

John Cartwright’s father, Richard, was a United Empire Loyalist who in 1778 saw his property at Albany, New York, “destroyed and plundered”. Banished from Albany, he came to Kingston in Canada via Montreal where his long-standing business dealings with the late Sir William Johnson helped him re-establish himself. By the time Richard died in 1815, he left £20,000 and 27,000-acres of land in Upper Canada to his two surviving sons, the twins John and Robert. Both sons were educated at Oxford University in England and before returning to Canada in 1830 John travelled through Europe taking a great interest in its architecture. In 1838, he commissioned the Irish native George Browne to build his new home at Kingston, influenced by the Coote family's Bellamont in County Cavan.

House & Gardens

Although commonly called Rockwood or Rockwood Villa, Cartwright himself may have first named it "Rockhurst" to distinguish it from his childhood home in Kingston which was also called "Rockwood". In its day, the house lay to the west of the city on an estate of 881-acres. It was positioned overlooking Lake Ontario, surrounded by fields and hardwood groves on the slopes of Hatter’s Bay, near the village of Portsmouth. Cartwright, “spared no expense in stocking his well-cultivated farm with the best breeds of cattle and sheep”.

The Palladian villa is a mix of Italianate and Neo-Baroque, both popular styles during the Regency period. The Neo-Classical façade faced north and a sequence of rooms were built around a centre hall plan to benefit from the spectacular view over Lake Ontario. The central hall presented, “an octagonal rotunda that extended up two floors, surrounded by a balcony at the second level, and crowned by a panelled dome containing a rose-glass skylight”. It was constructed with ashlar and covered in stucco, but lined to show its ashlar masonry. The gardens were landscaped and contained the stables, since demolished.

Cartwright died in 1845 and nine years later (1854), his widow vacated the house and leased it to one John Palmer Litchfield (1808-1869), the former SuperIntendent of a lunatic asylum in Liverpool, England, who was not only thrown into debtor's prison in Australia, but was outed that ‘Dr’ Lichfield had no medical degree. Litchfield was described as, “a scoundrel, a con artist and, at the very least... definitely of dubious character”. On coming to Canada, he charmed Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald and rented Rockwood with the intention of turning it into a private asylum. For a second time, he was outed for falsely purporting to be a medical doctor, but his ability to charm and his skill in modern practices and techniques allowed the inconvenience to be quietly passed over.

Kingston Psychiatric Hospital

In 1856, Macdonald, on behalf of the government, acquired Rockwood and its last remaining 35-acres of landscaped gardens as the site for Lichfield’s "Criminal Lunatic Asylum". The stables were converted to house 24-female patients previously confined in the penitentiary. Another building was erected nearby in 1859 and by 1870, Rockwood ceased to be part of the hospital and was used as the SuperIntendent’s residence. Today, it remains as the nucleus of the Kingston Psychiatric Hospital.