The Lawn

D’Arcy Boulton grew up at The Grange in a family that was at the centre of Toronto’s ruling “Family Compact”. In 1837, he came to Cobourg come to study law under his uncle, George Strange Boulton, who lived at Northumberland Hall, and in the following year D’Arcy married Emily Heath whose family are best associated with Heathcote.  

 

The Boultons lived all their married life at Cobourg, building their spacious family home in about 1842 which immediately became a social centre for Cobourg’s elite. D’Arcy successfully continued his legal career and served as Mayor of Cobourg in the 1850s. In his capacity as commander of the 3rd Cavalry Regiment, he was appointed aide-de-camp to the Prince of Wales during his visit to Cobourg on his Canadian Tour in 1860.   

 

After Col. Boulton died in 1902, his widow put the house up for sale and it was purchased by, “a wealthy Pittsburgh socialite,” Mary Estelle (Brown) Jones as a summer home. She was the widow of Thomas Mifflin Jones Jr., nephew of Benjamin Franklin Jones, the Pittsburgh steel magnate who built Braemar Cottage in Cresson. In the same year that her first husband died, Mary purchased "The Lawn" and remarried Charles Edward Speer, youngest son of the President of the First National Bank. Her love for the area was enticed the parents of her daughter-in-law, Katherine (Hess) Jones from Philadelphia, to buy Heathcote next door as their summer home. The Speers eventually divorced and in 1926 Mary was married for a third time to Lt.-Col. Wilfred Chatterton Dumble, of Cobourg.

 

The Dumble family had lived at Cobourg since the 1840s when they made their home at Dromore but from 1926 it was "The Lawn" that became known as the "Dumble Estate." In 1928, Mary made several significant extensions to the house, notably to the north, and a pair of wings were sympathetically added to either side of the house by Darling & Pearson, architects, of Toronto. In 1930, Mary purchased the neighbouring property, Heathcote, and demolished that mansion in order to extend her own already extensive gardens. 

 

The gardens included an old orchard, fountains, a formal pond, and a freshwater well. It is presumed to have remained in the Dumble family after Mary’s death in about 1966. By 1991, the house had been divided into apartments and in the following year then owner, Don DePalma, obtained a demolition permit in order to sell it to John Wilson of Wincolm Developments. Wincolm tore down what had been, “one of the finest examples of Regency architecture in Ontario,” but had escaped designation. Some of the original shutters can still be seen at Blackham’s Hotel in Port Hope, but the grand old house itself has been replaced by a block of condos known as “The Lawn Condominium Residences”.