Touring Dundurn Castle in Hamilton, Ontario

 

Dundurn Castle, Hamilton Ontario

Source: Wikipedia

     This Easter weekend, my family and I visited Dundurn Castle in Hamilton, Ontario. Dundurn Castle is an 1830s mansion by the water. It is furnished as it would have been in the 1850s. We were led around the house in a guided tour by a staff member who suggested that we might come again to enjoy different versions of the tour as different guides included different information. As a first time visitor to the site, having a general tour was nice and the idea of having slightly different tours is intriguing (though I don’t know how they differ), but I think there is potential for more specialized tours of Dundurn Castle that focus on different elements of the site. The website only mentions two such tours, one focused on the War of 1812 and one focused on the kitchen. While these look fascinating, I think they could potentially have more options, especially if they are trying to encourage repeat visitors.

    One topic that I think would have been worthy of a dedicated tour was the servants and their living and working spaces. The tour I took did devote an appropriate amount of time to covering these spaces, but there are limits to what can be said on one tour. Many of the servants’ spaces were furnished and included in the tour, the only major exception appeared to be the coachhouse and male servants’ quarters (the same building), which was being used as a gift shop (and presumably offices, as part of the building seemed to be closed). The large amount of furnished servants’ spaces helped our guide give the topic the attention that it deserves as she emphasized that the servant’s lives were more representative of how the majority of people lived in the 1850s. Nonetheless, I think there is still potential for a dedicated tour as I think it would have been interesting to learn more about some of the individual servants and their lives. There are probably records showing the names of at least some of the servants at Dundurn Castle in the 1850s and may also be some additional records that might give some clues about their subsequent lives (i.e. marriage and death records). Even if there aren’t any further records beyond these, they can use information about the lives of servants in the 1850s to discuss what their lives might have been like.

    Another topic that could be a potential focus for a dedicated tour would be religion and politics. While this sounds controversial, the focus would be on religion and politics from the nineteenth century, so the material covered is less likely to be wildly controversial in the present day (not that I think museums should be afraid of weighing in on politics). As Allan MacNab, the owner of the house in the mid-nineteenth century, was actively involved in politics, there should be plenty of material to discuss. In one of the bedrooms, there was Catholic devotional materials, and the tour guide explained that MacNab had converted to Catholicism on his deathbed (some of his family was Catholic), causing great controversy at the time. This discussion could be further contextualized with more information about Catholic vs. Protestant conflict and anti-Catholicism in Great Britain and its colonies, which arose in the sixteenth century with the Protestant Reformation and continued for centuries after. Another topic that could be discussed is the MacNab family’s Scottish heritage and the tartan curtains in the study, as there is a lot of complicated history surrounding Scottish tartan and its politics. 

    Ultimately, I thought that Dundurn Castle was worth visiting if you are interested in learning about the history of domestic life in nineteenth century Canada. While it is an elite mansion, the tour does pay attention to the lives of more ordinary people, in the form of the numerous servants who worked there in the nineteenth century. One thing that could have been a bit clearer during the tour was the chronology of the house’s ownership and changes made to it. The guide did explain some of the major renovations made under MacNab’s ownership and previous structures incorporated into the construction of the main house, but didn’t really discuss the later history of the house much so I never really gained a clear picture of that part of the house’s history. I almost wonder if it would be helpful to have a timeline of the house’s ownership on display in the gift shop/ticket desk area in the coachhouse. 

    The tickets for Dundurn Castle also included tickets for the military museum on the grounds of the house (formerly a gatehouse). This museum included exhibits about the War of 1812 and the Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837. I found them reasonably informative, but the former exhibit had too much text and imagery bunched together. I understand that they are dealing with the inherent challenge of trying to communicate as much information as possible in a small space, but I think there were some labels and images that could have been omitted and text panels that could have been shortened.