The Hermitage

The Hermitage had several owners before George Gordon Browne Leith acquired it in 1855. A wealthy Irish-born Scottish immigrant, Leith settled his family there because it lay near the privileges of the British upper class establishment in the Hamilton area, and because its rolling hills and gentle streams recalled the Scottish landscape. He built a large stone house with limestone quarried from the property. The Leith family used the Hermitage as a summer residence and spent winters in either Hamilton or Scotland. Eleanor Alma Dick-Lauder, the only one of the five Leith children born in Canada, remained devoted to the family home. After it was destroyed by fire in 1934, she built a modest house within the ruins and lived there alone until her death in 1942. The ruins on the Headwaters Trail are all that remain of the Leith estate, and the Gatehouse, part of the original estate, housed the gatekeeper and his family and now exhibits artifacts excavated from the ruins tied to the Leith family.

Ontario · Canada