Lore
The Hermitage in Ancaster, now part of Hamilton, Ontario, began as a house built in 1830 by the Reverend George Sheed and later became linked to Otto Ives, an English officer of the Greek War of Independence, whose household added an unusual cosmopolitan element to the area. Local folklore grew around a story of Ives’s coachman, William Black, and a young Greek companion, though surviving records are sparse. After 1853, George Gordon Browne Leith and Eleanor Ferrier transformed the property into a grand estate. A fire destroyed the house in 1934, but its stone ruins endured, giving the site lasting significance through its landscape, remains, and legend.
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Ontario · Canada
