Glorious Glanmore House!

“Sometime the best hiding place is the one in plain sight.”

- Stephenie Meyer, Novelist

It takes me less than ten minutes to walk from our home to Glanmore House, Belleville’s National Historic Site (link) on Bridge Street East. 

Despite having lived in the Bay of Quinte area on and off for decaades, I am embarrassed to say that, until recently, I had never visited Glanmore House. I had driven by it hundreds of times, and my dear friend Lindi is a passionate Glanmore House volunteer and advocate. (You can find Lindi’s delightful blog about heritage architecture, “ancestral roofs”, here.) Yet somehow – mostly through benign neglect – I had just never gotten around to checking it out for myself. 

Glanmore House was hidden in plain sight for me.

Talk about missing a treasure!

All that changed two weeks ago when I finally decided to break my inertia by hauling myself and my camera over to Glanmore House for a visit. 

And what a fine place it is! Sumptuous and superbly curated, it is a celebration of Victorian and Edwardian sensibilities, not to mention a test of the staff who have to dust all those beautiful bits and pieces on display – those many, many ostentatious, gaudy, fabulous. bizarre, lovingly preserved bits and pieces! My goodness, but wealthy Victorians DID love their collections! 

The house, built in the ornate Second Empire style, was built in 1882-1883 for the wealthy Belleville banker, John Philpot Curran Phillips, and his family. Four generations of the family lived in the house until 1971, when the City of Belleville purchased it to become a museum. Fully restored to its original grandeur, it is a time traveller’s delight. Its dedicated staff and volunteers keep it filled with energy and delights. Kudos to all involved. 

I approve of my tax money supporting such a treasure. 

Please don’t ignore it for as long as I did. 

A technical note about the photos below: I have recently switched from JPEG photos to RAW photos, giving me much larger files to play with. I have also begun using Adobe Lightroom Classic CC software to edit photos. For those not familiar with the process, it is the equivalent of little boys' switching from short pants to long pants. It’s all a little daunting and I’m on a steep learning curve, but it was clearly time to up my game. So, up it, I did.

I hope you enjoy the resulting photos.