Description of Historic Place

The 1900 Balfour House, a two-storey stone farmhouse with a broad verandah, stands in a large sheltered yard amid flat open fields near Warren. The municipal designation applies to the dwelling.

Heritage Value

The solid stone Balfour House, with its substantial boxy proportions, shallow hipped roof, broad overhanging eaves and prominent front dormer, is an excellent example of a four-square farmhouse established in rural Manitoba at the turn of the twentieth century. Constructed with granite stones carefully laid out for effect, the large dwelling is further enhanced by limestone quoins, lintels and sills, a full-length open front verandah also detailed with stone and an enclosed second-floor sun porch at the rear. Built by a mason, Mr. Willoughby, for his daughter Susan and her husband, James Balfour, and continuously occupied for nearly five decades by the Hunter family, this ambitious dwelling on well-maintained grounds is a landmark near Warren in the Interlake region.

Source: Rural Municipality of Woodlands By-law No. 2428/01, March 13, 2001

Character-Defining Elements

Key elements that define the heritage character of the Balfour House site include:
- its large tree-sheltered and grassed setting and the dwelling's placement, facing south and set back off a driveway fronted by stone gateposts

Key elements that define the dwelling's substantial four-square design and stone construction include:
- the blocky form, two storeys high, extended by ancillary front and rear volumes, and set beneath a large, modestly pitched hip roof with overhanging eaves and a hipped front dormer
- the stone construction, including the main structure's fieldstone granite walls, laid in a squared rubble pattern and with corners highlighted by rough-cut limestone quoins, the front verandah's cyclopean fieldstone base and squared pillars and the fieldstone walls of the lower rear extension
- the full-length open verandah, one storey high, with heavy angled columns, a shallow, partially hipped roof and a pediment over the entranceway
- the symmetrically composed front, including the central entrance containing a solid wood door with an oval window of bevelled glass
- the window shapes and sizes, mostly tall rectangular single openings, but also small horizontal rectangles of leaded glass
- the rear second-floor sun porch with walls of glass and wood beneath a shallow hipped roof
- details and finishes such as rough-cut limestone window sills and broad lintels, tall brick chimneys, secondary doorways with stone lintels, the stone-walled front staircase, etc.

Key interior elements that define the dwelling's heritage character include:
- the functional centre-hall plan with the main-floor hall opening on to the front living room and study,
- the decorative features and finishes, including the finely crafted wood staircase, the custom woodwork with high baseboards throughout most of the structure, the beamed ceilings in the study and dining room, the hardwood flooring, etc.