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Ross Bay Villa

1865 establishments in CanadaHistoric buildings and structures in CanadaMuseums in Victoria, British Columbia
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The Ross Bay Villa is a historic house museum, at 1490 Fairfield Road in Victoria, British Columbia, owned and operated by the Ross Bay Villa Society. The single-family home, built in 1865, is a Heritage Designated building in the City of Victoria. The Villa is one of only about 10 residences in Victoria known to survive from before 1870. Originally located on a 1.9-acre parcel owned by Charles Buxton, an English philanthropist and MP, the one-storey cottage was built five km from the growing town of Victoria, well outside the existing town limits, and served only by a dirt trail to the nearest neighbours, Mrs. Isabella Ross (the first woman to own property in the colony), and Robert Burnaby. The house was largely surrounded by bush, farmland and the swamps of Fairfield, Greater Victoria. The first occupants were Francis James Roscoe and his wife Anna Letitia Roscoe. The house was likely designed by John Wright, the only full-time professional architect practising in Victoria at the time. Wright has been described as the founding father of BC's architectural establishment. The Villa, which was not so named until 1882-83, was designed in the popular Gothic Revival architecture style, in which John Wright specialised.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Ross Bay Villa (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Ross Bay Villa
Fairfield Road, Victoria Fairfield

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Wikipedia: Ross Bay VillaContinue reading on Wikipedia

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Latitude Longitude
N 48.411944444444 ° E -123.34166666667 °
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Address

Ross Bay Villa

Fairfield Road 1490
V8S 1G3 Victoria, Fairfield
British Columbia, Canada
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Abkhazi Garden
Abkhazi Garden

The Abkhazi Garden was created in Victoria, British Columbia, on Vancouver Island, in 1946 by Prince and Princess Abkhazi. The garden is known as 'the garden that love built' and was developed by Prince Nicolas Abkhazi and Princess Marjorie ('Peggy') Abkhazi (born Marjorie Mable Jane Carter, later Marjorie Mable Jane Pemberton-Carter) over the decades that they owned the property on Fairfield Road.Prince Nicolas Abkhazi fled Georgia for France soon after the Russian Revolution where he first met Peggy in 1922. During World War Two he joined the French army and was captured as a prisoner of war by the Germans. Peggy meanwhile had returned to Shanghai where she was interned by the Japanese from 1943 too 1945. They were reunited in New York in 1946 and later moved to Victoria, British Columbia, Canada where they remained the rest of their lives. Not long after their deaths the garden was purchased by The Land Conservancy of British Columbia with plans to steward the land as a garden in perpetuity to memorialize and share the story of the Prince and Princess Abkhazi. The garden is approximately one acre and features pathways of crushed gravel and stone paths that wind their way under rhododendron plants with different coloured flowers that have grown to the size of trees. Under the rhododendrons grow smaller flowers, ferns, and other shade tolerant plants. In the centre of the garden is a tea house and gift shop. A proposal was submitted in March 2022 to protect the garden by transferring the denser zoning of the property to a nearby property and submission of a request to officially recognize the property as a heritage property in the city of Victoria. This is after the city tried to impose a heritage designation that met resistance from The Land Conservancy of British Columbia while it underwent restructuring and sought to sell some properties to maintain financial stability. The Land Conservancy was later able to sell the parking spot that had been heritage designated by the city on Foul Bay Road and no longer required creditor protection by 2017. The fee to enter the Abkhazi garden is by a suggested donation of ten dollars.