Windermere Manor is a stylish hotel and conference centre in the heart of London, Ontario. Boasting an elegant Tudor exterior design, the Windermere is known for being a charming place to stay when you’ve got business in the city, or you’re looking to host a major event, like a wedding. Visitors to Windermere Manor come from all over to take in the history, the sights, and the detailed attention to service that the staff takes pride in.
A Tribute To Tudor Architecture…and the Local Economy
The history of Windermere Manor as a physical building stretches back to 1925, but its inception goes back somewhat further than that, to an integral moment in the history of London, Ontario. The growth of Canada just before Confederation was marked by primary industry: logging the vast forests, tilling the rich soils, digging into the hard, unyielding rock to discover minerals and other substances. One of the less important “other substances” at the time was oil, which was still something of a novelty in the decades after the War of 1812. Petroleum and oil had some industrial uses, but for lighting and energy there were more useful, traditional sources like whale oil or wood and coal. In the 1850s, however, European entrepreneurs had figured out how to separate kerosene from petroleum and use it (at first) as lantern fuel, where it proved to be a much brighter alternative to coal and therefore a much more useful substance to provide light for crucial services like nighttime surgeries. By the early 1860s, these uses and research interests stemming from the U.S. Civil War prompted a rise of oil well drillers and speculators in Ontario. Charles Nelson Tripp of Enniskillen Township (near Sarnia, Ontario) was the first in Canada to sink a well in the gum beds of the Black Creek and extract ‘oils, naphtha paints, and burning fluids’. That was 1851; in 1858 James Miller Williams sunk the first commercial oil well in North America (Williams No. 1) at what is now the town of Oil Springs, Ontario. Ontario joined Pennsylvania and Wyoming as part of the early oil boom, and up to the Civil War there was a rise in new wells, facilities, and refineries in southwestern Ontario.
In 1865, the peak of the oil boom in Ontario and the final days of the Confederacy, oil was selling for $11.13 a barrel – big money especially for the mid-19th Century. The next year, however, saw the crash: oil plummeted to fifty cents per barrel in 1867 and production at Oil Springs and surrounding areas ground to a halt. Some speculators moved north, setting up new facilities around Petrolia, Ontario. Others moved out west, where the Albertan oil industry would set itself up well by the eve of the First World War. A group of investors in London, Ontario, however, continued to believe in the potential of the Ontario oil industry. On September 8th, 1880, long after the glory days of the Ontario oil industry, sixteen refinery owners in southwestern Ontario met in London to pool their refineries together into one united conglomerate, which they rechristened the Imperial Oil Company, Ltd. Many of the founding fathers of Imperial Oil have names that resound through history to the modern age. Frederick Fitzgerald, the first President of the company, also built the London Water Works in 1878. Hotshot youngster Jake Engelhart, the first Vice-President, was only 33 when Imperial Oil was founded but had been deep into the oil business since he was 19; he was also the owner of the 1877 London Tecumsehs, who had also played their first games in Labatt Park that year. The company did well in its time but bad luck would dog them for the remainder of the 19th Century. In the summer of 1883 lightning struck one of their refineries, causing a major fire that destroyed the company’s assets in London. While the company tried to rebuild the following year, it included a plan to run a pipeline for crude oil from the Lambton Wells into the city of London. The London municipal government began to get flooded with complaints about the noise and the smell, and in the end neither Imperial Oil’s money nor its political connections could compete with the raw democratic distaste for flash fires and the reek of gasoline, which was at the time considered useless and dumped into the river. Think about that the next time you fill up.
The City of London banned refineries from operating within the city limits, which had expanded quite a bit through the 1880s. Imperial Oil packed up its London headquarters and moved operations to Petrolia and moved their new refinery operations to Sarnia. Later, in the 1890s, the expanded Imperial Oil found themselves overstretched, and turned to foreign investors to continue their market expansion. That foreign investor was J.D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, and that buyout made the original Imperial Oil investors very rich. One of those newly rich founders was Thomas Smallman, who had in truth mad a great deal of money in the 1870s as director of the London Life Insurance Company; he was also on the Board of Governors of Western University upon the founding of the school. Thomas Smallman had an eye for architecture and the historical designs of past English eras; he purchased a gorgeous Queen Anne mansion named Waverly and passed his passion for architecture and style onto his young son John.
John Smallman is the man who built Windermere Manor in 1925, modelling it on his love for Tudor architecture. The Tudor era hearkens back to the period between the end of the War Of The Roses in 1485 and the death of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603. It’s a design aesthetic that emphasizes lofty ceilings, low arches over entryways, carefully crafted oriels (the windows that jut out in a concave fashion from the building), hand-hewn wooden beams, and the massive wood-burning stone fireplace. John Smallman built it as a tribute to his father and used the acres around the Windermere Manor to raise horses and grow cash crops; he also ran Smallman & Ingram Dry Goods in downtown London. The raising of racing horses was lucrative but was also a passion, and you can still find the remains of the old stone bridge that was part of the Manor’s horse run down between the hotel and the old Manor House.
Windermere Manor and the Discovery Park
After three generations of Smallman families living in Windermere Manor, the descendants of Thomas Smallman decided to move on to new vistas in the early 1970s and sold the Manor and the surrounding acres to the University of Western Ontario. The University spent the rest of the Seventies and the entirety of the Eighties going through a series of renovations and upgrades to the property and in 1991 re-opened Windermere Manor as part of their Western Discovery Park. The former manor, and now hotel and conference centre, is a splendid centre piece to a research axis that includes national government laboratories and large multi-industrial research complexes.
Today, the Windermere Manor features 48 guest rooms. Each room is 205 square feet and features at least one Queen size bed; several rooms also feature King size bed, and each features an exceedingly comfortable pillow top mattress. For larger groups, a small amount of rooms feature two Queen size beds and a pull-out couch, accommodating up to five guests. All rooms also provide a refrigerator and coffee maker, as well as free wifi and wired internet, and cable TV. Laundry facilities are available on-site and cribs or infant beds are freely available on request as well. The Windermere is a popular spot for professionals to spend a couple of days in London, especially when there are academic or business conferences being hosted at the nearby Western University.
While the Windermere Manor does a brisk business as a hotel, it’s the Manor’s reputation as a stellar wedding destination that provides the bulk of its fame these days. The Windermere Manor offers four different event spaces. The largest of these is the Grand Hall, which holds 120 guests for sit-down meals and 150 guests for cocktail parties. A number of the smaller rooms are used as combination meeting/conference rooms and as potential reception spots for smaller weddings. The North Meeting room holds up to 48 people and the Board Room holds 16 people; both are located on the ground floor. The Deer View Room is, as the name might suggest, located on the second floor and holds up to 48 people. The wedding planning crew at the Windermere offers packages for both winter and summer weddings, with particular crafted menus for each. The base price for a reception at the Windermere is $1500, and the base price for having the wedding at the Windermere as well as the reception is $1800. Part of this price gives the future married couple access to a personal on-site wedding coordinator starting from six months away from the wedding date. The Windermere’s coordinator will help you choose the perfect indoor or outdoor location for the ceremony, and also help you scout out the perfect spots for the all-important wedding day pictures. On-site accommodations can be booked in advance and 40 of the 48 guest rooms can be set aside for wedding guests if necessary. There’s no need to scramble around for the extraneous equipment that wedding couples often forget, either: the Windermere provides podiums and wireless microphones for speeches, as well as tables for guest book signing, gifts, and a space for the DJ.
Fine Dining On The Grounds Of History
Events are catered by the on-site fine dining restaurant, Restaurant Ninety-One. Their menus are carefully selected to emphasize the season of the wedding. Summer fare begins with stationary platters including a variety of dips, brie boards, charcuterie boards, and a delicious cured rainbow trout platter. The plated dinner is four courses. The appetizer course offers light soups and salads, including a salad composed of local greens, a beet salad, and a couscous and quinoa salad; soups include roasted potato and asparagus soup and a sweet corn and lime soup. A sorbet course comes between appetizer and dinner and comes in a variety of flavours. The entrée course selections are a succulent cross between the traditional and the gourmet – braised boneless short ribs, roasted ribeye, rack of lamb, and the like. Dessert includes choices like lemon cake, crème brulee, s’mores silk cake, and vanilla cheesecake. The winter menu replaces some options with a more autumn-and-winter oriented repast. Iced prawns (served with a saffron aioli) are available as an appetizer, in addition to the year-round set of cheese and cured meat selections. A marinated winter greens salad is available during the winter months, and the soups have a heartier, richer taste base – selections include caramelized onion and ale soup, roasted potato and crème fraiche soup, and sweet pumpkin and toasted chili soup. Two additional dishes offered during the colder parts of the year are pan roasted duck breast and Moroccan spiced lamb.
The catering services of Restaurant Ninety-One aren’t limited to weddings, either. Conferences and meetings can be catered buffet-style, with many of the popular wedding options available, like the caramelized onion, cheddar, and ale soup. Gala catering is available, which offers an assortment of the restaurant’s best appetizers including charcuterie boards and crudités platters (vegetable trays with buttermilk ranch dip) and, at the higher end, brioche bread pudding and roast chicken platters. If your reception or event runs late, then Restaurant Ninety-One has you covered there as well; their late night catering menu features items like nachos, pierogi, tacos, French fries, and flatbreads.
On-Site Apiary
One thing that sets both Windermere Manor and Restaurant Ninety-One apart is the presence of an on-site apiary, which has been in operation since April of 2010. The apiary, run by apiarist Rick Huismann, consists of 28 hives and nearly two million bees. The bees gather from the Windermere’s unique assortment of plants and flowers, delivering a honey with its own distinct flavour. The honey is used extensively in many of the dishes produced by Restaurant Ninety-One and also in some of the craft beers produced by the restaurant, including the Windermere Honey Stung Ale, which simply has to be tried in order to be believed.
The Windermere Manor is an excellent place to stay when visiting the city of London, Ontario. Its close proximity to both Western University and the amenities of Masonville Mall and downtown London make it the perfect spot to get the most out of the city when you come. It’s also an excellent spot to have a wedding or host a gala, and its on-site restaurant makes it a local destination when it comes to fine dining. Lovers of history, architecture, and food can find a lot to enjoy about a trip to Windermere Manor.