Limehouse: Trail

I knew that the village of Limehouse is located in an especially beautiful area before my son and I traveled up there to hike.  My grandfather built his house on the edge of Limehouse (and Stewardtown) because he liked the area so much and as a boy this meant that I took many day-long excursions exploring the local geography.

I also had read about the paint factory that use to operate here a century ago.  The Toronto Daily Mail from June 24th, 1893 reports that, “John Newton & Sons manufacture mineral paints for outbuildings and fences. These paints are of seven different colours and are fare proof as well as permanent.”  And, in researching further, I found out that some of these pigment colours were created locally from the red and blue clay!  (As an interesting aside: Another source of one of their seven colours was the chocolate brown, bog iron ore, dug in Conestogo.  Overall this paint was of a quality that it held a wide market, traveling across the commonwealth from Canada and the United States, to England and even Australia).

So, as my son and traipsed around Limehouse on our hike, we picked up rocks as we went along.  The trail we followed offered a real variety of scenery: From old buildings; to fields; to cliffs; to river banks; we enjoyed them all.  And, by the end of our walk, we had collected a bag full of specimens to test when we got home.
The rocks we collected were equally as diverse and after my son and I crush them up I’ll post some photos of what we found.

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