Description of Historic Place

The historic place is the two-storey log First Mallam House, built in 1900 in a rural vernacular manner at 4845 Lakeshore Road, in the Okanagan Mission neighbourhood of Kelowna, and now a part of the Summerhill Estate Winery.

Heritage Value

The First Mallam House is a simple building that is valued as one of the few original pre-emptors' log homes still extant. It is representative of the first stage of agricultural development at the south end of Okanagan Mission at the beginning of the twentieth century, a phase that took place somewhat later than on the nearby Mission Creek delta. The property has value as well for having had a wide range of agricultural uses, including fruit, tobacco, dairy, and vineyard and winery.

This squared-log house on the edge of a small ravine that contains Rembler Creek, was built in 1900 by A. 'Gus' Anderson, who had pre-empted (homesteaded) the property in that year. An earlier pre-emptor in 1887, Francis Ortolan, had abandoned his claim. The house form is a simple, gabled rectangle, typical of vernacular log buildings in many pioneer communities in central and western Canada, although the full second storey is more ambitious than most such log houses, in which the walls would be lower and more of the second floor would have fallen within the sloping roof.

Henry Cecil Mallam bought the house and property from Anderson in 1904, a year after his arrival from England. After adding a bedroom and woodshed to the house (probably the adjacent one-storey structure), in 1906 he married Giffortina M. Thomson, second daughter of Mr. and Mrs. G.M. Thomson, neighbouring pioneer settlers who had been in Okanagan Mission since 1892. Both husband and wife were keen sports people, playing tennis and badminton and riding, and they were the focus of the lively younger set of the area. A source reported that 'a Sunday afternoon pastime was for one of the group to hold up a flattened teaspoon while the others took turns to shoot at it with a .22 rifle.' Mallam was a charter member of the Kelowna Club when it was formed in 1905.

In 1910 the log house became adjunct housing for his farming operations as the Mallams moved to a new and larger house they built on their property. Cecil Mallam raised fruit and ran a dairy (the large barn still stands lower on the hillside). In 1912 he also tried tobacco, whose cultivation was being promoted aggressively by the British North American Tobacco Company.

This portion of the former Mallam property is now the Summerhill Estate Winery, which has restored the house to a pioneer character, which may or may not be its original appearance, with the intention of using it as a museum.

Source: City of Kelowna, Planning Department, File No. 6800-02

Character-Defining Elements

The character-defining elements of the First Mallam House include:
- Two-storey log house with one-story log addition, connected by an enclosed breezeway
- Both structures have medium-pitched gabled roofs
- Squared logs with some dovetail joints, but mostly less sophisticated squared joints (chinking is recent and differs from the original)
- Wood shingles in gable ends
- Central hearth
- Windows are mostly double-hung, wood two-over-two sash
- Set in a large vineyard and not formally landscaped, but with many adjacent trees