Description of Historic Place

Chapman House National Historic Site of Canada is a two-storey red-brick house which preserves the ''Georgian'' form, typical of a prosperous eighteenth-century east coast farmhouse.
Located in Fort Lawrence, Nova Scotia, the house sits on a knoll, overlooking the Amherst Marsh and LaPlanche River. The official recognition refers to the house on its legal lot.

Heritage Value

Chapman House was designated a national historic site of Canada because it preserves the basic form and many of the details of a prosperous late 18th-century farmhouse.

The house was built by Charles Dixon and William Chapman Junior for Major Thomas Chapman, in the tradition of the British classical vernacular of the time. Chapman, one of several English immigrants settling this area in the 1770s, pursued farming on the fertile marsh and dyke lands already developed by the Acadians.

Source: Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada, Minutes, Nov. 1968.

Character-Defining Elements

Key elements contributing to the heritage value of this site include:

- its location near the Nova Scotia - New Brunswick border;
- its rural setting at the end of a long driveway, amongst agricultural lands and outbuildings;
- the two-storey, rectangular massing of the main block;
- its steep front-sloping pitched roof with tight eaves and end chimneys;
- its brick and timber construction on a cut stone foundation;
- the pattern created from the locally made red brick with black headers set in Flemish bond;
- its five-bay façade with side-lit central entry and side-lit window above;
- its classically inspired detailing with simple cornice, frieze and fretted dentils;
- its multi-pane sash windows framed under a flat brick arch with projecting keystones;
- its surviving centre-hall interior plan, finishes and details, including original fireplaces, doors, woodwork, and hardware.