Description of Historic Place

The Fintry Haybarn-Granary is a gambrel-roofed structure situated immediately to the west of the Octagonal Dairy Barn in Fintry Provincial Park near Kelowna, British Columbia. It is part of a complex of related buildings and structures known locally as the Fintry Estate.

Heritage Value

Built in the mid-1920s, the Fintry Haybarn-Granary is significant because it conveys the scale and vision of the agricultural operations developed by James C. Dun-Waters at the Fintry Estate between 1909 and 1939.

The Fintry Haybarn-Granary reveals the scale of the cow and horse herds, and the existence of hay and grain-growing lands that were part of the estate's agricultural operation. The building is also important because it houses a mill for processing grain supplied by grain harvested from the estate's delta lands.

This building, fitted with a Pelton water turbine, also represents the isolation of the estate far from the developing electrical grid in the Okanagan, its singular hydro asset in the form of the precipitous run of Shorts Creek to its delta, and the ambition of Dun-Waters himself.

Source: Ministry of Environment, BC Parks

Character-Defining Elements

Key character-defining elements of the Fintry Haybarn-Granary include:

Site:
-location as part of a cluster of barn buildings
-orthogonal relationships within the cluster
-association with nearby hayfields

Building:
-simple gambrel roof form with ridge extension for hoist track
-two distinct parts of the building sharing a single gable roof: open hay storage end and closed granary end
-remaining original wood windows and doors and associated hardware
-remains of mill, Pelton wheel, and hydro infrastructure