Description of Historic Place

The Annand/Rowlatt Farmstead consists of a 2 ½ storey wood frame farmhouse, a 1 storey gable-roofed barn, a 2 storey gambrel-roofed barn, and landscape consistent with a working farm. It is now located in the Greater Vancouver Regional District's Campbell Valley Regional Park in southwest Langley, British Columbia.

Heritage Value

The Annand/Rowlatt Farmstead is important for its historic and cultural significance, in particular for the age and style of the three main buildings, for its site, and for its association with the Annand and Rowlatt families. It is also an important example of a community-led restoration that combined the resources of the Langley Heritage Society and the Greater Vancouver Regional District.

The farmhouse, built in 1888, is one of the oldest houses still extant in the Township of Langley. Alexander Annand had it built to replace his first house (built 1886). For this bigger house, Annand reportedly hired a master carpenter to build the house, paying him one dollar per day, plus board. This was an unusual expense for such a sparsely settled area during these early years.

Included in the Heritage Designation Bylaw are the two barns on the site. The first was built in 1898 and is a simple, 1 storey structure with a gable roof and cedar siding. The second was built much later, in 1939, and is a slightly larger and more elaborate 2 storey structure with a gambrel roof. The two barns illustrate the change in farming practices from producing pasture and hay crops to dairy farming.

The overall farmstead site is a fine example of an early Fraser Valley farmstead in its original configuration. It is still possible to see from the site that a great deal of the original area would have been considerably wooded. In 1892, a Report on Agriculture indicated that the southeast area of Langley was heavily timbered with Douglas fir, red cedar and hemlock, with some open meadowland and patches of alder, willow and vine maple. In fact, a typical farmstead at this time consisted of: 70% forests, 9% pasture and 21% swamp and marsh.

The relationship of the three buildings to each other, to the farmstead, and also to the surrounding forest indicates how self-reliant these farms had to be at a time when transportation was difficult and slow. The location of the property close to the Canada/United States border meant that the Annands and the Rowlatts mostly looked south for business, purchases and for their mail service. This was typical of the farmsteads that were built near the border and represents an interesting period of south Langley's history.

Both the Annand and the Rowlatt families were important pioneer families in the south Langley community. The first family to farm this site was Alexander Annand and his wife Sarah Ann, who homesteaded here in 1886. The Annands are credited with establishing the Langley Fall Fair in the 1910s. They sold the land to W.F. Taylor in 1905, who leased a portion of the farmstead and the house to Len Rowlatt in 1914. Rowlatt, renowned for his water divining ability, later purchased the house and farm and lived there until his death in 1972.

Source: Langley Centennial Museum, heritage files

Character-Defining Elements

The character-defining elements of the Annand-Rowlatt Farmstead include:
Farmstead:
- Original configuration of the barns and the house to each other and to the property
- Enough surrounding old-growth trees to hint at original setting
- The pastoral quality of the property, including its quiet environment

House:
- Formal architectural qualities such as: balloon construction, hand-cut cedar laths that secure the plaster walls, gable roof, kitchen addition at rear of house, size and placement of windows, main door position at extreme edge of front facade
- Simple, unadorned quality of the house
- Relationship to the barns and the property

1898 Barn:
- Formal architectural qualities such as: gable roof, hand-hewn beams with hand split cedar slabs as siding
- Relationship to the other barn, the house and to the property

1939 Barn:
- Formal architectural qualities such as: post and beam heavy timber frame that supports a loft floor, 2nd floor loft framed with a 3 pinned rough sawn timber arches, 2 wood man-doors on the main floor, a full-sized wood panel door centred on the east facade, a sliding barn door centred on the west facade, double doors on the floor level of the hayloft of the west facade, a wide vertically sliding hay-loading door above on the west facade
- Relationship to the other barn, the house and to the property