Craigdarroch Castle

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Photo by:  W.C. Mainwaring. (UVic Archives 080605)   Image size = 67KB

     Perched on a conspicuous rise above Victoria's old Rockland residential district, not far from Government House, sits the monumental former home of the Robert Dunsmuir family - Craigdarroch.  In 1921, new Victoria College students coming through the western doorway might pause inside the main entrance hall and read the fireplace inscription, "Welcome ever smiles and farewell goes out smiling" (Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida ).

     To the left was the Dunsmuir library; this room was now the office of the Victoria College Registrar, Professor Howard Russell.  To the far left, within the enclosed carriage entrance of the porte-cochère, was the inner sanctum of Principal E.B. Paul.  To the right of the entrance hall was the vast double drawing-room, the site of lectures in English, History and French.  Mathematics was taught in the Dunsmuir dining room.  Through the pantry one could reach the original kitchen, known to some alumni as the classics lecture-hall.  Of the twenty-odd rooms on the upper storeys, only three would be initially used for classes.  Percy Elliott lectured in physics and chemistry in the enormous third-floor billiard-room.  The fourth floor of Craigdarroch consisted of a wonderfully convoluted open space - the Dunsmuir ballroom.  Gradually this area would be developed into the Victoria College Library, although there was no library worthy of the name until the 1930s.  Connecting the whole castle was that majestic and seemingly endless front staircase, with its gorgeous stained-glass windows.

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