Tara Hall, Georgian manor house in Wellington, Canada.
Tara Hall is a Georgian manor house in Wellington, Ontario, built of brick laid five courses deep in Flemish bond, with large tooled limestone quoins at the corners. Wide Venetian windows with splayed stone lintels sit above a stone band course separating the storeys. A pagoda-roofed veranda once ran the length of the front.
Merchant and postmaster Archibald McFaul built Tara Hall between 1837 and November 1839. In 1844 he sold it to the Catholic Church for £1,000, which ran a boarding school there for twelve years until the mortgage went unpaid; McFaul foreclosed and returned in 1856, living there until his death in January 1864. In 1889 the house hosted Masonic ceremonies for the Wellington Lodge cornerstone.
The name comes from the Irish Hill of Tara, connecting the house to the heritage of early settlers in Ontario. This naming choice reflects the Irish connections that many immigrants brought to the region.
Tara Hall stands on the south side of County Road 2 in Wellington, directly across from McFaul's original blacksmith shop, which predates the house. The building is a private residence, so the interior is not open to visitors; the brick facade, limestone quoins and Venetian windows can be seen from the road.
A purported secret tunnel once linked Tara Hall to St. Frances of Rome Catholic Church, 160 metres due north; it may have sheltered fugitive slaves on the Underground Railroad, though others attribute it to the Fenian Raids of 1866. No documented proof survives.
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