Ontario Abandoned Places will be rebranded as Ominous Abandoned Places

Stoned on Asbestos (Hammersly Farmhouse)

Arson House in Cambridge, Ontario, Canada

Oct 29 2020

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Recent status Arson
Location # 16824

Victim of arson in August 2022. Completely gone now.


I tend to scroll around on Google maps for no other reason then why not, I find it interesting to see what everything looks like from above, and sometimes I end up finding a location. This was one of those times. I see a house on Google maps without any distinct paths leading towards it, suspicious. I decide to check it out, and go through the forest so I can have an easy way out if something goes wrong. I step into a clearing and right in front of me, there's the house. Beautiful stone building, although it became evident very quickly that I was not the first person to find it. I wander through the cornfield, I'm about to step up to the house, I look to my right and bam, a brand new Lexus. Needless to say, I left. I came back a few days later with backup (ishootthings) and we successfully made it up to the house without any sign of someone else. We get in, and the house is trashed. Holes in the walls, graffiti everywhere, and burnout tracks from someone who thought it'd be a good idea to bring their dirt bike inside. We explored the basement, made it upstairs and this is when I became especially thankful that I'd brought a mask. In a room, up against a hole in the wall was a pile of grey dirt-like substance. Asbestos. I guarantee whoever was digging that out of the wall did not have a mask, and probably didn't know what they were dealing with. After a bit more exploration, we were off. If you decide to visit this location yourself, please please please, bring a respirator that's rated for asbestos, and if you plan to touch things, gloves.

After further investigation, I found an entry on a Cambridge Heritage PDF listing this building as the Hammersly Farm, built in 1855 with stone from Barrie. Nothing else was there, just an interesting tidbit.

JAN 2021 - Cambridge heritege comittee asks the city to designate this house before it is apparently moved and and possibly damaged by the developer in the massive development that is encroaching on the farmhouse.

Comments

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1 year ago

Me and my idiot friends destroyed the walls years ago, no we were not wearing masks and didn't realize until years later that we were breathing in asbestos everytime we went. There was at least 8 of us there and even the old owner of the property came by to show us some of the hidden spots he had in the floor when he used to live there. We broke the walls down with 2 hamers and a baseball bat. We decided one day to get everyone together to destroy the upstairs wall between the two rooms. I realized it was asbestos years later when I was thinking about that day after seeing it demolished and realized that there was no insulation between the walls when we destroyed it. Probably going to have some health problems in the future. Also me and my friends did not burn it down that happened years after we went there.

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1 year ago

Burned to the ground by kids partying in the night apparently. Demolished in the process. AUG 2022. The developer had just started to prepare to move it. https://www.cambridgetoday.ca/local-news/historic-farmhouse-destroyed-by-sunday-morning-fire-5749778

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3 years ago

https://www.cambridgetimes.ca/news-story/10314610-cambridge-heritage-committee-asks-council-to-designate-1850s-farmhouse/?fbclid=IwAR2nOh6m7STTzlpgOOWhr8oo_V3ZPLJELGihdhwfuNpVH1JydWt-0rJRU0U

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3 years ago

Mhm, I saw that too. Forgot to update the description though.

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3 years ago

Found out through the Cambridge heritage site that this was built in 1860 known as the Hammersly farm and the stone came from Barrie, On.