Our history
Beginning of Craigflower
The Hudson’s Bay Company established several farms to make the western fur-trading forts self-sufficient. Kenneth McKenzie, an experienced farm bailiff from Scotland, was hired to run the Craigflower Farm, the largest farm of four at 900 acres. Seventy-three farmers and tradespeople from Scotland landed in January, 1853 at Fort Victoria from the Norman Morrison supply ship and built Craigflower Manor and Schoolhouse.
Twenty-one buildings were located on Front Street at the water edge near the Manor. The farm, slaughterhouse and bakery provided meat, bread and hardtack to the Royal Navy, Fort Victoria and other customers. The marginal soil fertility led to the dissolution of the Company farms in 1865, and McKenzie and his family moved to a sheep farm on Christmas Hill. The farm was leased to a series of tenants for uses such as a social club, dairy farm, recreation hall and charitable camp for girls. In 1911, much of the pasture land was used for the formation of the Songhees Reserve.
In 1936, the derelict Front Street buildings were replaced with an auto court and the remaining farm property was sold as building lots.
Purchase by BC Provincial Government
In 1967, the provincial government purchased the Craigflower Manor and 3-acre property as a provincial heritage site. At the time, the Craigflower property held a full-service Texaco gas station in the front yard of the Manor, a Big Ben’s restaurant on the corner of Admirals and the Old Island Highway and the Craigflower Bungalow Court and Motel along the waterfront of the property.
The Manor itself was used as an annex for the Motel when additional rooms were required. The commercial buildings were then removed from the property and extensive rehabilitation of the Manor, led by architect Peter Cotton, put the Manor back into a circa 1860 state.
Craigflower Manor is designated both a provincial and national heritage site and is maintained as a historic house museum. The photo is of the restaurant that was on the corner of Craigflower property where the new community centre will be built.
Victoria Scottish Community Centre
In 2014, the Victoria Highland Games Association entered into a long-term tenure agreement with the provincial Heritage Branch for the Craigflower property. The Victoria Highland Games Association has been operating and maintaining this property since then and has held many public events, tours, demonstrations and activities on the property during this time.
Under this tenure, the Victoria Highland Games Association is permitted to build and operate a community centre on the property, while maintaining the Manor as a historic house museum. From 2014 to 2021, the Association went through all the provincial and municipal approval requirements to build the Centre. On June 15, 2021, the Victoria Highland Games Association signed a construction contract with Knappett Projects Inc. to begin building the Centre in July 2022. The Association spent the period from 2014 to 2022 fundraising all the necessary money to construct the building.
The new Craigflower Centre was officially opened by the Association’s President, Jim Maxwell, on January 19, 2023. It is a true legacy to all the volunteers of the Victoria Highland Games Association, past and present, who have worked so hard to make the new building a reality!
