Village Squire, 1977-08, Page 8The furniture sitting in the parlour is not the original furniture from the Inn but the pieces are of
historical interest. There's even an old melodian that dates back to 1890.
was made from fieldstone which was inexpensive.
The building was obviously erected by a German
housebuilder for the following reasons:
(1) There is a full cellar with plenty of headroom,
(2) The interior basement walls are upright posts with bricks
stuffed between,
(3) The windows are squarish,
(4) Every room has a chair rail,
(5) There are double attic windows in the gable ends,
(6) The interrupted exterior brick pattern shows that scaffold
ends were built into the walls, and the resulting holes filled in
later,
(7) The interior structure is a beam frame and the hall walls
are not brick supported by stone foundations as in a British
building.
(8) The fireplace support beneath the bar room has a
construction detail found in some Dutch houses along the
Hudson River."
Tim and Madeleine Whelan run the museum which is open
from June until September from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. everyday
except Monday. In what was once the diningroom, people can
PG. 6 VILLAGE SQUIRE/AUGUST 1977.
purchase some of Madeleine's weaving which she does on a
huge weaving loom set up at the back of the diningroom.
Besides running the museum, Tim is also an actor with the
Shakespearean Festival in Stratford and he recently did an
episode of Sidestreet in Toronto.
The Whelans were asked to take over the museum by Stan
Dingman, publisher of the Beacon Herald and chairman of
the Perth County Historical Board when the couple who had
been operating it decided they wanted to spend more time in
their antique store. The Whelans have been operating the
museum for four seasons now. They started in 1974.
The Perth County Historical Board has hopes of eventually
restoring Fryfogel Inn to its original form. They own the
museum jointly with the city of Stratford.
Three students are currently working at the museum for the
summer cataloguing the various items of interest. Merri
Hamilton is taking tine arts in Windsor, Sheila Ferguson is
interested primarily in archaeology and Jim Mohr takes
history at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo.
Admission to the museum this year is SO cents and you
don't have to make a reservation.