By Gloria Hildebrandt

As the visitor and her border collie emerged from their car in front of the Cheltenham Country Store, an enormous bird stepped across the road toward them. Even the dog froze for a moment: what was that? A turkey hen was calmly approaching them, oblivious to passing cars. The woman waved at a man going toward the store. "Do you know whose this is?" she asked. "That’s just a wild turkey," the man replied. "There are usually four or five of them around."

Wild turkeys wandering freely (fearless of dogs, cars, and people) are one of the unusual charms of Cheltenham, a historic village lying in the valley on Creditview Road north of the King Sideroad. With a small population of around five hundred, it has the highest concentration of designated heritage properties within the Town of Caledon. There are fifteen properties, with one more approved for consideration by Heritage Caledon.

Most of the designated properties are residences, including the store with its second-storey apartment, and some are surrounded by rambling gardens. There’s a small cottage with a broad front verandah. There’s a long, narrow building that for years was used as a meeting hall for various organizations. There’s a lovely stone house with a metal unicorn above the front door. At a bend in the Credit River where there is a modest rill of rapids, sits the old Haines sawmill.

Scratch the history of most of the old buildings in Cheltenham and you’ll find a link to the Haines family. It was Charles Haines, a millwright, who literally chopped a settlement out of the bush in 1821 and named it after his home town of Cheltenham, England. In 1887 Frederick Haines authorized the construction of the store, its neighbouring hotel, and a two storey brick house after a fire destroyed a block of buildings. A descendant of the Haines family still owns the large, timber frame house that settler Charles built on a hill for his family of nine children.

"My great-grandmother was Charles’ great granddaughter," says Shelley Craig. She and her husband Steve run the house as The Top of the Hill Bed & Breakfast, and their brochure states that she is the seventh generation of the Haines family. "My grandmother lived here when I was a little girl," she adds. "Every Sunday after church we always had dinner here. Everybody always called it The Top of the Hill.

There are three guest bedrooms available, and each is fitted with periodstyle antiques and family heirlooms. The breakfast contains three courses and includes fresh fruit, home baking, and a hot main course. In warm weather it is served on the patio.

Shelley reports that Arrington’s Inn Journal named The Top of the Hill the best B&B in Canada for 2004, and gave it the award for best breakfast for 2005. In 2001/2002, it was rated by Headwaters Country Tourism Association as the best accommodation in the under nine rooms category.

Shelley guides groups on historical walking tours of the community, but special arrangements must be made first calling her at 905-838-3790. Self-guided tours are easy to take with the aid of a free map that is available at the store.

The store contains a post office, selected grocery goods, and some gourmet items, a second room houses gifts for the home and garden, and also a café area. A back room has been turned into a spa where skin care, massage and manicures and pedicures are offered.

Both the store and the B&B are on the walking tour. Other properties include the Haines-Dennis house, built around 1890 as stone barn. It has been a residence since the 1950s and retains the original door and window openings. Rowe Hall is only eighteen feet wide and was built in the 1850s as a shop. Since then it has been used as an Orange Hall, as well as a Women’s Institute meeting house, Sunday school, eucre hall, polling booth, and is now a residence.

The Kee-Brown house, built in the Ontario Gothic style around the 1870s, has exceptional wood detailing on the exterior and interior. Unicorn House, circa 1865, has thick walls of randomly set stone and a mysterious grave marker in the backyard.

High on a hill the large polychromatic brick Little-Webber house dates back to 1861 and is rumoured to have a ghost. The Cheltenham Brick Works on Mississauga Road at Mill Street were a leader in North American brick manufacturing, but went out of business in 1958.

The additional property that is approved for designation by Heritage Caledon is located at the corner of Creditview and Mill. Sally Drummond, Heritage Resource Officer for the Town of Caledon, describes it as a "former worker’s cottage under consideration for reasons of historical association with the Haines family which settled the village, rather than architectural, as it has had numerous modern alterations to its windows."

While properties continue to be identified as being of heritage interest, the future of Cheltenham as a whole is being examined. A formal village study is in progress by the Town of Caledon, the Region of Peel and Credit Valley Conservation. The study is looking at planning for growth and change for the next twenty years.

Regional Councillor David Lyons states that "pressure for new housing development will continue to grow as it is unlikely that this area will fall out of favour as a destination for newcomers to our country. The village study is an opportunity to determine what Caledon can contribute to providing a unique and inclusive living option. We must be visionary in our choices in order that we do not become parochial and exclusionary."

Councillor Allan Thompson seems to have different concerns as he asks residents to participate in the village study "to provide the valuable input into how our villages and communities within the town should grow so that we may manage the growth that we will have to take as part of the Greater Toronto Area, while at the same time maintaining and preserving the unique characteristics and flavours of these smaller communities."

A series of public meetings and workshops is being held to consult with the community and receive written comments. A community open house is planned for April 2005, with the study to be completed in July.

Marsha Paley, Senior Policy Planner at the Town of Caledon Planning Department, says "We have been trying to get as much participation as possible. We have mailed out information to property owners, put ads in local papers, used signs and posters and had something in the Creditview Public School flyer."

There is a newsletter on the progress of the study, called The Cheltenham Charter. Further information is available at www.town.caledon.on.ca  or by calling Marsha Paley at 905-584-2272, extension 4256.

Whatever the results of the study, the village of Cheltenham is sure to change. A thirty-house subdivision development is poised to be built once the study is complete. It remains to be seen whether the resulting increase in traffic will mean the end of the neighbourly wild turkeys.