The owners of the historic church in Huron East had ambitious plans when they bought the building during the COVID-19 pandemic as part of a plan to move to the country. Partially renovated when they purchased it, the work has new been completed.Cathy Koop Photography
83506 Livingstone Line, Huron East, Ont.
Asking Price: $989,999
Taxes: $4,561.16 (2024)
Lot Size: 165 by 137.23 feet
Listing agent: Jeff Smith, Royal LePage Burloak Real Estate Services
The backstory
Like many urban dwellers who looked to move to more rural areas during the COVID-19 pandemic the owners of 83506 Livingstone Line craved country living. But they also had a particular ambition.
“When my wife and I were dating 25 years ago we had driven by a church that was for sale, and we said how great would that be to buy a church and live in it,” said Todd Luscombe. Despite that musing, he had never been in a converted church until they were looking to move from their Hamilton neighbourhood in 2021 and came across the listing for the former Knox Presbyterian church in Moncrief, a little less than two hours north-west of their old neighbourhood.
The building is a handsome deep red brick above a cut-stone base, with more stonework quoins on the corners and arched stone lintels on the rounded-top windows. “When we saw it we fell in love, we were shocked at how amazing it was, it was about 50-per-cent renovated, we spent the last four years finishing it off,” said Mr. Luscombe.
He lived his whole life in Hamilton, and his parents come from Michigan and farther north in Ontario, so he didn’t have any particular roots in the area of his new home, or so he thought.
“After we purchased it we did some research, and it turns out my great-grandfather was a presbyterian minister and he preached at this location,” he said. Like many small rural churches in Ontario, the congregation wasn’t big enough to support a full-time minister, so his great-grandfather would travel to several in a circuit ministering to multiple flocks.
There are still elderly folks in the area who have stopped by to mention how they used to attend services, or were even married, in the place he now calls home.
The house today
The cornerstone for the church was laid in 1911, but there have been a lot of updates over the years.
“It’s got old bones, but with a high-tech interior,” said Mr. Luscombe. Not only is there air conditioning and new electrical in most parts of the structure but the previous owner wired up the entire space with ethernet cables to provide hard connection points across the large complex. There’s an existing communications tower in the back lot, but there’s also fibre optic internet being run in the community to bring turn the local concession road into a digital superhighway at last.
The home has a mix of new and old interiors as well: Mr. Luscombe updated the coach-house apartment into a full guest suite, and removed an original church kitchen on the lower floor (once upon a time the staging area of many a Sunday supper or high tea with egg salad sammies) to create a larger living room (with barnboard accents).
Home of the Week: 83506 Livingstone Line, Huron East, Ont.Cathy Koop Photography
1 of 24
The central parts of the church – the nave and the altar – had already been converted to domestic uses by the previous owner who bought the church way back in the 1970s. Most of the pews have been removed (some were saved for a breakfast nook) but the original maple floors shine with the honey glow of 100 years of polishing. A painted wood ceiling arches from all four walls toward a central medallion with a fan, long pendant lights extend down toward a mid-point from the high ceilings.
The altar platform remains raised above the rest of the nave, but now the kitchen and island occupy it. The only ministering on this altar comes on days Mr. Luscombe has family or friends over for huge breakfasts whipped up on the massive black-enamel gas-fed AGA-cooker (an unusual always-on stove and oven very different from your typical electric range).
“It’s no problem to sit 20 people in here, kids at the breakfast nook and adults at the dining table,” he said. The couple has a projector they use to display movies on the soaring walls of the central space, and they love to entertain. “We’ve had 75 people in the Great Hall upstairs, and there’s room to spare.”
Next to the double-doored entry to at the back of the room is a stairway that climbs up to Mr. Luscombe’s office in what they call the “Bell Tower” (don’t worry, there’s no century-old bell suspended in that belfry).
The central parts of the church – the nave and the altar – were converted to domestic uses by the previous owner. The original maple floors shine with the glow of 100 years of polishing and the altar platform remains raised above the rest of the nave, but now the kitchen and island occupy it.Cathy Koop Photography
The couple has come up with nicknames for the many spaces of the old church to help define the parts of the warren-like structure. The lower level has three bedrooms, but the primary suite has a large bathroom ensuite they installed (the “New Bathroom”) and on the same level there’s a covered “Breezeway” that spans the back rooms to the “Coach House”/garage.
There’s also an in-ground pool just off the Breezeway, another popular attraction for guests, and a cabana that had a hot tub (and maybe could again).
Moving to the country
The place the couple finds themselves most often is the balcony that stretches across the rear of the church behind the kitchen and above the pool.
“That’s where we have our morning coffee when the sun is coming up off the farm fields,” said Mr. Luscombe. “We have a lot of our dinners out here, and late nights too.”
Living at a crossroads is what counts as busy out in farm country, where tradespeople still mail invoices by Canada Post and it’s 20 minutes in any direction to a store, town or restaurant.
“We’ve seen all the seasons, even the winters are incredibly beautiful,” Mr. Luscombe said, who was happy to find out being on a school route means that the road is plowed by 6 a.m. after each snow. Still, he’s had a ball learning to use the lawn-tractor – with snowblower attachment – that came with the almost two acres of land. They bought bicycles too, to ride the nearby converted rail-path trail.
“There’s so many places to sit and hang out: there’s a covered area downstairs that’s remarkable in the rain, we just sit out and listen to the thunder,” he said. Helpfully, that’s called the “Storm Room.”