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A block west down Kent Street from Rochford Square are two of William Harris's most interesting houses.

The Priory (below right) is built of Wallace sandstone with red Island stone facings. Harris is said to have modelled it on a Welsh cottage - but its pillared piazza on the south side is pure Romanesque Revival. Inside there is dark woodwork and stained glass. The downstairs is designed for entertaining. Reception rooms open through french doors to a ”living hall' dominated by a curved staircase that wraps around interior stairs connecting the maids‘ rooms in the attic with the kitchen in the back. The house was constructed in 1887 by railway accountant Richard Jackson in an attempt, it is said, to lure

into matrimony a local lady who had proven diflicult otherwise to impress. When he was found to have diverted men and materials from the railway to work on the house he left the province, and it became the home of his mortgagee, James Beales.

James Peake had similar ill fortune with Beaconsfield (above left), across the street from The Priory. After marrying the daughter of the Lieutenant Governor, he engaged the fledgling architect William Harris to design for him Charlottetown's most luxurious and expensive house, in fashionable French Second Empire Style, which he built on a Splendid site facing the Governor's mansion. Within 6 years of its construction in 1877 he was bankrupt, and his mortgagee, the parsimonious bachelor, Henry Cundall, moved in and made it his home. Today it houses the Prince Edward Island Museum and Heritage Foundation, and is filled with late Victorian antiques.