Old school house on the move

Traffic heading to Lime Ridge Mall on the Hamilton Mountain today had to detour around a school house built more than 130 years ago.

The ancient structure is being moved to a new home, but it can only use the streets at night, so it parked for the day on Upper Wentworth.

The permit is from 7 p.m. To 7 a.m. Workers spent five weeks moving steel beams under the building and securing the structure so they could move it, and now that people are seeing it, it’s causing quite a commotion.

Throughout Friday night, the old school moved slowly down the 8 kilometre stretch, a long route chosen to most easily accommodate the wide, and tall load.

When the school was built in 1882, it was called S.S. Barton Number 5. Back then, about 25 students in eight grades would have learned all together in the one room. It eventually was renamed Mohawk Trail and it stayed a school until it was no longer needed in the mid 1960s. Then the teachers’ union restored the building as a museum. Mohawk College got its name, in part, from this school.

The old schoolhouse will continue to be an education museum in its new home behind the new school board offices being constructed off Upper Wentworth.

Many people saw the building in its old high-traffic location on Mohawk Road, but few were able to see inside, as it has been mostly closed in recent years.