THE former Wesleyan Methodist Chapel in Hamilton – also known as ‘Eildon’- is about to notch up 160 years this Sunday, but the building does look substantially different from the day when its foundation stone was laid with ceremony at the site.

On the corner of McIntyre and Clarke St, the bluestone house gives little indication of its original purpose, and the extensive modifications, both external and internal, begun in 1913 and turned the solidly-built hall into individual living spaces, with the height and shape of the roof altered as well.

For owner, Carmel Schlaghecke, the structure has made a great family home for over 50 years now, and she was quite willing to take a guided walk around the property, enthusiastically pointing out a myriad of details about the walls, windows and doors.

“It was a long, straight building,” she said.

“We bought it from the Learmonth estate.”

This name was long associated with the church, with The Spectator reporting the day after the ceremony that Mr Peter Learmonth was chair of the committee, in charge of getting the building up and running.

Mr Learmonth was a well-known figure in Hamilton, having arrived in 1859 to run several flour mills in the area and was also credited with having a hand in later establishing the Hamilton Hospital, and founding Alexandra College and the Hamilton & Western District College.

He also served as Dundas Shire president and was the only person to hold the position for four successive terms.

Originally, the Wesleyan Methodists congregation had been offered a site in Lonsdale Street, but they rejected it as not prestigious enough and too far from other Protestant churches.

By the time the congregants had found a location and engaged architects Thomas Crouch and Ralph Wilson from Melbourne to design a suitable Gothic-style church, they had raised 343 pounds, nine shillings, and six pence, just under half of what the building would cost to erect.

So, in “heavy and continuous rain” on Thursday, May 8, 1862, a “tolerable flock were assembled soon after four o’clock” and Reverend Daniel James Draper from Melbourne gave his blessing to the construction, adjusting the mortar of the newly-set stone with a trowel.

Whilst the building would not be completed until after the year was over, it served the community until 1913 when the congregation moved to the site of the current Uniting Church, taking with it the stained-glass windows, organ and other fittings.

Mr Learmonth died in 1893 and his widow, Mary was asked to be part of the ceremony for the new location, “although labouring under great physical disability, she laid the stone of the new building” on April 5, 1913 - however she died aged 82 on November 24 that year, having been too frail to attend the opening of the new sanctuary.

Mrs Learmonth, who had birthed 10 children and was known for her “devotion and energy” and “sound judgment” in supporting the building of the 1862 chapel, was now gone along with the congregation and so it was sold.

During the alterations, a worker called James Brokenshire was killed on April 21, 1914, when a plank of staging gave way whilst lifting a lintel stone, the workman bleeding profusely having sustained a fracture to the base of his skull and the back of the ear.

Ms Schlaghecke said she and her late husband could never agree which window it was, telling the story in a front room on the McIntyre St side.

“Bill, my husband, he thought it was that lintel,” she said.

“I thought it was the one in the loungeroom; which one it was I don’t know.”

But there was a twist to the story of the dead worker that led to a man knocking on their door many years ago, having recently discovered he was adopted, and his mother came from Hamilton.

“Of course (Mr Brokenshire’s) engaged and it's 1913 and his girlfriend's pregnant,” Ms Schlaghecke said.

“She went off … and put up the baby for adoption.

“He found out that his mother had lived in Skene Street and was engaged to a young fellow who was a builder on the alteration of this church.”

Ms Schlaghecke had other things to point out about the changes, such as the loungeroom extending out beyond the original line of the northern wall, which explained two telltale cracks on opposite walls and how they discovered the original shape and location of the pulpit.

“We had the dining room done up a few years ago,” she said.

“When they pulled up the carpet … you could see where there had been the insert that had been obviously semi-circular.”

With the anniversary this weekend on Mother’s Day, one more detail was brought to light in the research of this story.

Ms Schleghecke’s husband had put what he believed to the be the date of the laying of the foundation stone into the path leading to their front door – 2.5.1862 – but the reason for the six-day error was explained by looking in The Spectator archives.

Back then this paper was only published weekly and the notice for the laying of the stone was on that date, and the following week contained the day-old report.

On receiving the information, Ms Schlaghecke said she knew there had been a discrepancy - “one piece of paper I had, did say the eighth”- but it was unlikely she was going to change them.

“I had a look at those numbers that Bill had put in there and they’re screwed into the cement, and I thought, ‘Oooh, I don’t know that I can get those out’,” she laughed.

“I think it will be one of those things that’s in the too-hard basket.”