The story of Lover’s Lane in Ancaster

With Valentine’s Day coming up this weekend, we wanted to share one of the local folklores about love.

This one comes from the Hermitage in Ancaster and Lover’s Lane.

Otto Ives had hired a Scottish coachman by the name of Mr. William Black. Mr. Black was also a tutor in the English language. Mr. Ives had the coachman teach his wife’s niece to speak and write the language.

It did not take too long for the coachman and the niece to fall in love. So Mr. William Black went to Otto Ives and asked for his wife’s niece’s hand in marriage. Mr. Otto Ives was very upset by the thought of the coachman and niece to wed. He rejected the proposal made by Mr. Black.

The next morning Mr. Ives and his wife (Magdalen) were to go out for the day, yet the coachman was not at the front door with the carriage as planned.

Mr. Ives went out to the barn to see why the coachman did not bring the coach around. It was there that Otto Ives made the discovery of seeing Mr. William Black’s body dangling from the rafters in the barn around the first Hermitage.

In those days, a suicide could not be buried on consecrated ground. Therefore, according to the tradition of the time period, Mr. William Black was buried at the angle of Lovers Lane and Sulpher Springs Road, in Ancaster. Thus the name Lovers Lane came to be.

Some folks have claimed to hear a soft moan when they travel by the intersection that sounds to be that of a man sobbing. Others say it is only the wind going through the trees that makes the sound.

Mr. Otto Ives died in 1835 just two years after he had purchased the Hermitage. His widow and her niece moved to Wales after his death.

And in the year 1853 sold the Hermitage to G.G. Leith who then built the second Hermitage Mansion on the property and kept the name the Hermitage.

Legend claims the coachman’s ghost still walks Lover’s Lane.

Header image courtesy of Fred Gundel.

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• Ancaster
• Hamilton
• HamOnt
• Lover's Lane