The Noble Era

When Earl Noble and his wife Elsie purchased and moved into Winterholme in 1960, they brought an outport friendliness
to the mansion.

Winterholme went up for sale in 1959, and Earl Noble used
to get the keys from then-owner, Gordon winter to drive his LeMarchant Road home to have a look. His wife wasn’t intimidated by the 14,000 sq. ft. mansion because she has always lived in big homes from her childhood in Jackson’s Arm,
a logging community close to Earl’s outport home, where her father, Kenneth Lush, was a merchant. The couple, who had to come to St. John’s post office to meet, lived in a large house in Nipper’s Harbor when they married. The home was originally owned by Dr. Blackler from England, who had one of his countrymen build it with lots of fireplaces and plaster ceilings. When the Nobles moved to St. John’s they lived in another spacious home called ‘Hillcrest’ at 108 LeMarchant Road.

Elsie Noble smiles as she recalls the ‘open house’
policy at Winterholme, for her friends and relatives from
‘around the bay.’

“All the relatives from everywhere would stay with me,
just like when we were in Nipper’s Harbour,” says the active octogenarian who now lived next to Winterholme in a
bungalow that she and Earl had built in 1979.

A young lawyer who lived on the third floor still remembers the smell of Elsie’s fresh bread when he entered the house on baking day. There was always a spare loaf for an appreciative tenant.

Since its construction in 1905, the Queen Anne style house, location on the corner of Circular and Rennies Mill Roads, had been owned by the Winter family. During W.W.II it became elegant office space for the Canadian Armed Forces, who rented it from Gordon Winter for their headquarters. After 1945 the owner had apartments constructed in the attic and second story, and put the mansion up for sale in the late ‘50s, to be bought by the Noble Family.

As a fish merchant from Nipper’s Harbor on Newfoundland’s remote north-east coast, Earl Noble loved socializing and many were the nights the carved oak walls of the elegant foyer rang with music and laughter.

New Year's Eve

A newspaper picture of New Year’s Eve, 1960, shows the entrance hall, with couples dancing in front of a welcoming fireplace. The local newspapers even published names of the most worthy of the 75 couples invited.

Earl Noble kept the dancers on their toes by providing music on his piano accordion, backed up by his son Keith playing the Hammond Organ on the main landing.

Unlike most of Winterholme’s owners, who hired maids to help them manage the house, Elsie Noble did all her own housework in the first floor area that the Nobles, with their three children Keith, Kevin and Kathy occupied.

“I hired a girl once, but by the time I’d explained where everything was and what had to be done, I decided it would be faster to do it myself,” says Elsie. “Myself and my sister made
all the sandwiches and hors d’oeuvres for the New Year’s Eve parties, and froze them in advance.”

The Nobles had just moved into the mansion when they planned their first New Year’s celebration to welcome the Sixties.
The large green walled games room, trophied by the hapless heads of African animals, housed the bar. Bottles of liquor
were placed on the carved-legged billiard table and a
professional bartender handed out drinks.

The billiard room was also used for its original purpose when
Earl Noble got together a foursome include Judge Winter, and a brother-in-law of Earl’s from England, who coached him
in the proper art of playing billiards.

This oblong room was used as Earl Noble’s office as well, when he worked at his desk in front of the window late into the night. Tenants at the time remember Winterholme always being lit up, and however late he arrived home, one young lawyer,
whose attic apartment peeped through the treetops, was
always invited in for a nightcap, when Earl saw him
parking his car in the garden driveway.

The servants once had the full run of the attic with small bedrooms, a communal bathroom, and a back staircase for discrete access to the family downstairs, but with a change of lifestyle, apartments were gradually added. The family sleeping quarters on the second floor, which had originally housed the bedroom suite for Marmaduke Winter and his wife, complete with oval walls, dressing rooms, and silver fixtures in the
master bathroom, had been turned into three apartments
by the time the Nobles moved in. They inhabited the
basement as well as the main floor.

Folding doors separating the two large living rooms were
pulled over to make spacious bedrooms for each of the two sons, while daughter, Kathy slept in a smaller room under the elegant staircase. Her room had bars on the windows, a leftover from W.W.II when the Canadian Armed Forces rented the house,
and used that room to store liquor.

Downstairs, part of the sturdy concrete-walled basement was once used as a nerve center for the servants, with bells linked to call buttons in each of the upstairs rooms. It was here that earl set up his amateur radio station, and communicated with ‘hams’ from around the world. His son, Keith, used the downstairs basement to practice for the university’s Upsilon Singers, a male quartet in which he still sings.

When the Nobles moved into Winterholme the house was vacant except for the family of businessman Lewis Ayre, of Ayre & Sons Department Store on harbor-skirting Water Street. The Ayre family rented part of the second floor, and, coincidentally, moved out when the Nobles bought the house.

In the Noble era Winterholme was ‘one big happy family.’ Residents, (tenants), some of whom were well-known
people in the St. John’s community; merchants, lawyers,
doctors and media personalities such as Sally West of
Cream of the West Flour, all entered into the spirit of camaraderie fostered by their landlord.

Installs Shuffleboard

“Earl played shuffleboard in Florida, and he liked it so much
he had one put into the garden at Winterholme,” Elsie remembers. The tenants would play the shipboard game
on warm summer nights.

Sometimes Earl would pipe music out into the garden from his office; and residents would have a barbecue and dance on the smooth shuffleboard surface. On winter days Earl would play the organ on the main staircase landing and encourage whoever was around to launch an impromptu sing song. Keith also joined in and Elsie would sometimes back him up on the guitar.

Tenants also enjoyed the garden, some to the extent of
Sally West, who tended a few vegetables and, along with Elsie, grew flowers along the side of the house.

When the main pillars in the front of the house rotted, Earl
took advantage of the gaps to insert flower pots, and he erected a flagpole to accent the round flower garden in the middle of the circular front drive. The owner took pride in flying flags for
every special occasion. He had a Canadian flag, a Newfoundland flag, a Northern Ireland flag which he flew on Orangeman’s day, and a French flag honoring Bastille Day. There was always a
flag flapping in front of Winterholme, with the Canadian
one getting the longest run.

Christmas time he strung large white lights from the
house to the front trees, glad to be active in the crisp air.

“Earl didn’t have a handyman. He enjoyed doing it
all himself,” says Elsie.

A man of many accomplishments, besides being a fish
merchant and running Noble and Sons Limited, he studied electrical engineering, had a degree in business, and
learned to type at Mercy Convent.

But the halcyon days at Winterholme were to come to an end for the Nobles. At the age of 56, Earl, who used to beat Elsie out with his constant activity at home and in Florida, had his first heart attack. As his health continued to decline, the couple bought a trailer in Florida to give Earl more time to relax.

The following Christmas Eve he visited the new owner’s
Dick and Ruby Cook and toasted them with brandy.
On New Year’s Day he passed away.

Today, Elsie Noble lives next door to Winterholme and remembers the wonderful times she shared there with
her husband and family. But she’s not sad.

“I never miss it. This house I live in now was build for me,
and I love it,” she says, indicating her large bungalow filled with artifacts and souvenirs of her past. “All the others were built
for someone else,” she concludes, glancing out her living room window at the large green mansion next door.