Blast! Dundurn Castle cannons removed over safety concerns
Dundurn Castle is undefended by cannon for the first time in decades after safety concerns forced the city to remove two guns thought to date back to the War of 1812 era.
So if anyone is still interested in invading Burlington Heights, now might be your best shot.
The city used a crane Tuesday to haul the pair of 3,200-pound cannons away from a longtime perch in front of the Hamilton Military Museum, a former gatehouse for the castle at the corner of Dundurn Street and York Boulevard.
The cast iron, 24-pounder cannons themselves are still in fine shape more than two centuries after their assumed date of manufacture. But the 1970s replica wooden sea carriages" that hold the guns, on the other hand, are deteriorating rapidly," said museum supervisor Carolyn King.
That's a dangerous problem for a pair of 1.5-tonne artifacts that also unofficially serve as two of the oldest play structures in Hamilton.
Kids really do love to climb on them," said King. We've done some repairs over the years, but it had got to the point where we felt it was a public safety concern."
Conservationists will examine the cannons and aging carriages later this year to determine whether a base constructed out of different materials would be safer and last longer.
(Bigger cannons facing out over Hamilton Harbour further west along York Boulevard have rested on concrete bases since 1914 and remain in service as heritage climbing gyms, for example.)
For now, the museum cannons are going into artifact storage alongside a couple of nine-pounder guns removed from the park several years ago for similar reasons.
The city cannot yet say when or if the cannons will return to guard the landward approach to the national historic site.
It would be hard to find a more historically appropriate home, though.
The gatehouse-turned-museum was actually built in the 1830s atop an old gun battery. The clifftop Burlington Heights area is also nationally recognized as a key strategic defensive outpost used to stave off would-be American invaders during the War of 1812.
It's not clear if the 24-pounder cannons - on display since they were rediscovered in a city storage building in the 1970s - were ever actually used locally during the war, said King.
But she said a royal cipher on the barrels suggests they were manufactured during the reign of King George III, who died in 1820.
Matthew Van Dongen is a Hamilton-based reporter covering transportation for The Spectator. Reach him via email: mvandongen@thespec.com