The Royal Coachman

Waterdown’s hotels at one time numbered nine, most of them located along Dundas Street. The earliest record of a hotel upon this corner is in 1868 when William Heisse was listed as a Hotel Keeper. Patrick Kirk purchased the small frame hotel in 1888 and it remained in this family until 1966. Soon after the Kirk Family took possession they enlarged the building, likely to accommodate passengers of the three different stage coach routes that passed through Waterdown.

In the hotel’s early days, a night’s lodging cost only $1.50 and whisky was 3 cents a glass. During its first years, the Kirk was one of the sites of local agricultural salesman John Prudhams annual banquet. A small stream once crossed through what has since become a parking lot and was used to save the building during the dramatic fire of 1922.