54-storey tower could test protections for London, Ont.'s castle-like national historic site

The Middlesex County Courthouse, a grim-looking building based on a medieval castle, stands on the site where historians say London, Ont., first took shape nearly two centuries ago.

“If you say 'the old courthouse,' everybody knows what you mean,” said Steve Liggett, a volunteer with the London-Middlesex Historical Society who has been giving tours of the building since 1988.

“It's the most recognizable building in the city of London. It’s very much a symbol of the city.”

Generations of trials and executions have played out within its walls, including the proceedings behind the infamous Donnelly murders, the 1935 kidnapping of beer tycoon John Labatt and the 1872 execution of Phoebe Campbell, the first woman hanged in post-Confederation Canada. Thin

The County of Middlesex sold the building and the former Middlesex County Health Building next door to York Developments for $30 million in 2019.

The company has announced plans for a 54-storey, 800-unit residential tower next door to the nearly 200-year-old building — casting a literal shadow over the place where the city began, while at the same time shining a light on what some heritage advocates say is a gap in federal law.

The courthouse still hosts county council and community group meetings and weddings — a strange afterlife for a place where trials and executions once played out.

Liggett said once the county moves out near the end of 2026, its future will be in private hands.

"I would like to believe that nobody is crazy enough to tear it down," he said. "Everybody and their grandmother would be opposed to that. The problem is what do you do with it?"

The courthouse was originally designed to resemble Malahide Castle, built north of Dublin in 1475 and the ancestral home of Irish-born colonial administrator Thomas Talbot, whose influence helped shape early settlement in southwestern Ontario.

Renovations in the 1890s and again in 1911 significantly altered the building's orientation, shifting its main face from the Thames River toward Talbot Street as London grew around it.

The courthouse is designated a National Historic Site of Canada, an honour given by the federal government to places "for their profound importance to the country's history and culture," yet the title carries little legal force.

"The designation doesn't say you cannot tear it down," Liggett said. "There's only so much protection because private ownership is paramount. How would you like it if someone said you couldn't tear your house down or sell it?"

Plans by York Developments obtained by CBC News through a freedom of information request show the proposed tower would require four storeys of underground parking garage that would extend to within roughly 16 metres of the courthouse building.