PROVINCIAL HERITAGE PLACE Built in 1833 and expanded in 1866, the Old Carleton County Court House in Upper Woodstock was the first courthouse in Carleton County. Many county residents passed through its' doorway with a variety of motives – passengers awaiting the arrival of the stagecoach, farmers attending agricultural exhibitions, politicians and their followers on declaration days, audiences for choral concerts, magistrates, judges, jurymen, lawyers and litigants, petty criminals, murderers, spectators who came by road and river from miles around and trial-watching pupils from the school next door. In 1911, the County Council sold the Old Carleton County Court House and it was transformed into a barn. For half a century, cattle and horses stood in stalls that were built, in part, from the judge's bench. Purchased by the Carleton County Historical Society in 1962, the monumental task of restoring this once-magnificent building to its former glory began. Now you can pass through the same doorway with your own motive – sit in the prisoner's box, climb the long stairway to the galleries to hear the whisperings of a long-ago murder trial, open the iron-bound door and visit the prisoner's room, or feel the power in your hands as you raise the gavel and announce, “Silence in the court!”. Come and see for yourself ... and you be the judge!
Old Carleton County Court House
