If you are reading this because someone sent you a link, or because you searched and this came up, or because you have been watching for something like this longer than you would care to admit: this is the one.
Here’s what to keep in mind.
David Small Designs has spent 30 years designing custom homes across Ontario, and the award shelf is long: BILD Best Custom Home over $2 Million, OHBA Most Outstanding Custom Home, CHBA National Awards for Housing Excellence, and the International Design and Architecture Award for Best Luxury Residence in Canada.
The portfolio runs modern, transitional, and traditional, but every project shares one underlying commitment: a home should be inseparable from the land it sits on and the life it is built for.
Homes designed at this level are built once, for one family, to answer a specific set of needs. They are not made to be resold. They are made to be lived in, fully, for a long time, which is exactly why it is worth paying attention when one reaches the open market. The firm puts it plainly:
"While our homes do come to market from time to time, simply because we have designed so many, they are not typically conceived as 'forever homes.' They are designed to meet a very specific moment and set of needs for each client. What carries through, however, is a sense of timelessness. Regardless of style, our homes are grounded in their connection to the land and in a balance between grandeur and comfort. Those qualities tend to deepen over time."
David Small
Founder & Creative Principal
The qualities deepen over time. A David Small home does not peak on completion day. It settles into its land. The plantings fill in, the grounds grow into the architecture, and the design logic that was invisible on day one becomes the thing you cannot picture living without. This estate is ten years old. It sits at exactly the stage the firm is describing, and it anchors our listing for
this rural luxury estate.
Most properties at this scale are designed around a program. Here is the square footage, here are the rooms, here is the budget, and the land is a constraint to be managed around.
At 13160 Nassagaweya Esquesing Townline, the land was the opportunity. Five acres bordering Milton and Halton Hills, forested and private, with a generous open clearing and natural grading the firm described as a rare condition: a site that supported every key driver at once, privacy, sun orientation, and views. Land like this, in the Milton area we work in every day, almost never comes available.
With the usual constraints gone, what replaced them was intention. The designers were not working around setbacks or awkward grade, so the considerations that are normally the first to be cut, where the light lands, how the approach unfolds, what the windows look at, were free to lead instead. You feel it before you can name it: rooms oriented to the sun rather than the lot line, sightlines that pull toward the forest instead of the driveway. The arrival sequence was built to build. The porte-cochere and garage sit where they fully express the architecture before you reach the front door. The long, linear facade is not a stylistic flourish. It is the geometry the land made possible.
Then the interior does something deliberate, and it is the move the firm names as the one they are most proud of:
That is not a feature. It is architecture doing the one thing only the best architecture can: it changes how you feel the moment you cross the threshold.
The family who commissioned this home had a clear answer. They wanted a life where everything happened at home, not as a concession to what the outside world lacked, but because the home itself would be the destination. That brief asked for things most properties cannot physically hold. The bowling alley is the clean example. A two-lane alley needs specific width, structure, and clear spans that a typical lot cannot give you, and the firm has said as much: only the scale of the land made a footprint wide enough to fold those spaces in. The result, in their words, is recreation that feels seamless rather than appended.
You read that distinction the moment you are downstairs. The two-lane alley with electronic scoring and mood lighting does not feel like a room that got added on. Neither does the golf simulator, the 800-bottle climate-controlled wine cellar, the theatre, or the games lounge with its own wood-burning fireplace and kitchenette. None of it reads as a checklist. It reads as a building shaped from the foundation up to hold one particular life.
Scale is easy to buy. Warmth at scale is the hard part, and it is why homes this size so often feel like hotels: impressive on arrival, impersonal by the second morning. The firm's answer is layering. Open the spaces into one another, kitchen to family room to gathering area, then give each one its own identity through ceiling treatments, proportion, and the quiet work of arches, openings, and thresholds that define a room without walling it off. Done right, every space belongs to a larger whole and still feels like a place of its own.
You feel that logic all through the house. The coffered ceilings and accent lighting in the dining room. The carved stone mantle scaled exactly to the room around it. The bamboo flooring that carries a single warmth across the main level. The arches that mark a transition where a lesser house would have put a door.
The clearest proof is the room nobody planned to love most. The three-season screened porch, with its own wood fireplace, is the space the family used more than any other: the place a 16,000 square foot house quietly collapses down to one fire, one stretch of trees, and a few people. That is the test scale has to pass, and this house passes it.
Scale is easy to buy. Warmth at scale is the hard part, and it is why homes this size so often feel like hotels: impressive on arrival, impersonal by the second morning. The firm's answer is layering. Open the spaces into one another, kitchen to family room to gathering area, then give each one its own identity through ceiling treatments, proportion, and the quiet work of arches, openings, and thresholds that define a room without walling it off. Done right, every space belongs to a larger whole and still feels like a place of its own.
In practice it reads like a small residence of its own. A chandelier-lit hall leads in. The office looks into the forest and doubles as the home's electronics and security hub. A vaulted music room opens to a wood-lined sauna, and a private deck waits at the end of it with treetop views and a remote-lift cover on the hot tub so using it is never a chore. The suite itself holds a library with a gas fireplace, two dressing rooms finished in floor-to-ceiling millwork, and its own laundry.
When the house is full and the lower level is going, the owner's wing is somewhere else entirely. That is the point of it.
There is a stage in a serious property's life when the architecture and the land stop being two separate things. The plantings mature. The stone weathers. The saplings that were staked on day one now frame the approach. The house stops looking designed and starts looking inevitable.
This estate is at that stage. Ten years in, the firm says, the home has settled into its environment in a way that cannot be staged on completion day: the landscape grows in, site and building begin to work as one, and the result reads as seamless. Their conclusion is the one worth hearing as a buyer, that great residential design is not about the day it is finished but about how it lives and improves over the years that follow.
The grounds bear that out. Five acres of forest and walking trails. A saltwater pool with waterfalls and a cedar-lined pool house with its own wood fireplace. An outdoor kitchen with built-in BBQ and pizza oven under covered pergolas. A sport court, a fire pit, vegetable gardens, and grounds that stay lit into the evening. The full list is in the table; the point is simpler than the list.
It is not a house with a yard. It is an estate that happens to also have a house.
Most buyers at this level have learned the hard way that a floor plan is a lie of omission. It gives you dimensions. It does not tell you how a room feels at seven in the morning, whether the light is right, or whether the arrival builds the way a great approach should. We asked the firm what a buyer should look for beyond the listing when one of their homes comes up at resale.
It is the way the lower level opens to the grounds without feeling underground. The way the owner's wing sits apart without feeling cut off. The way the exterior sets an expectation the interior then resets. The way ten years of growth has made the stone look like it was always there. None of that survives in a photograph. It lives in the building, which is part of why we worked with Rogers TV to feature this estate on their
See Your House Now series.
The buyers who recognize them act on that recognition. The buyers who want to think about it find out they waited too long.
We have been ranked #1 in Milton since 2009, confirmed by independent audit data, and we have helped over 3,000 families buy and sell. We understand what this property is. We are the right team to walk you through it.
To arrange a private showing of 13160 Nassagaweya Esquesing Townline, visit The Manor House Listing or call 905-878-6232.
David Small Designs builds around two principles that define their work: the connection between land and building, and the balance between grandeur and comfort. In practice, this means every home is sited to serve the land's best qualities rather than fight them, and every large space is given the ceiling treatments, proportions, and transitions needed to feel human rather than monumental. After 30 years and over 1,000 design projects, the firm has an award record that spans BILD, OHBA, CHBA, and international recognition. The design logic is something buyers understand immediately when they walk in.
David Small Designs confirmed to us directly that their homes are not typically conceived as properties that will be resold. Each one is built to a specific brief for a specific family at a specific moment in their life. That means resale examples carry the original design intent intact. A home like 13160 Nassagaweya Esquesing Townline, on five acres near Milton, at over 16,000 sq ft, with the recreational program it holds, does not have a comparable.
The lower level contains: a two-lane private bowling alley with electronic scoring and projector/screen, televisions, and mood lighting; a golf simulator with projector and netting; a theatre room seating eight; a climate-controlled wine cellar with 800-bottle capacity; a wet bar with dual fridges and dishwasher; a recreation room with three televisions and walkout windows; a games lounge with its own kitchenette and wood-burning fireplace; a spa room with natural light and walkout; and elevator access. Two staircases provide separate entry from the main house and from behind the kitchen.
Yes. The second floor includes a fully independent secondary suite with its own private entrance and dedicated staircase. It contains a full kitchen with stove, oven, hood fan, sink, dishwasher, and fridge; a sitting area and bedroom; a three-piece bath; double closets; dedicated laundry; and storage. It operates completely independently from the main residence.
13160 Nassagaweya Esquesing Townline is located outside of Acton, Ontario, under 40 minutes to Pearson International Airport and less than an hour to downtown Toronto. Five private forested acres with complete privacy, and still one of the most connected locations in Halton Region. That combination does not exist on many properties.
Yes. This property is listed with the Flowers Team at Royal LePage Meadowtowne Realty.
To arrange a private showing, visit flowersteam.ca/rural-luxury-estate or call 905-878-6232. We will ensure you have the context needed to understand what you are looking at before you arrive.
This blog post is not intended to solicit properties currently under contract.
We aren’t just about selling your home. We are about providing an experience you want to share with your family and friends. Our Team is passionate about real estate and take pride in providing the best real estate experience possible.
