Modern herring houses.


The Ordnance Survey 1:2500 First Edition mapping of 1868 shows two long buildings and several smaller associated structures forming a complex at this location, arranged around an enclosed yard, and including what may be a walled garden.


The original herring houses were built, together with a large house, by John Joseph Bacon in 1771, at a cost of £1,200.


One large building (shown undivided on the original OS) occupies a substantial part of the easterly frontage onto the road leading to St Michael's Isle. This structure formed the herring houses. It is currently subdivided into two, and the more southerly half occupied as a dwelling. The northerly portion is used for storage, although it would seem to have been altered for domestic use at first floor level in the past.


Archive photographs taken before conversion to domestic use would suggest that the building may have been divided into three, and later four, areas at ground level, each served by a wide vehicular doorway opening onto the road; the two more northerly examples retain and are characterised by their arched doorheads. Doorways at first floor level appear to have served for loading vehicles standing in the roadway below. An extension to the north gable present by the 1868 survey is of similar character and would seem on photographic evidence to have been used for similar purposes; this is now demolished and replaced by a dwelling. The combined length of the roadside frontage was 55m, now reduced to 47m.


A large building on the same axis to the rear (west) shown on the original OS was 37m long and 8m deep. This was a very tall structure when originally constructed, substantially overtopping the herring houses to the east, and dominating all other buildings in Derbyhaven until the construction of the ornate late Victorian Marine Hotel in the centre of the village. It appears from old photographs to have had few original openings save for seven small, regularly spaced, windows under the eaves on each elevation; these were characterised by arched windowheads. Its design and lack of groundlevel windows suggest that it is likely to have been a storehouse.


The building was still roofed in the 1920s, but the entire roof structure and gable peaks above eaves height had gone by the 1970s. Photographs from the early 1980s show that the southern part was protected by a modern flat roof, but this part of the building has since been reduced to a single storey. The northern end of the building has been substantially redeveloped for domestic use and is now joined to the nearby eastern building by a modern link.


The walled yard associated with the herring house complex has now been largely redeveloped, particularly at its northern end, but the rear (west) boundary wall still survives, despite several breaches. At least two wells, capped by pumps at the time of the original OS, have been covered in.