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.


A 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.