Cliff Cottage Step Cottage

House, now two houses. Circa mid 17th century, with alterations of the 19th and 20th centuries.

The building is constructed of slatestone rubble with some 19th-century rebuilding in brick. The roof is covered with slurried scantle slate with ridge tiles and gable ends, though parts are now roofed in slate and asbestos slate. The cross wing to the front left has a gable-end stack at the front with rubble shaft; there is also a front lateral stack in rubble with a 20th-century brick shaft to the right.

The plan is unusual and largely unaltered. Originally a three-room plan with entrance to a small lobby, the building operated as a combined fishing and residential property. The cross wing to the left contains the front room, heated from a gable-end stack, a small central partitioned room (unheated), and a rear section now part of Cliff Cottage that would originally have been a boat shed or store. Remarkably, all living accommodation is at first-floor level; the entire ground floor beneath the main rooms comprises a pilchard cellar with a separate entrance at the front. The room to the right of the lobby is heated from the front lateral stack, while the room at the end right appears never to have been heated. This represents an exceptional survival of a working fish cellar with integrated domestic quarters.

Externally, the building is two storeys with an asymmetrical front. The gable end of the cross wing dominates the left side with its large external stack. The ground floor has a 19th-century two-light two-pane casement with timber lintel; the first floor retains a late 19th-century four-pane sash. An external stone stair with slate treads leads to a 19th-century four-panelled door, with a large external stack to its right. At ground floor to the right is a plank door serving the pilchard cellar; the first floor above has a late 19th-century four-pane sash. The first-floor level has been rebuilt in brick. The right end of the building shows an early 20th-century two-light three-pane casement at ground floor and a late 19th-century six-pane sash at first floor, with a small plate-glass sash also present. At the rear, a single-light four-pane casement serves the cellar to the left; to the right is a single-storey rubble lean-to, extended in the 20th century with 20th-century window and door. The rear gable end of the cross wing, rendered and painted, has a 20th-century window to the left and small 20th-century windows at ground and first-floor levels to the right.

Internally, the pilchard cellar retains a cobbled floor with a drainage channel leading to a drain hole in the rear wall. The ceiling features roughly hewn beams. Along the front wall of the cellar are sockets for pressing poles used in pilchard processing. The first-floor lobby entrance preserves a short section of 18th-century wooden screen to the right. The main room features boxed beams and a front lateral fireplace with a 20th-century range insert and 19th-century mantel, with a cupboard behind the entrance lobby. The front room of the cross wing has a 19th-century chimneypiece. The roof structure comprises roughly hewn principal rafters halved and pegged at the apex, with cambered collars pegged (not halved) to the principal rafters. Some trusses have been replaced, but the roof structure remains largely intact.

This is an exceptional survival: a complete working fish cellar with sockets for pressing poles still in situ, combined with unaltered domestic living quarters accessed by external stairs above it.