Pilchards Corner The White Cottage Union Cellars Including The White Cottage And Pilchards Corner

SX 08 SW ST ENDiLLION PORT GAVERNE 2/106 Union Cellars including the White - Cottage and Pilchards Corner GV II Fish cellars now store and domestic accommodation. Circa early C19. Stone rubble and cob, partly weather-boarded and slate-hung. Slate and asbestos slate roof with hipped ends. 2 storey range on south west with narrow projecting single-storey wing adjoining on south east and further narrow single-storey range at right angles on north east to form overall 'U' shaped plan around open courtyard. Enclosing the yard on the north west a front wall, set slightly back with a central entrance and double doors. The open yard has been grassed to form a garden for the 2 converted houses on the south west. 'The White House' on the north of this 2-storey range retains C19 fenestration. The pilchard catch was loaded into leaky hogsheads and placed on a wooden platform or gutter against the wall. The fish were then crushed by large stones, suspended from long pressing beams which were slotted into the brick niches which remain largely intact along the outer wall of the north east wing. The nets and tackle were kept in storage lofts, probably on the south west and the single-storey wings on the south east and north east were probably originally open-fronted to the yard with roofs supported on timber posts, providing shelter for the pilchard catch, for the drying of fish and also the storage of merchandise landed at the quay of Port Gaverne. 3 further converted fish cellars remain to the east (Venus cellars) to the south east (Liberty Cellars and Rashleigh Cellars, qv). N.J.G. Pounds 'Cornish Fish Cellars' Antiquity 1944 (18) 36-41.

Listing NGR: SX0028180770