Museum And Avice'S Cottage

This building comprises two former cottages, now combined to serve as the Portland Museum and Avice’s Cottage. No. 217 dates largely to the 17th century, but was substantially modified in the early 19th century. It is constructed of squared and coursed dressed blocks, with a thatched roof. The two-storey, two-windowed front has 16-pane sashes in chamfered and flush surrounds with wooden sills. A ground-floor window on the left was formerly wider, likely a 3-light mullioned casement. A central flat-slabbed stone porch provides access via a plank door and a small opening towards the street. A ground-floor window on the right was a former doorway. The roof features a raised coped verge, slab capping, and a former stack to the right, with large kneeler stones. A blocked attic window is visible in the gable return, which connects to an adjoining cottage with a wall closing the gap to the roof slope.

Avice’s Cottage now lacks floors and partitions, but may have originally been a cross-passage, two-room plan building. It returns at right angles to No. 217 and is constructed of squared dressed stone with a thatched roof. It is one storey and attic in height, with a coped gable to the left featuring a stopped and moulded drip over a 16-pane sash window. A similar window with a 24-pane casement is at ground level, with a 20-pane sash to the right and a plank door at the centre. The front gable bears the date stone "1640" and is coped with large kneelers. The return gable wall on the left is plain, except for a small blocked light low down. The right end gable is plain and largely obscured by a later, non-original extension.

At the rear, No. 217 has a swept-down extension to the door and a single light, while Avice’s Cottage has a basket-head recess at mid-height and a horizontal sliding sash window with a 2x12-pane configuration in a flush surround. The interior of Avice’s Cottage features a deep bressumer fire at the west end with a 19th-century grate and three small square exits to the flue. An 18th-century fire is present at the upper level, and a copper boiler is in the northeast corner. No. 217 has a deep wood bressumer fireplace on stone cheeks to the north wall, a deep recess to the left roofed with close-set beams or thick planks, a stone slab floor and a stick baluster staircase. The property was given to the islanders by Dr. Marie Stopes in 1929 and its name is derived from Thomas Hardy's ‘The Well-Beloved’, which features three generations of Avices on the ‘Isle of Slingers’.