The Cabin

The Cabin

A former fisherman's store dating from the mid-19th century, with some 20th-century alterations. From the 1920s to 1971, it served as a summer home and studio for artists Judith Ackland (1892-1971) and Mary Stella Edwards (1898-1989).

The building is constructed of brownish and grey stone rubble with brick stack and dressings, and has slate roofs. It is a simple one-up, one-down structure oriented east-west, set against a bank, with a small single-storey addition at the east end.

The cabin is a two-storey building with a pitched roof, standing on a platform on the cliff above Bideford Bay. Its south side is set against the bank. Doors and windows are set in openings under segmental brick arches, with stone cills to the windows. The south elevation is otherwise blind and appears single-storey from the path above the building; a wide doorway with a plank-and-batten door gives level access to the first-floor room.

The west gable end has an off-centre doorway to the ground floor with a 19th-century plank door. Above it is an inset slate plaque inscribed "THE CABIN". To the left is a nine-pane fixed window. The long north elevation has a roughly central multi-paned timber casement window to the ground floor and a two-over-two horned sash window to the first floor to the right. At the west end is a rectangular brick ridge stack with an offset to the top. The east gable end has a four-paned fixed light to the ground floor and a narrow one-over-one horned sash above. Attached at the east end is the former privy, with a lean-to roof against the retaining wall to the south, featuring a plank-and-batten door with notched top.

Internally, the stone walls are whitewashed. The ground-floor room has a timber-clad ceiling and a high inglenook fireplace at the west end, with a deep timber bressumer and mantleshelf. A woodburning stove (replaced 2016) occupies the grate. At the east end, half the width of the building is taken up by a pantry partitioned off with matchboarding, fitted with a plank-and-batten door with wrought-iron door furniture and shelves fixed to both side walls. Adjacent to the pantry door is a second similar door giving access to the stair. The stair is boxed in with matchboarding, creating a small understairs cupboard, and turns through 90 degrees with timber treads and risers.

The first-floor room is floored in brown patterned linoleum. It contains a narrow cast-iron fireplace with a round-arched grate and a timber mantleshelf extending the width of the chimney breast. A matchboard balustrade separates the stair from the room and extends over the stair void as a deep shelf. Along the long elevations are narrow timbers running part of the length of the room, each fitted with rows of nails inserted, likely associated with the building's original function as a fisherman's store, perhaps for hanging nets. The roof is ceiled, but the ends of the principal rafters of the mid-truss are visible, and the exterior shows twin purlins.