The Fishing House

The Fishing House is an early 19th-century salmon fishing house situated on the bank of the River Severn. It is constructed of rendered brick with a brick stack, and has a plain clay tile roof. The building comprises a simple two-room plan with a lean-to addition to the north.

The building is one-and-a-half storeys high. The main elevation, facing the river, features a central entrance doorway approached by a patterned apron of square clay tiles, flanked by small, vertical windows with upright iron cames. A timber hatch with moulded edges is set into the south gable to light the first floor. The other elevations are plain. A short, square brick stack is located at the north gable.

Internally, the ground floor is divided into two unequal rooms. The northern room features a transverse chamfered beam of heavy section and a 19th-century cast-iron range set below a large bressumer running the length of the building. The floor appears to be rammed earth. A partition south of the entrance contains two 19th-century plank doors: one provides access to a ground-floor storage area, and the other to the staircase. Both have cast-iron strap hinges, one also having a thumb-latch. The staircase is a simple ladder-type rising to the first floor, largely contained within the roof space. Exposed roof timbers consist of paired common rafters. The northern end retains relatively wide early-19th-century floorboards.

The fishing house was built above Madam’s Pool during the early 19th century and is shown on the 1841 tithe map. It was designed to facilitate lave-net salmon fishing, a significant local industry at the time. Fishermen would wade into the river with Y-framed lave or draft nets to catch salmon exposed by the receding tide. This practice continued along the River Severn into the 20th century. The Fishing House at Elmore is one of few surviving examples associated with this industry.

The building is designated at Grade II for being a rare surviving example of a pre-1840 fishing house associated with the historic lave-net salmon fishing industry on the River Severn, and for surviving largely unaltered and never having been converted.