A beamed room inside Island House during the restoration.

As they stand

The Rooms

Six rooms and faces of Island House, photographed as they stand today, with what survives in each.

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Island House has been recorded room by room, its beams, hearths, doorways, windows and roof timbers catalogued as surviving fabric. Each room below is shown as it is now, mid-restoration, with the surviving features you can still point at.

One · the principal hall

The great inglenook, in its 17th-century life

The three lounges, and the bar beyond them

The great inglenook of Island House today: a very wide fireplace opening spanned by a massive cambered stone bressumer, with a deep open hearth beneath it and a smaller arched recess alongside holding a little cusped window.
Now The great inglenook as it stands: the cambered bressumer still spanning the opening, and beside it the recess with its small cusped window.

What survives here

  • The great inglenook, with its cambered timber bressumer, keeping-hole and plank door F06
  • A second, stone inglenook with the cusped “Gothic” window, in the rear wing behind the bar F19
  • The hearth hierarchy across the house, open inglenooks at ground level, smaller grates above F20
  • Hewn axial ceiling beams, carrying what may be smoke-blackening from an open hearth F04
  • A timber mullion-and-transom leaded window to the garden F07 · F15

Two · the stair

The stone stair-shaft

The stair, from the ground floor to the second landing

Looking down the stair of Island House in July 2021: a timber balustrade turning down between the stone walls of the stair shaft.
2021 Looking down the stair shaft in July 2021, before the stair was boarded for the works.
The stair tower of Island House in April 2021, its tall stone walls lit by a window with red and green coloured glass.
2021 The stair tower in April 2021, lit by the coloured glass of its window.
The stair of Island House today, boarded and propped for protection while the restoration goes on around it.
Now The stair today, boarded and propped while the work goes on around it.

What survives here

  • A historic winder staircase, turning within a stone shaft F25
  • The stair-tower lightwell, with Victorian coloured margin glass F31
  • Two stacked mullioned windows in the gable, long read as a defensive loophole, and resolved as ordinary lights F01

Three · the roof void

The retained oak, and its true date

The top floor, where the old roof stands open above the rooms

The top floor of Island House today: dark historic roof trusses, purlins and rafters standing open above a long room, with new stud partitions framed up beneath them.
Now The top floor today: the old trusses and purlins standing open above the room, with the new partitions framed up beneath them.

What survives here

  • A fossilised earlier stone gable, standing inside the roof space F02
  • Retained pegged oak trusses with curved braces, the timber dated by stable isotopes to the winter of 1656/57 F32
  • A principal-rafter-and-purlin truss with raking struts, hand-converted F03
  • Scarf-spliced historic oak, the dendrochronology candidates F29
  • Most of the roof around them was stripped and replaced in 2021 F13

The trusses show inside the top-floor rooms, as in the photograph above. The void behind and above them, where the fossilised gable stands, is reached on site only.

Four · the yard door

The working threshold

The entrance courtyard, and the lower courtyard behind it

The arched doorway at Island House today: a stone opening under a brick-dressed relieving arch, its jambs cut from dressed stone, looking through into the beamed space beyond.
Now The doorway as it stands: the relieving arch above it and the dressed jambs either side, looking through to the beamed room beyond.

What survives here

  • A straight joint with dressed quoins, and a door inserted beneath a relieving arch F08
  • Dressed freestone jambs to the principal doorway F09
  • A segmental, four-centred doorway to the rear and garden F10
  • The piered undercroft beneath, with its arched recess F05
  • The date over the door is recorded as 1658 in the Cadw listing, and is not in the fabric register

Five · the waterside

The house meeting the water

The rear of the house and the creek-side garden wall

The creek-side wall of Island House today: a long rubble-stone boundary wall with blocked window openings, rising from the overgrown bed of the stream.
Now The creek-side wall today, its openings blocked and the stream bed grown over.

What survives here

  • The house set against the castle, built with estuary cobbles F11
  • Boarded and blocked openings along the waterside elevation F17
  • The creek and leat boundary walls, rising straight from the stream F21
  • External mullion-and-transom windows with cambered arches F15 · F16

Read this one with the quay, the excavated waterfront is the same ground.

Six · the Gothick face

The castle, echoed in miniature

The gate tower and the boundary wall on the castle side

The crenellated Gothick gateway at Island House today: a castellated stone gate tower with a pointed archway, standing against greenery.
Now The crenellated gateway today.

What survives here

  • The castellated parapet and pointed Gothic window of the gate tower F23
  • The coped rubble boundary wall, with a vent slot long mistaken for something older F18
  • The wall carries Mary Abra Hughes Skyrme’s inscription of 1837, recording its rebuilding

Read this one with Mary Abra Hughes Skyrme, who put her name on it.