As the eighteenth century progressed, the Newfoundland fishery became more stable, so that individual mercantile interests returned to the same harbour year after year, using the same fishing space. With this increased stability in the fishery came, no doubt, a change in fisheries architecture, so that merchants could plan much larger operations utilizing larger and more permanent buildings. This led to the construction of larger stages, merely expanding on the building vocabulary that had been developed in the seventeenth century.
Wealthy Europeans began to establish what essentially were fish processing factories in Newfoundland, often leaving a small number of servants to overwinter in the colony to protect the entire fisheries premises. Agents of West Country families became managers of major Newfoundland operations with large numbers of essentially migratory labour working there in the summer months.
Sir Arthur Holdsworth's plantation in Ferryland was probably typical of many of these large concerns that had been set up in Newfoundland by the end of the eighteenth century. A map, circa 1790 (figure 3), depicts the layout of this fisheries plantation.
Click to enlarge
| (figure3) Map of the Holdsworth premises, Ferryland, ca. 1790;
a stage 21' x 96' is depicted in the centre (Courtesy of the Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador). |
Both sources are likely describing French traditions, and one researcher has speculated that de Fer may have been merely illustrating Denys' account. But Newfoundland harbours certainly had their share of French fishing stations in the seventeenth century, often shared with ships from other countries, and later stage forms indicate that what was described by Denys and de Fer certainly is the stage-type later used by British fishermen. Indeed, one of the key issues still in need of investigation is the borrowings of both building form and technologies between the Newfoundland stage and the French chauffaud throughout Atlantic Canada.
Besides a large stone dwelling house, 60' x 24', there was an adjacent separate kitchen with a cellar and freshwater spring. Nearby was the "Great Store", measuring 100' by 30', and 18' to the wall plate. The first level was used to store dried fish, and the upper level to house nets and sails. (Store is the term used to refer to any outbuilding that housed fisheries gear). Four other stores stood nearby, ranging in length from 32' to 93'. Yet, the processing of fish took place in Holdsworth's stage, measuring 21' by 96'--twice as large as the type described by Denys. An additional indicator of the extent and permanence of Holdsworth's operation was the fact that there were also a number of stone buildings on the property: a range of five fishermen's houses; a cook room; a stable and hay loft; a blacksmith's forge; and a house in which to dye nets.
