The Best Premises at Fogo on Fogo Island are an impressive collection of fisheries buildings and structures dating from the 1930s into the 1960s, including seven stores and a stage.  These have been in the Best family for several generations.  Some of buildings were purpose-built for use in the fishing industry, while others originated for other functions and have had a number of roles throughout their existence.

 

The oldest building is a studded tilt built by Thomas Best (1812-1891), who came to Newfoundland from Dorset, England around 1838.  It was used as a barn for sheep and goats and ,one time, a cow, until the 1960s.  The grass shed addition was made in the 1940s.  The tilt is now used for storage as part of the Best Premises.

 

Another store built around the early 1900s by Elijah Best    Elijah also built another dry fish store with a net loft around 1914, using pine board rejected from a Gander Bay sawmill.  This building once functioned as a sail loft.

 

One store was origianally a dwelling, built by Jimmy Withams around the 1860s.  It was used by the local cooperative and credit union, formed after a falling out with local fish merchants, from about some time in the 1940s through to 1962.  It started to serve as a twine loft in the early 1960s.

 

Around 1950 Thomas Best (1906-1986) built a supply building for a small-scale mink farming operation.  In the next decade it was converted into a bunkhouse for a trap-fishing crew.

 

The first fishing stage was probably built at this site around 1840, but the current one was built around 1960 by several Best men.

 

Donald Best oversaw the project of repairs to the Best Premises in 2007, with plans that they would continue to be used in the fishing industry, for such purposes as mending and storing fishing gear.