Description of Historic Place

The Casey Store and House site includes a one-and-a-half-storey, wooden fisheries building and a two-storey former residence located at 197 Harbour Drive, Conche. The fish store is located across the road and down over the bank from the house, where it stands at the oceanside on a sloping segment of grassy land near a small beach. The municipal heritage designation is confined to the footprints of the two buildings, Casey House and Casey Store.

Heritage Value

The Casey Store and House site has been designated a municipal heritage site by the Town of Conche because of its historic, cultural, architectural and aesthetic values.

The Casey Store has historic value because of its connection to one of the original Irish settler families of Conche. The store’s site, a complex of fisheries structures known as the Casey Rooms in the Taylor’s Point area, was first occupied by the builder’s father, Captain Tom Casey (1799-1880).

The Casey Store has historic and cultural value because of its association with the fishing industry in Conche and in its region, known as the French Shore. Conche was an important fishing centre for both French and English vessels during the eighteenth century. The British granted the French rights to fish along the French Shore in 1713. These treaty rights remained in place until 1904, the year that Michael Casey Sr. (1835-1922) built Casey Store. The Casey Store was then one of many salt fish stores in the community, and part of the Casey Rooms. The Casey Store is now one of the oldest fisheries buildings remaining on the French Shore, and the only structure from the Casey Rooms left.

The Casey Store has architectural value as a good surviving example of a French Shore traditional fisheries building. It is a simple, rectangular, one-and-a-half-storey loft structure, with a steeply pitched gable roof, narrow clapboard painted red ochre colour, and a foundation of wooden posts. A small cross on one of its doors is an interesting regional cultural motif.

The Casey House has historic and architectural value as one of the older homes in Conche, having been built in 1920 in a common two-storey, rectangular building plan with a vernacular design. It has a low pitched roof and symmetrical façade, with three windows on the upper storey and windows on either side of the door on the first floor.

The Casey Store has aesthetic value as a longtime feature of Conche’s coastal cultural landscape, evoking the period when it was part of the overall Casey Rooms and salt cod was an important component of Newfoundland’s fishery. The relationship of the site to the ocean, and the proximity of the house to the store, presents a pattern of land use traditionally associated with that fishery. The Casey House and Store are together a noteworthy example of a family fisheries building and former residence remaining on the cultural landscape at Conche.

Source: Town of Conche Council Meeting Minutes of 2007/12/19

Character-Defining Elements

Elements related to the architectural value of the store:

-simple, rectangular building plan;
-steeply pitched gable roof;
-placement of windows and doors;
-simple trims;
-narrow clapboard sheathing;
-red ochre colour;
-wood post foundation;
-and cross on door;

Elements relating to the architectural value of the house:

-low pitched gable roof;
-two storey height;
-original door placement;
-original wooden window material, placement and dimensions;
-narrow clapboard sheathing;

And key elements that relate to the cultural, historic and aesthetic value of the property:

-oceanside location of the Casey Store at the former Casey Rooms complex.
-and the proximity of the house to the fish store.