Description of Historic Place

The Trahey Property is a cluster of five 19th-20th century outbuildings, a single residence, a fence, a gate and a well, located on Pool Road, Conception Harbour. The designation encompasses the entire property and all buildings on the site.

Heritage Value

The Trahey Property was designated a registered heritage structure because it has cultural, aesthetic and environmental values.

The Trahey Property is culturally valuable because it forms a collection of rare, intact structures used in the domestic economy of rural Newfoundland during the 19th-20th centuries. The buildings accommodated the agricultural and fishing activities typical of the families in Conception Harbour until the mid-20th century. The structures exemplify the close functional relationship between the various domains associated with the rural Newfoundland economy of the 19th-20th centuries.

The Trahey Property has aesthetic value because of the variety and types of architecture used to construct the buildings. Built on the beach with post and beam construction the structures were made with hand-cut timbers and dowels. The stone and post foundations support the buildings and keep them above the salt tide. The two-storey stable has a mid-pitch gable roof which is connected to a flat-roofed workshop which, in turn, is connected to a steeply-pitched gable roofed carriage house and twine loft. The nearby outhouse, root cellar and residence are unrelated in terms of architecture, but draw the property together within the boundaries of hand-crafted, traditional picket and longer fences.

The Trahey Property is environmentally valuable because it holds a prominent position in Conception Harbour, being located in the Pool area. This locality offers a vista from the public wharf and Trahey’s has been the subject of much public notice in the forms of various media, artwork and photography.

Source : Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador, unnumbered property file, Conception Harbour - Trahey Property

Character-Defining Elements

All those features which reflect the setting and simple vernacular design of the house and complete set of 19th-20th century outbuildings, including:
-use of traditional materials;
-wooden doors and simple trim;
-wooden windows and simple trim;
-narrow clapboard;
-felt and tar roofs;
-existing roof styles and pitches;
-building heights, massing, and dimensions;
-use of red ochre colour on the outbuildings;
-relationship to each other and proximity to the water; and,
-viewscape and visibility of the structures from the water.