A captain's house of 1877
Eight rooms on Hillsborough Street and a kitchen that cooks twice a day, with a casino in the carriage barn at the back.
Built in 1877 for a man in the shipping trade
Hillsborough Street runs down towards the harbour and was where the shipping money built in the 1870s. This house went up in 1877, lost its original verandah to a storm in 1902, and gained the covered porch that is there now in 1904.
The mansard roof gives it away. For about fifteen years every house with any ambition in this town had one, and then they stopped, which makes dating them easy.
Inside there are eight rooms and a kitchen at the back of the ground floor. The garden is longer than it is wide, and at the bottom of it stands a carriage barn that was built for two horses and a trap.
Rooms
Eight
Built
1877
Harbour
Seven minutes downhill
Breakfast
7:30 to 10:00
Four kinds, eight rooms
Bay
It has the bay window over the porch, with three sashes, and it's the only room with a desk big enough to work at.
Hillsborough Street is quiet after eight and gets going again at seven when the school run starts.
Mansard
Two rooms sit up in the mansard, with dormers, sloped walls and the original plaster. It's cracked in places and has been left that way on purpose.
They are the warmest rooms in February, and best avoided in late July.
Garden
Two rooms at the back with their own door onto the boarded path, which is how most people reach the barn in the evening.
Level from the garden, and the only rooms in the house without a stair to climb.
Captain
The largest of the back rooms, named after the man who built the house, who was in the shipping trade and had opinions about where a bedroom window should face.
It faces east, so it gets the sun at six in the morning in June, which is either wonderful or the reason the blinds are blackout.
- Every room has a kettle, and the tea tray is restocked whether or not you used it.
- The only television is in the parlour, and it's switched on for hockey.
- Every room has blackout blinds, and between June and August this far north you'll be glad of them.
- Two ground-floor rooms are level from the garden path and have a step-free bathroom; the front door has three steps and a ramp that is kept in the hall.
Two sittings a day and a short list of suppliers
Everything on the table comes from the island or the water around it, and the suppliers are close enough to name: mussels from a lease at Orwell, beef from a farm at Hampshire, and potatoes from a field you can see from the road out to the north shore.
The cook has been here since 2012 and writes the supper card in the afternoon, after the day's deliveries have been argued over.
Breakfast
Half past seven to ten at two tables in the dining room. Oatcakes, eggs, bacon from Hampshire, and preserves made in this kitchen in September.
Supper
Thursday to Monday at seven o'clock, one sitting of fourteen. It's three courses with no choices, and guests get first refusal before the rest goes to the town.
The parlour
Front room on the ground floor, with the built-in cabinets the captain put in, a decanter on the sideboard and the only television in the house.
A casino at the bottom of the garden
The barn stands on this lot behind the garden and belongs to the house, so the casino has the same address and the same people. It has five tables and a bar, open four evenings a week.
It's about fifty paces down a boarded path, cleared and salted all winter, and on this island that's a promise worth making in writing. The age here is 19, as set by Prince Edward Island, and photo ID is checked at the door on every visit.
A harbour, a north shore, and a bridge to the mainland
The harbour is seven minutes downhill and the Confederation Centre is five. The north shore beaches are about forty minutes by road and the sand there is red, which photographs badly and is remarkable in person.
The bridge to New Brunswick is an hour west. The ferry to Nova Scotia runs from Wood Islands from May to December and takes seventy-five minutes.
In July and August the town is full, and every bed on this street is taken by February. October is empty, the light is better and the kitchen is happier.
Seven minutes up from the harbour
Address
54 Hillsborough Street
Charlottetown, PE C1A 4W6
Canada
Telephone
+1 902 892 4170
Email
[email protected]
Front desk
Seven in the morning until eleven at night, and after that a bell on the porch rings in the back of the house.