The Ashbourne Shop is a mid-nineteenth-century wooden mercantile building with a mid-pitched gable roof and a rear extension hipped roof. It shares a property with the stylistically similar Ashbourne Office, as well as the Ashbourne Longhouse. Together, these buildings form the Ashbourne Premises. The Ashbourne Shop is located on Main Street, Twillingate, sitting in an open grassy lot near the harbourfront. This designation is confined to the footprint of the Ashbourne Shop.
Formal Recognition Type
Registered Heritage Structure
Heritage Value
The Ashbourne Shop has been designated a Registered Heritage Structure by the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador for its historic, aesthetic and cultural value.
The Ashbourne Shop was built some time before 1883, before the property belonged to the Ashbournes. Merchant William Ashbourne purchased the premises in 1897 from Edwin Duder Jr., who was himself a prominent merchant until the Bank Crash of 1894. Ashbourne outfitted schooners participating in the Labrador fishery and the seal hunt and also exported fish and seal products. The Ashbourne Shop served as a grocery and general store. William’s son Thomas inherited the property following his father’s death in 1922. Thomas Ashbourne was active in Newfoundland politics, beginning as an M.H.A. in the 1920s and eventually travelling with Joey Smallwood to Ottawa as a delegate for the National Convention in 1947 . Following Confederation with Canada, he went on to represent the Twillingate area in the House of Commons. Thomas Ashbourne died in 1984. The property remains under the ownership of Ashbourne descendants.
The timber framed Shop features a mid-pitched gable roof, with a hand-hewn roof rafters on the interior. The large windows flanking the front entrance and the sign band on the front facade are characteristic of storefronts in nineteenth-century buildings. Pedimented window mouldings and the central, arched window on the front facade add decorative detailing to an otherwise utilitarian mercantile building. The hipped roof extension on the back of the building is possibly a later addition, constructed pre-1897.
The Ashbourne Shop, along with the adjacent Ashbourne Longhouse and Office buildings, represents only part of a larger merchant premises that once included stores, a lumber yard and wharf access. The Ashbourne properties are physical reminders of Twillingate’s history as a vibrant and prosperous port town driven by the fishing and shipping industries. Merchants like the Ashbournes were at the heart of these industries, and were central figures in the social, economic and political life of Newfoundland throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century.
Source: Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador property file “Twillingate – Ashbourne Shop – FPT 1315”
Character Defining Elements
All those elements of the early mercantile retail store construction, including:
– two-and-a-half storey timber-frame construction;
– mid-pitched gable roof;
– returned eaves;
– narrow wooden clapboard;
– wooden corner boards with pilasters;
– sign band on front facade;
– flagpole on front gable;
– massing and dimension of rear addition featuring a hipped roof;
– any remaining original wooden windows, their trims, sizes, shapes, dimensions and locations;
– any remaining original wooden doors, their trims, sizes, dimensions and locations.
All those elements that relate to the building’s history as part of a merchant premises, including:
-prominent location of building in the community;
-proximity to and visibility from the water;
-location of building on the property, and;
-proximity to other historic buildings that make up the Ashbourne Premises complex.
Google map
Heritage NL Fieldnotes Series No. 20 – Mercantile Memories: The Ashbourne Premises, Twillingate, NL (2021)
