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NOTE: Budgell’s Stage was destroyed during a storm in the 2010s.
Note: First picture taken after restoration, second picture taken during restoration, third picture taken before restoration.
Nestled in the lee of a huge rock on Budgell’s Point in the town of St. Anthony is Budgell’s Stage. This wooden, one and a half storey building with a steep pitched roof was built in the 1940s by Mr. Fred Budgell. Fred’s father Noah had built a stage here in the early 1920s, shortly after his family resettled from Little Brehat, a now abandoned settlement a few miles southeast of St. Anthony. A fierce storm in the early 1940s swept this stage away and Fred rebuilt on the point that had been home to his father’s stage.
From the time of its construction, Budgell’s Stage has been used for various fisheries purposes, particularly the processing, curing and storage of fish and the making and mending of fishing gear. Fishermen from other parts of the northeast coast often used the stage for processing cod while participating in the summer floater fishery. At the end of the fishing season, salted cod stored in the stage would be put aboard small boats and transported to large schooners owned by fish merchants. Fred Budgell, a skilled boat builder, also used the stage as a workshop and built over twenty vessels on the site. The stage was also used for many other purposes that were a vital part of the traditional subsistence economy in many outports, including the winter storage of salted goods, preserves, fresh meat, berries and hay.
During the 1950s and 1960s American servicemen were stationed at a radar station in St. Anthony. The stage had always been a social gathering place for locals and they were now joined by foreign servicemen who had a front row seat to observe the fishing heritage, cultural practices and social customs of the community.
In 2005, Fred’s son Lester applied to the Fisheries Heritage Preservation Program for assistance to restore the stage built by his father. The building was becoming structurally unsound. The entire stage needed to be re-levelled, rain and snow came through cracks in the walls and the roof, the clapboard siding and trims were dried and split, window and door boxes were rotted and many glass panes were broken.
By the summer of 2006, Budgell’s Stage had undergone drastic improvements. The floors were stabilized, the roof was waterproofed, new wooden clapboard siding was installed, missing longers on the wharf and flake were replaced, new window and door boxes were constructed, window panes were replaced and new doors built. A mill in Roddickton supplied the wood and Lester’s father had a hand in fixing the windows and doors.
For Lester, his father’s involvement in the project made it a special experience; “I am very pleased to have had the opportunity to work on the restoration of this fishing premises, and it has been especially rewarding to observe my 84 year old dad experience the pleasure of helping with this process and knowing that his accomplishments are to be preserved for a long time to come.” This once weathered stage that had for years blended into the grey rock that shelters it, now stands out on the landscape of St. Anthony. With its new lease on life, it will remain for years a proud reminder of a way of life that shaped coastal communities like St. Anthony.
