Wickmere, Northumberland
A herring warehouse of 1908, three doors from the lifeboat station. Dinner is at two sittings and the coast path starts at the gate.
The house
It was built to keep fish cold, which is why the walls are three feet thick and the windows face north.
We took the building on in 2014, when it had been standing empty for eleven years and the roof was more or less a rumour. What we kept was everything structural and most of what was ugly — the cast-iron pulleys on the top floor, the salt-bleached boards, the tar on the seaward gable that nobody has managed to remove since 1908.
What we changed: the roof, obviously, and every window, and the fact that it was cold. Four rooms, no lift, no spa, no conference facilities. The bar has eleven stools and the dining room seats twenty-eight.
The whole top floor, under the original pulley beam, with the only bath in the building you can lie down in.
Tonight, from £310 B&B
See the room →
First floor, straight over the harbour wall. You can hear the boats going out at five, and you will.
Tonight, from £235 B&B
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The quiet one. West over the saltings, and in October you will hear the geese come in before you see them.
Tonight, from £185 B&B
See the room →The dining room
Three courses, two choices at each. If you cannot eat something, tell us when you book and we will simply cook you something else — there is no separate menu for it.
Availability
Rates are per room per night and include breakfast. Fridays and Saturdays carry a two-night minimum outside the low season.
Six boats still work out of here. The ice house at the far end is open on Saturdays.
Four miles of sand with nobody on it, most of the year. Terns nest at the north end from May.
Boardwalk from the church. Curlew, redshank, and in October something like eight thousand pink-footed geese.
The light is automatic now, but the keepers’ cottages are still there and so is the tea hut.
Between the door and the point
The harbour, the marsh behind the church, the boats at four in the afternoon, and the harbour again. Twelve minutes on foot end to end.
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Eight thousand pink-footed geese came in over the marsh on Tuesday night, which by our records is the earliest since we opened.
Every four or five years somebody suggests it, and every four or five years the seaward gable wins.
Reservations
One of the four rooms is held back for people who ring rather than book online. If the calendar says we are full, it is still worth asking.