Mousehole's granite harbour cottages need a door that respects the conservation area
By Cornwall Composite Doors · 2 September 1969 · 4 min read
Mousehole's tightly packed harbour cottages sit in a conservation area where a heritage-style composite door is almost always the right call.
One of Cornwall's most complete harbour villages
Mousehole has changed less than almost anywhere else on this coast — the granite cottages that wrap around the harbour are largely original in footprint and frontage, and the whole village core sits within a conservation area. TR19 properties here are typically narrow-fronted, thick-walled and built directly onto the street, with doors that have to sit correctly with granite lintels and window surrounds that were never designed with modern standard sizes in mind. Getting a new door right here is as much about respecting what's already there as it is about weatherproofing.
The harbour's direct exposure
Mousehole faces almost due south into open water, and properties on The Parade and around the harbour itself take driven rain and salt spray with very little shelter. We specify stainless steel hinges, letterplates and locks as standard here, along with a drained threshold, because standard-grade fittings corrode noticeably faster on this stretch of coast than they would even a mile or two inland.
Heritage styling that works with the granite
A cottage-style composite door with vertical boarding or a traditional panel layout, in Chartwell Green, cream or black, is by far the most common specification we fit in Mousehole, usually with chrome or pewter furniture rather than brass, which tends to look too formal against the granite. Duck egg is also popular on the smaller fishermen's cottages closer to the harbour wall, echoing the painted joinery you still see on boats and window frames around the village.
Working around conservation-area requirements
Because so much of Mousehole sits in a conservation area, we always suggest a quick check with the council's conservation officer before ordering if your cottage is listed. In our experience heritage-style composite doors are very rarely refused, since they replicate the panel layout and proportions of the doors they're replacing far more closely than a modern flush design would.
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