Tilting Heritage House B&B

The Hotel

Tilting Heritage House B&B occupies a restored saltbox dwelling in the village of Tilting, on the eastern shore of Fogo Island. Tilting is one of the most consequential village landscapes in Atlantic Canada and is one of only two Canadian villages designated both as a National Historic Site of Canada (in 2003) and as a Registered Heritage District by the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador. The village was settled in the mid-eighteenth century by Irish migrant fishermen from Waterford, Wexford, and the southeast Munster coast, and is the rare Newfoundland outport where the Irish dialect, Catholic parish structure, and family naming patterns have survived the cod moratorium and the slow rural emigration of the late twentieth century largely intact. The village's saltbox houses, root cellars, fishing stages and stone-walled lanes form one of the most heavily documented vernacular landscapes in the country.

The B&B itself is a four-bedroom restored historic dwelling, the form known locally as a "linhay" or saltbox, with the long slope of the back roof closing the house to the wind. The structure has been carefully restored with the heritage-district requirements in mind: original spruce-plank flooring, the local-form mantle and bake-oven preserved, hand-pieced quilts on the beds, and a modern bathroom and kitchen built into the back wing. The four rooms, two with queen beds, two with double beds, each have private en-suite full bathrooms, which is unusual for a heritage B&B of this size and is the project's central comfort decision. Floors are wide-plank spruce, the windows are deep-set, and the wood-stove in the parlour is in seasonal use from October through May.

Hospitality is by the resident host couple, who live in a separate part of the house. A full breakfast, eggs from on-island hens, homemade partridgeberry jams, fresh bread, locally-cured bacon, is included in the room rate and is served at the kitchen table; evening meals can be arranged in advance for an additional charge and draw from the local fishery and the household garden in summer. The hosts hold deep knowledge of the village heritage, the hiking trails (the Lion's Den trail begins at the village edge), the punt-tour operators, the iceberg-season timing, and the church and graveyard tours that animate the National Historic Site. Tilting is twenty minutes by car from the Fogo Island Inn, so the property functions both as a stand-alone destination and as a value-anchored complement to Inn stays.

For travellers whose Fogo Island brief is the place, the history, and the people more than the architecture of the Inn, and for whom the CAD 2,000-plus all-inclusive rate is not the right frame, the Tilting Heritage House B&B is the most considered alternative on the island. It is not a luxury hotel and does not pretend to be; it is a four-room heritage B&B in a designated National Historic Site, run by hosts whose families have been on Fogo Island for two-hundred-fifty years, with a breakfast that runs to local jams and a view that runs to the Atlantic. For three or four nights it is the rare experience that gets you closer to the actual Fogo Island than the Inn's curated programme does.

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