A substantial house with two equal sized rooms on the ground floor. A single, apparently upper floor window survives on the W side but there is little other evidence of this upper floor. The structure is built from roughly coursed stone blocks, mortared and rendered. The interior is also rendered with a finer material but much of this rendering has fallen off. The N side of the house is mainly collapsed and no features survive save for the base of what looks like a buttress, the collapse includes about half of the internal dividing wall. The S side has a door leading into the room with the larger fireplace (built into the gable end at the W). There is a gap leading into the room with the smaller fireplace at the E but this could be due to collapse, though a door here would be likely and there is also some sign of there being an outbuilding in this position. Any interconnecting door between the two rooms was probably in the collapsed section of dividing wall. The two fireplaces are interesting, the larger is low with a substantial stone lintel over,set within a slightly protruding chimney, the smaller is positioned high up and is itself oddly narrow and high and set wholly within the wall space. The house is overall 11.5m x 5.8m., the walls are 0.65m thick. 40m above O.D.
John Latham RCAHMW 12 March 2013 (from NT report 1990)
The Manager's House at Carmel Head has been monitored as part of the CHERISH project, due to being at risk from natural processes exacerbated by climate change. CHERISH (Climate, Heritage and Environments of Reefs, Islands and Headlands) is an EU-funded Wales-Ireland project (2017-2022) led by the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales, in partnership with the Discovery Programme: Centre for Archaeology and Innovation Ireland, Aberystwyth University: Department of Geography and Earth Sciences and Geological Survey, Ireland. Work included aerial survey in 2016 and photographic survey in 2018.
H. Genders Boyd, CHERISH, April 2022