Stockdale House Stockdale House was built shortly after 1706. In that year Joseph Wright obtained a land grant next to his father’s house on the condition that he build a stone house within 18 months. Wright’s house mirrored his father’s in its cruciform layout and in its employment of a Flemish gable. The younger Wright’s house differed in that he attached two external chimneys to his hall and parlour home, and a third to the projecting chamber to the north, whereas Skerrett’s Cottage has a large single chimney to warm the northern chamber, and a second, built later to the southwest.

The name of the house commemorates Joseph Stockdale, a London printer who brought the first press to Bermuda in 1783 and began publishing the colony’s first newspaper, the Bermuda Gazette, the following year. Stockdale leased the house in 1801 from John Briggs for 1,000 years for £180 and a rent of one peppercorn a year. After Stockdale died in 1803, his three daughters, Frances, Priscilla and Sarah, carried on the printing business and ran a stationery store, perhaps in the cellar of the house.

In 1816 this sibling syndicate was dissolved after Sarah Stockdale married professional printer CharlesRollin Beach and moved the press to Hamilton. With the Beaches gone to the new capital, Frances and her English husband John Bryan Tucker made Stockdale their home. In 1848 their heirs sold the house to John McKean, Royal Engineers Foreman of Works, for £160. McKean, in turn, sold it to George Wainwright in 1865, who bequeathed it to his daughter Mary McCallan two years later.

Stockdale is notable for the minimal changes made to its original plan, the main one being a narrow extension to the north chamber which encompasses space once occupied by the third chimney and its lateral closets. The house was never given an internal staircase; the cellar was separate from domestic accommodation on the main floor above. Photographs from the start of the 20th century show that by then the house had been given a simple wooden porch that ran along the eastern side of its porch chamber. This was later roofed in stone and the main entrance moved from its earlier position at the south of the first-floor porch chamber. The distinctive entry gateposts were also moved at this time. The house passed through a number of hands as the 20th century progressed and was purchased by Lieutenant Colonel Gavin Shorto in 1969.