The main street at Port Vincent

The Ventnor Hotel is the oldest building still standing in Port Vincent. Built on Allotment 1 opposite the jetty it was always intended as a site for a hotel, and building commenced in early November 1877 following the sale of the town allotments in September. Mr George Selth was the owner of the hotel but the licencee was Mr Laurie Driver. Originally called the Port Vincent Hotel the name was changed in 1912 to the Ventnor Hotel after the home town of the new licencee Mrs Clara Ponder who came from Ventnor on the Isle of Wight. Extensions were made to the hotel in 1926, adding another 12 bedrooms and two bathrooms. In 1956 a beer garden was added, and in 1959 another major alteration was made. The pepper tree just visible to the left was removed in 1937.

The original store in Port Vincent closed in 1882 and for a number of years the town had no store. In 1903 the Harris family settled in Port Vincent; Mr Harris was the jetty toll collector but the income from this was insufficient to support the family and he undertook a number of other jobs including blacksmithing and with his wife opened a general store and tearoom in a rented building on the allotment behind the hotel. Cake and biscuits were home-made and the tearooms were well patronized on the day the steamer came in with supplies. The store carried groceries, fruit and vegetables and drapery and supplied not only the townspeople but the surrounding farms. The Harris' sold the tearooms in 1913 to James Disher.

A grain store was erected by Joseph Parsons in the late 1880s or 1890s on the inland corner of the same town block that the hotel occupied. It was built of stone and had a high gable roof. Parsons used the store to house his own bagged wheat from his farm near Curramulka as well as other material he exported including wool and mallee stumps. He arranged his own shipments directly with the Adelaide grain merchants. Parsons ceased using it as a grain store from about 1903 and it has had a variety of uses since then including general store, church, bank, post office and art gallery. It continues to be known as the Grain Store. A residence was added to the building in 1907 and the front gable of this is just visible to the left of the high Grain Store gable.

Jones, Alan, Port Vincent: shipping port to pleasure resort Port Vincent, S. Aust.: Port Vincent Progress Association, 1994

Carmichael, Ern, The ill-shaped leg: a story of the development of Yorke Peninsula [Fullarton, S. Aust.]: E.J. Carmichael, 1973