A Private View: an other-worldly Tudor house miraculously spun into a 21st-century tale

The author, chef, interior designer, stylist, photographer and shop-owner, Alastair Hendy is a storyteller at heart. He approaches interiors the way he creates recipes, opens shops (A G Hendy & Co is a place of pilgrimage), photographs food or launches restaurants; diving in deep to become fully immersed, and reinventing himself with each project. But perhaps his tallest tale to date is his home in Hastings Old Town …

Built around the time of the Spanish Armada in 1588 (the rear wing, now the kitchen, was constructed in the 1400s, years before Christopher Columbus set sail for the Americas), the grade II-listed house took five years of intricate restoration work to recover and has graced the pages of countless interior titles. It has also inspired some of the most creative minds: Tim Walker – one of the world’s leading fashion photographers – has regularly stayed at 135 All Saints Street in a bid to immerse himself totally into Alastair’s curated surroundings: “I re-read The Elves and The Shoemaker Ladybird book,” said Tim Walker of his first stay at the house “and realised your house is that house! We didn’t see any elves. But then again, we didn’t leave out any half-finished shoes. I am so impressed by your work; I really know how hard it is to make a fairy tale functional”.

Stepping off the street and through the ancient front door, the immediate sensation is visceral, as your eyes adjust to the flickering candlelight, wood panelled walls and scrubbed flagstone floors. Ahead of the sale of his home of almost two decades, Alastair shares the painstaking restoration journey he took, peeling back the layers of centuries to create a home whose character offers a multitude of magical tales.

Alastair Hendy: “When I saw 135 All Saints Street on the market, I jumped at the chance to look inside. It had been on my radar for years, so I wanted a nose around, but I fell in love. The exterior is captivating, like an illustration from a fairytale, yet it was the completeness that was beguiling, and I was besotted as soon as I’d passed through the front door. The fact that it was untouched by later extensions was perfect – it was as it was intended to be, from the day it was erected 450 years ago. It had been through the mill with modernisations over every century, but this was superficial and could be rectified; the bones were all there.

“The degree of restoration turned out to be monumental but I’m a sucker for a new challenge and the project soon took hold, resulting in what you see today. It went through years of deconstruction, mess and mayhem. After the completion of major structural repairs, came the removal of the jarring additions, and putting in the things that reflected the true character of the house. A reinvention of its past; a reconfiguration of its history.”

“The narrative took hold, and it became more autobiographical, drawing on memories of childhood, challenging the conventions of traditional Tudor restoration make-overs, looking beyond each room’s constraints and into its more conceptual and imaginative possibilities. It was never daunting, more challenging, and that gets the creative juices flowing for me …

“Records date back to 1888 and simply list those that lived here. However, it does hold a dark secret. The rear section – the oldest part of the house – was used as the old town mortuary up until the 1950s. Two elderly fishermen recounted their childhood memories, when they would come and peer through the back windows of the house to spy on the bodies laid out, then run away.

“I sourced all the materials, fixtures and fittings, I wanted to change the modern pine floorboards with older, wider oak boards, which proved a challenge as they don’t exist in reclamation yards. After much searching, I discovered, right on my doorstep, salvaged groyne oak: the wood saved from deconstructed groynes on the beach. Beautifully worn by the sea, and naturally toughened by the impregnation of salt, missing internal doors were constructed from it, as were the beds. The more rustic boarding was used to remodel the garden and the shed which is inspired by the famous Hastings’ fishermen’s towering net huts.”

“The double-height kitchen is the oldest part of the house, with an open timber frame. I took it down to its bare bones, paint was stripped from the timbers inside and out using poultice (a paste used to remove deep layers of paint). The roof was rebuilt and retiled, the failed timbers spliced in with new oak; the missing tie beam and collar put back, and steel tie-braces added. The building was under-pinned and the kitchen floor lowered; the internal walls stripped back and restored using lath, horse hair and lime plaster. Modern windows were replaced with diamond mullion oak windows, glazed between their bars. The sink and its lead-work, the plate rack, all shelving, wood cladding and shutters were all added. It became a complete top-to-toe transformation.

“Plumbing didn’t exist when the house was built, but now of course we can’t live without it. Repurposed vintage finds fit the pared-back aesthetic, such as the sink in the main bathroom made up from a Romanian fish filleting table and an English bread proving bowl, and the bath, a French wine pressing tub, which was lined and plumbed.

“The restoration of the house drew so much attention; people would wander in off the street for a peek, fascinated. I let them in on various planned days through the year, to share in the steady transformation, and these became a permanent fixture, especially in December.  We lit all the log fires in the inglenooks, set candles in all rooms, decorated with gingerbread hearts and spruce, and drew the shutters to banish the outside world.  The Christmas opening became a pilgrimage for many.

“I love every room, the way they interconnect, the journey through the house delivers beautiful vistas and arresting spaces to quietly hang out. The house is so much bigger inside than it looks, as it stands very deep from the road and has four floors. Sometimes I had to create architecture and textures where there were none, to make each room a different chapter in the same story, while keeping the home reading as a unified whole. I wanted to avoid breaking the spell as you travel through the house.

“Visitors are blown away by the attention to detail, the smell, mood, otherworldliness. They think it an extraordinary thing to do, to reinvent the dust of history, to create and use the house as those who would have done half a millennium ago.  But we have electricity, hot running water, baths, central heating and underfloor heating in the kitchen. The pleasure of the past occupying the present is the pleasure of illusion.

“I equate it to stepping into Grimm Brother’s fairy tale, minus the witch!  The kitchen is a joy to cook in and comes alive when we throw a party, especially on bonfire night; when we light everything by candlelight and I cook up a vast pot of smoked haddock chowder, the local bonfire societies in their vast dark procession drum past the front door. It’s as if the ghost ships of the Spanish Armada have landed, delivering a sea-faring and war-torn army of the undead into the dimly lit passageways of Hastings Old Town, and the house feels right at home. And when all are gone, a soak in the bath and then cosying up in one of the box beds makes us all feel we are very much living happily ever after.”