At their charming home in Hastings Old Town, editor Steven Short and arts project manager David Clegg have restored and incorporated a subterranean coach house – older than the street itself – into a residence full of unexpected delights.

Tucked behind a vintage clothes shop, down one of Hastings Old Town’s magical hidden twittens, lies a charming, photogenic lawned avenue of cottages. One house, seemingly no different from its neighbours, however, holds a hidden secret beneath its foundations – an underground treasure with a remarkable story.

Though invisible from above, it plays a significant role in the town’s history and has already captivated over a thousand visitors.
When writer Steven Short and his partner David Clegg bought the house in Swan Avenue in 2021, they thought they were moving into a quaint but relatively ordinary Victorian terrace. “It looked fairly typical on the surface,” Steven says. But the couple quickly discovered that their future home was far from ordinary.

Beneath their dining room floor lay the buried remnants of a centuries-old coach house, part of the once-grand Swan Hotel complex, complete with vaulted arches, cobbled floors, soot-blackened walls, and fragments of both medieval and Georgian history. Today, thanks to the painstaking renovation work of David and Steven, their home is now one of the most remarkable domestic restoration projects in Hastings.

Before they began work on the cellar, Steven and David started their renovations on the upper floors of their cottage, opening up walls and moving doorways, as well as the welcome addition of a glazed door and window to the back of the house leading to a renovated roof terrace. “When we moved in, it was like a swamp,” Steven says. “There were freshwater leeches in the basement and the whole place stank of turnips and damp.”

Clearing 200 bags of mud by hand, the pair initially uncovered original cobbles and then wheel tracks, fireplace ashes, oyster shells from an 18th-century skittle yard, and even a vintage clay pipe. What began as a messy and somewhat daunting discovery soon became their passion project. “We like to say it’s not a house with a cellar, it’s an amazing cellar with a house,” Steven laughs. “We really have become custodians of a huge part of Old Town history.”

Before the extensive work on the cellar began, Steven and David had to live in a building site for almost two years while they worked on the upper floors, creating a home which is now filled with charm, warmth and character. “After years of painting white walls for my exhibition work, we decided we’re done with white,” says David. “Now it’s all about colour!” The main living room is painted in Banana Dream II by Dulux, a joyful yellow that sets the tone for the rest of the house. A portrait of Brighton beach artist Rory McCormack by Thierry Bal sits above the fireplace, a nod to David’s long-running Keepers Project documenting self-taught artists and outsider environments.

Bright textiles and personal curios, from the couple’s adventures around the world, punctuate every corner along with generous tropical planting. Africa-print cushions from McCully & Crane are mixed with those by Fine Cell Work, a charity supporting rehabilitation through prison needlework. A vase once used as a battery acid jar sits alongside a framed childhood photo of Steven in a nightie. “Almost everything in this house has a story,” he says. The house is filled with David and Steven’s signature mix of high and low, sentimental and strange, everywhere there are objects filled with narratives.

A papier-mâché clown’s head from a Barcelona shop, a monkey’s jacket and a prayer plaque, once said to be owned by Warren Ellis of The Bad Seeds. “We like things that are curious, or odd. Our collection is full of surprises and not all of them are pretty,” David laughs. “One of Steven’s Christmas presents to me was a foetus-shaped paperweight.”
The dining room walls are painted in Rosie Posie by Earthborn, a warm pink that complements the restored brick fireplace. A buffalo skull above the mantelpiece was gifted in exchange for picture-framing favours, and a Scottie Wilson teapot, found in a charity shop for £5, adds a burst of mid-century eccentricity.

A tall Victorian cabinet was rescued from a film prop company, while the midmod chairs, from Funkin Junk interiors, hang on pegs – designed by Antony Gormley for the Homebase × Tate millennium project – when not in use. “We love pieces with a past and we love to mix periods, from 19th to 20th century,” Steven says. “Dark furniture might not be fashionable, but we think it’s beautiful.” There are framed Poole Pottery plates, silver vases from early-2000s Habitat, and artwork features across most bare walls. Lithographs by Jean Dubuffet and Sister Corita Kent (the ‘pop art nun’) mingle with discarded photos found on the streets of New York and Chicago.

The house may be historical, but its layout has been reimagined for modern life. “We both work from home, so flow, external light and comfort were all key elements in our design and decoration,” says Steven. What was once a dark second bedroom is now a bright office, with views over the High Street and East Hill, painted in Parmesan by Graphenstone, a shade also used on the stairwell. The desk is from Vitsœ, the cushion from Aboriginal Contemporary in Sydney, a souvenir from Steven’s year living there in 2010.

At the back of the house is the galley kitchen, previously damp, filthy and windowless. Now it is a light-drenched room, tiled in mustard and white Spanish-style geometric ceramics and softened with vintage orange glass lampshades from 1950s Germany. Functional free-standing metal shelving and a low level pine chest of drawers allows the light to flow through from the glazed back door and window, which also – like the office above – gives the house fabulous views over the heart of the Old Town to its rear.

Outside a small garden – which, due to the elevation of the house is actually a first floor roof terrace – is packed with tropical and seasonal plants, that mirror the soft planting to the front of the house. To the front of the house, on part of Swan Terrace’s communal lawned area, the neighbours regularly host drinks parties. “We love the sense of community here,” says Steven. “We briefly lived in Folkestone and before that Brighton and we really love the feeling that we are part of a group of like-minded people here, it’s fabulous and it was a huge pull on why we initially bought the house. It’s going to be something that we will miss,” adds David, now the couple are considering a move.

Upstairs in the bathroom, the walls are painted Nancy’s Blushes by Farrow & Ball, the floor in Kidney Bean by Dulux, the colours juxtaposed with the vintage green bath and pedestal sink. “The first night we moved in, David went to have a bath,” Steven recalls. “The previous owner had omitted to tell us the bath was broken and the whole thing cracked under him and water began pouring through the ceiling into the dining room.” The former scalloped edge 1980s bath was quickly replaced with a vintage cast iron bathtub salvaged from a hotel in Northumbria, an ordeal involving multiple people, a dismantled banister, and the discovery that the staircase wasn’t actually attached to the wall! A bedroom to the front of the house continues the stylish colour palette combination of pink and green.

While David and Steven’s restoration of the upstairs is striking, it’s the underground space that has captured the public imagination. Home to one of Hastings’ oldest surviving road surfaces, original gas lamp pipes and the entirely intact vaulted spaces where the coaches would have been parked, this is not your typical cellar. “The coach house beneath the terrace is on the 1750 plan of the town,” David explains. “And the back wall may well be medieval, we think it supported the terrace of the church garden.”

Over the last three years, more than a thousand people have visited the Swan Avenue cellar during various open days and one Facebook post alone generated 35,000 likes and comments. “People are fascinated,” David says. “We’ve had historians, authors and visitors whose ancestors worked at the Swan Hotel.” Though they no longer host open days, free private visits can still be arranged by email (any donations support the ongoing preservation of the space). “We’re fundraising for a 3D digital scan,” Steven explains.

“The space is not listed, so we want to document it, in case the next owner decides to tank the entire basement and turn it into a huge home office or gym!”
For now, the couple are busy playing with the idea of turning their highly individual cellar into a subterranean garden. Ferns planted in two newly opened light wells on the roof terrace above have already doubled in size, and David is experimenting with underground planting and grow lights. “It’s spectacularly bonkers,” Steven grins, “but it feels right. I can imagine Monty Don paying us a visit soon!”

Though Steven and David are considering their next move, they’re in no rush. “We’re not desperate to leave, we love this house,” Steven says. “We just want more space for overnight guests, now we have turned the spare room into an office, and it would be nice to have bigger garden as we do love gardening – above, as well as below ground!” Wherever they go, it’s clear that history, humour and a flair for storytelling will follow the couple. “We’ve always been drawn to homes with a bit of mystery,” David adds. “This one just happened to have 18th-century cobbles buried underneath it.”