Hastings has always had a strong community of creatives. Susan and Sam Pearson, who stumbled across Hastings as their new home in 2016, were thrilled to find a thriving community of designers and writers waiting for them, some they knew already, many they have met since they moved. The couple happened upon the town following a throwaway suggestion by a friend. “I did a bit of house snooping online,” says Susan, “so I could tell there were people like us here. The Jerwood (now Hastings Contemporary) had just opened and then we saw shops like vintage homeware store A.G. Hendy & Co in the Old Town and knew we could live here and we could find our ‘tribe’ in this end of East Sussex.”

The couple, who had moved from London to Brighton a couple of decades earlier, had relocated further down the coast to Devon. “It was lovely there, but we really felt it was time to come back to civilisation,” laughs Sam. “We cut our teeth on two properties down in Devon and were looking for a large undone property to convert, back in the South East.” Despite their initial reservations about the house, Susan – who had spent years in fashion working as a knitwear designer for luxury brands such as Max Mara – and Sam – who had been one of fashion’s most in-demand pattern cutters for several decades, including Saville Row and Nicole Farhi – decided to throw caution to the wind and make the move.

“It was the first house we saw and we initially thought it would be far too much work for us!” says Susan. “It was an absolute mess,” agrees Sam. “It had been used for multiple occupancy and had been literally carved up into bedsits, with stud walls butting up to windows and doors. We knew we had to strip it back to its bones before we could even begin to renovate it back to life.”

The house was full of rotten carpets and added partitions everywhere with extra showers and sinks, so the couple rolled up their sleeves and began work. “The first day we completed on the sale,” says Sam, “I walked in with a sledgehammer and took out all the stud walls so we could see what space we actually had, and then we drew up floor plans, and worked out how we could adapt it to make it back to a single residence, somewhere that we would like to live.”

The couple began work but then stopped during Covid and focused on the garden, before picking up the renovation in 2022. “Doing up houses has been a great new string to our creative bow,” says Susan. “Working in fashion for so long, when we turned our hand to renovating the period house in Devon, we found that we really enjoyed it. We designed something that people really wanted to live in, and so coming to Hastings we applied what we had learnt and just scaled it up.

We’ve been lucky that we chose a house that was in a great area, somewhere that is getting more and more fashionable. St Leonards is becoming the place to live and open a business. It’s quite exciting, it feels like Brighton did when we first moved there many years ago.”
Susan, who has since re-trained in kitchen design, is now developing her skills in interior design, moving away from fashion.

The kitchen, originally divided up into two bedrooms and a shower room, was completely opened up. “When we took out the old ground floor extension we found box bay footings at the back, so I took inspiration from other houses in the road to get an idea of what the house should look like. I knew I didn’t want to put in bifolds, I wanted to add cosiness and warmth, and we felt the glazed box bay was the way to do it. We were lucky to find some ex-display windows, and bought up as many as we could for a bargain price, unfortunately there was only one of many of the shapes, as they were ex-display, and so we had to buy the pair to it at the retail price. So one pair cost me £200 and the other one £2000!” laughs Susan.  

Luckily for the couple, whilst Susan has applied her fashion background to the design and aesthetics of the building, their secret weapon has been Sam, who has done the majority of the build himself. “When Brexit happened and then Covid, the cost of building materials went through the roof,” says Sam. “If we had used contractors, our entire budget would have been blown in a few weeks’ work. So, necessity meant that we had to do it ourselves. But we knew we could do it – we had done it in Devon, it was just now on a much bigger scale.” Susan believes that by doing the build themselves and going at a slower pace, they avoided making many mistakes, especially in terms of their aesthetic choices.

“At the beginning, I had ideas of painting everything white, with black framed Crittall windows and natural woods. However, I had to remember that I am a textile designer, I love colour, I love texture and also I have been in fashion long enough that I don’t follow trends, as I know too well that trends go out of fashion! So, in the end, I just went with what I love.” 
The fabulous ground floor kitchen is focused on a large handmade oak topped island.

Timber framed painted doors, Ercol bar stools and a wall of stunning limed oak door cabinets really set the tone for the rest of the house – part vintage finds, part bespoke joinery, part stylish high street adaptations and a lot of very hard graft. The antique oak doors that run down one wall were a discovery from eBay, which the couple then sandblasted and oiled.

They found the brass handles in the souk in Istanbul, the antique finger plates and rim locks were another eBay find and Sam created the beautiful bespoke interiors. “We took the door handles from our old Brighton house, via Devon, and brought them with us to Hastings, so they are very well travelled!” says Susan. The features on the doors give instant architectural period detail. The kitchen cabinets were from Wickes and then Sam adapted the units, the doors, the drawers, the skirting boards and kick boards, which is why the kitchen feels very far from something you might find in a brochure. A series of industrial overhead lights came from a shop in Devon which the couple had stored away for ages.

“We kept the sockets and the metal lighting conduits quite industrial to suit the lights. We were inspired by the local Hastings restaurant Half Man Half Burger,” says Sam. An old-fashioned phone sits on the wall and looks just perfect. Through the glazed doors of the newly rebuilt box bay is the garden that the couple have re-scaled, opened up and re-structured with gabions of smooth stones and new stairs. 
Susan and Sam opened up a structural wall between the kitchen and the adjacent room, allowing light to flow from the main room into the TV snug next door. Just enough has been kept to retain a sense of division between the two spaces and on a practical note, to allow the TV to be mounted on it.

“The TV snug was never a light room, so we went with a dark colour on the walls and the ceiling, with pops of pink to give some definition, “says Susan. “I think painting dark rooms a dark colour is the best way to handle them. I then asked Sam to make me some shutters, which he created from some oak Wickes kitchen doors, as it was a bit of a dark corridor outside and now it looks textural and warm, rather than cold and dark.”  

On the wall is grouped artwork, curated by Susan (which she has mirrored in many of the other rooms), including family pictures, illustrations and kimono sleeve textiles (given to the couple for their wedding) which have been framed and combined to beautiful effect. A comfy corner leather sofa is covered with a cacophony of textures that is continued on the floor with a bold red Qashqai rug that the couple originally bought in Brighton, the pair of which is now in the music room. 

Underfoot, a stunning limestone flooring offers a seamless flow from one room to the next, all across the ground floor. The patina within the fossilised limestone offers a subtle sense of pattern and, beneath the stone flooring, Sam has fitted an underfloor heating system that gently radiates heat. From the airy entrance hall, drenched in light from the original glazed doors, one is led off to a dining room, a utility room (packed with storage cupboards, which Susan laughs was mainly designed to take pieces of vintage kitchen and hardware from A.G. Hendy’s!) and a wonderfully elegant music room (as well as a chic downstairs loo). Susan and Sam were keen that the soaring ceilings were kept wherever possible to allow the Victorian dimensions of the house to sing. “Sadly a lot of the original ceiling detailing was lost in the last conversion, so we have chosen to add decorative vintage touches at eye level, so radiators, door handles, finger plates and switches have all been chosen with this in mind. We were very good customers of Authentic Reclamation in Stonegate,” agrees Sam. 
The couple have kept a similar grey tone in both the kitchen and in the dining room which is again drenched with light from the huge, glazed windows at the front of the house that have been dressed with simple white louvered wooden shutters. Overhead sit a series of Holophane lights which are industrial in feel like the kitchen and originally came from the Rolls Royce factory. These, like many items in the house, were sourced from one of the many antiques shops in nearby Norman Rd.

Next door to the dining room, the music room is an homage to Sam’s love of music. Wall hung guitars and a cabinet packed with vinyl set the tone. It’s most definitely a grown-up room with a rock’n’roll edge. Painted in Mylands Portcullis Marble Matt, Susan takes us on an aesthetic journey to Morocco (via Scotland). Underfoot is the pair of the Qashqai rug found in the TV room. Inlaid Moroccan wooden tables and a large Moroccan brass platter sit side by side patterned cushions and textural throws. It’s elegant, it’s sumptuous and yet it is cosy. In yet more beautifully curated frames sit more of Sam and Susan’s collections of illustrations, hand marbled papers and pieces of art given to them by friends and family over the years. “I had to be creative with the artwork in this house, I have so many walls so I can’t fill them with priceless pieces of art, so we have had to think outside of the box, and make artwork from books, illustrations and found pieces.” 
Underneath the wall of art sits a stunning tweed sofa and pair of stools which were made for the couple by an upholsterer they shared a studio with in Devon. “He wanted me to make him a three-piece suit, so I made him one in a Lovat tweed and then he upholstered our furniture in a similar tweed fabric from Johnstons of Elgin. Bizarrely enough our daughter, who is also a part time interior designer, chose the very same fabric for a chair in her house, I mean, what are the chances of that?” laughs Sam.

Another artist, Marc Heaton – who worked in the same studio in Devon as the couple – made the sculpture that sits on the console in the bay window, which fittingly for a music room, is made entirely from old piano keys. 
A very solid yet sweeping staircase, with its original wooden handrail (posts and finials) takes you effortlessly to the first floor via a large, glazed window, which Susan chose to paint in an oxblood to mirror the palette of the dark wood of the banisters. Upstairs there are two first floor bedrooms, a family bathroom and a studio space for the couple, packed with tailors’ dummies and pattern cutting tools that nod to Sam and Susan’s life in fashion.

“I have so much cashmere packed away, I really need to start making things, this house has taken up so much time, it will be wonderful to start again!” laughs Susan.  
The main bedroom suite has been painted in soft blue – Susan sources most of her paint from Little Greene and Mylands. The bedhead has been created with silk ikat fabrics that Susan bought online from Uzbekistan. The grey, white and burgundy pattern is subtly mirrored in the cushions, which are an Oscar de la Renta fabric, which were in turn inspired by Powys Castle’s tent room. A rug from the local auctioneers Bairstow and Hewett in Battle sits on the floor.

An Arts and Crafts style wooden bed frame from Liberty and a 2006 Stickley Mission School pair of wardrobes, offer pops of stylish hand-crafted timber. Black and white photographs from the turn of the 19th century by Karl Blossfeldt fill the wall. Above the head are Scandi-style pendant light shades seamlessly added, from Dunelm – high street and high end combined to perfect effect. 
The family bathroom painted in light bright white, features a tessellated style blue and grey geometric floor. A smart Crosswater shower enclosure and a Bayswater boat bath are matched with sinks from the Bath Store. Again, Susan has used old illustrations as the artwork in simple black frames that sit bold against the white of the walls. Louvered shutters, as with the floor below, keep the look consistent from one floor to the next – smart, crisp and stylishly functional. 
The pink guest bedroom on the same floor feels very different in style from the blue room and features dark wood Balinese furniture that the couple bought from Lombok which they have mirrored in a dark wood floor. “Although it’s pink,” says Susan, “we find men love this room. In fact ‘setting plaster’ pink like this used to be considered a masculine colour, it’s only recently in history that we think of pink being a feminine colour. I painted the fireplace in the oxblood primer and it looked so good that I kept it.” Susan has created a similar effect to the blue room, using ikat fabric panels to create the effect of a headboard. Three textural raffia pendant lamps, from Past Muster Trading on Kings Road in St Leonards, create a wonderful light feature, with silk flex looped above. An antique French mirror above the fireplace originally came from Swag in Brighton. “These fabric flowers,” says Susan, pointing to the beaded flowers on the mantelpiece, “I actually got from a dealer in London. They were designed to be used on graves as fake flowers, but I loved them so much, I bought a huge bag of them from her!” The side lamps were recently updated with Pooky ikat effect lampshades, and Sam painted wooden shutters to match the setting plaster walls, doors and skirting. Susan’s favourite interior trick being to paint up and over all in one flat colour.  

Work on the top floor bedroom revealed the original half-moon window. “It was UPVC when we bought the house, but luckily underneath was the old window which we rebuilt and re-glazed and it looks amazing!” says Susan who has used a gorgeous Welsh blanket on the bed. “I love Welsh woven blankets, as a designer I wish I could have an entire house of them!” she laughs. An adjoining wall has been partially opened to become a suite of rooms, allowing light to flow from the bedroom and window into an adjoining dressing room and shower room, which houses ‘Eastbourne’ pattern towels by another textile designer, Margo Selby.
Touches of the couple’s global travels are dotted around the room. A vintage luggage rack in the dressing room came from the same shop in Devon as the kitchen lights. Vintage finds have once again, as with the rest of the house, been married with some high street finds, this time lights from Ikea. Across the hall, which features a Moldovan rug, which Susan bought from Shop in Norman Road, is a children’s room the couple have created for their grandchildren, with a clever green scalloped canopy painted across the wall and ceiling. Susan has used Orla Kiely bedding, another well-loved textile designer. 
The house is packed with creative touches. Susan’s love of texture, colour and finding quirky decorative elements has been artfully combined with Sam’s incredible talent for joinery and building skill. Yes, it is always possible to buy a house, call in the builders and sit back and watch it happen around you. To do it the other way and live, work and breathe the complete re-development of a house – one that is entirely created by you, to your tastes – well that is something very different. The house, without question, has Sam and Susan’s individual touch and eye for style in every detail from top to bottom and for that they should be incredibly proud. “I feel like this chapter is now closed for us,” says Sam. “It took eight years and a lot of hard work but now, we need to move closer to our family in Yorkshire and the time feels right to go. I hope whoever buys the house will love it as much as we do, it really is a very special place to us, but now I would really like to sit back and enjoy my retirement, without having a sledgehammer in my hand!”

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Susan’s house blog can be followed on Instagram @victorian_fusion_remix