There are certain homes that reveal themselves slowly, room by room, object by object. As every great interior designer says, it’s all about the layering. That sense that an interior’s narrative, created over time, offers something far more personal and far more interesting than anything that could have been achieved in a single sweep of a designer’s hand. Patrick McAleenan’s duplex apartment in St Leonards-on-Sea is all about telling his stories, offering a home at last, for someone who has spent a life travelling and collecting. 

Set within a handsome 1850s building, just a short walk from the seafront and the uber cool Kings Road, packed with hip restaurants and interior boutiques, Patrick’s maisonette is the kind of place that you instantly settle into. It is colourful and considered, layered with art, and softened by cushions and throws plus several enormous, well-tended houseplants. It is a home lit with the quality of light that only a coastal town can offer, but, more than anything, it feels earned. Because for Patrick, who moved here from London four and a half years ago, this is not simply a home, it is the culmination of a life lived largely on the move.

“I’d lived in twelve different places in London,” he says, leaning against the kitchen island where, he cheerfully admits, he does most of his work. “I always rented. I just got to a stage where I wanted to finally buy before I was fifty and I thought: I can opt for a little shoe box in London, or I can move somewhere I actually want to be.” That somewhere turned out to be St Leonards, discovered mid-winter on a reconnaissance trip that he was careful to time deliberately. “It’s better to do it that way,” he says. “If you love it in the cold and the grey, you know it’s real.”

Patrick came to the area with a journalist’s eye and a former stylist’s instinct, both honed across a career that has ranged from fashion magazines (he started out as an assistant at GQ in the late nineties) through decades in PR working for premium spirits and lifestyle brands to event production and, more recently, a return to lifestyle writing for publications including The Times. 

When Patrick first arrived, he was focused on acquiring a flat in one of Decimus Burton’s iconic white stucco villas, but after being outbid on four of them, he pivoted and started to look in a more wider sense at what he wanted his home to feel like, and gained a willingness to wait until the right place appeared. After a year of searching, the apartment, close to Warrior Square train station (perfect for his weekly trips back up to London) appeared. Owned by a property developer, who had meticulously renovated it with good quality finishes, Patrick moved quickly. “I went to see it and I just knew,” he says. He finally moved to the East Sussex seaside in February 2022 and has not looked back since.

The flat spans two floors and the light-drenched living room, which is open plan off the airy kitchen, is the space that does most of the talking. A deep rust and red rug by Moroccan brand Beni Rugs anchors the space, providing the chromatic foundation from which everything else radiates. Furniture from Soho Home sits alongside a stylish contemporary green velvet sofa, a modular piece by Australian brand King, chosen specifically because it could be delivered in sections through the front door (after two previous sofas failed to fit).

The heroes of the room are a pair of stunning low orange velvet chairs sourced from Sideshow Interiors in St Leonards. These, Patrick explains with evident delight, are 1970s Broyhill originals from a Malibu home, acquired at auction by the dealers. “Everybody who comes here ends up sitting in those chairs,” he says. “My nephews and nieces fight over who gets to sit in them!”

Contemporary art is central to Patrick’s vision for this home, and the story of how it came to fill these walls is at the heart of Patrick’s wider relationship with St Leonards. Shortly after moving in, he bought a painting online through Artfinder and discovered, when the artist made contact to arrange delivery, that she lived locally. Her name is Julia Swaby, and her large, atmospheric piece now hangs in the living room, the first of several works he has acquired from her.

The friendship has since sparked a growing fascination with the area’s creative community. “I realised there were all these really good artists here,” he says. “I’d walk past Tim Nathan’s studio on London Road every day because he had this incredible gold horse sculpture in the window. One day I just knocked on the door. It was twenty thousand pounds! I didn’t buy that,” he laughs. “But he invited me in for tea and I bought a beautiful equestrian piece instead. It’s upstairs in the main bedroom now.”
That impulse, to seek out, connect with and champion the makers and creatives working along the South Coast has since become something more formal. Earlier this year Patrick launched South Coast Stories, a PR platform operating as an agency for local independent businesses and artists who have the quality to attract national attention but rarely the budgets to pursue it. “There’s this real independent spirit here,” he says. “I kept meeting founders, makers, craftspeople, all well known locally, but all with nationally-PR-able brands.” 

Back in the living room, every surface yields something worth looking at. Norman Stewart Clark vases, made by a ceramicist now in his eighties who no longer takes commissions, sit beside Murano glass pieces collected on work trips to Italy. A photograph from a shoot Patrick art directed during his years producing events and handling PR for a Philippine rum brand has been blown up and sits behind the two armchairs. Indeed, it is one of the first things you notice when you walk in. Robert Sample, another local artist whose studio is around the corner, contributes a large dark portrait that provokes what Patrick describes as “a very Marmite reaction” from visitors. He is sanguine about this. “I think it’s very meditative,” he says. The coffee table holds stacks of books and magazines. Patrick was an obsessive reader of fashion titles and has simply redirected that habit toward interiors magazines. The plants, two enormous monsteras from Made & Merchant, grown from small specimens that he carried home, now reach towards the ceiling. 

The kitchen was largely already in place when Patrick bought the property. Marble-style worktops, simple wooden cabinetry all with a satisfying sense of proportion. Patrick has added only what was needed including the green metro tiles behind the sink, a decision made with the same instinct for colour that runs through the whole flat. Above the sink, three photographs, including one by a friend Patricia Niven, acquired during the COVID lockdown, from a photography sale, create a quirky, conversation-starter gallery. A striking ceramic horse sculpture, by the maker duo Ostinelli & Priest, sits alone on a shelf, a considered move by Patrick, who instantly knew the piece had found its home there. 
Much of the furniture, both here and in the bedrooms upstairs, comes from a mix of Made.com, Pooky and British craftsman Tom Raffield whose steam-bent wood pieces occupy a particular place in the contemporary British design landscape. Benches and lighting are all Raffield pieces, acquired gradually by Patrick and placed with a quiet confidence. The work of other local makers and craftspeople are woven throughout the flat in a similar way, with prints and photographs across the walls in the bathrooms and the landing areas as well as the stunning walk-in wardrobe, that mysteriously glints with colourful sequins, as well as a mix of soft cashmere and velvet. It is Patrick’s homage to Sex & The City’s Carrie Bradshaw and was built by local carpenter Wayne Chapelwood over a single weekend while Patrick was away. “I was excited the whole time I was travelling, that I knew I was coming home to it,” he says. Throughout the property, Patrick has tried to work with local makers as much as possible. The California style shutters, across most of the two floors of windows, were made by a husband-and-wife team based in Eastbourne, whilst the burnt orange velvet full length curtains in the main bedroom came from a mother-and-daughter business with a showroom tucked behind West St Leonards. A collection of stylish candle holders and Murano glass pieces have been discovered around the many local antiques shops that surround Patrick’s home.

Throughout the flat, the accumulation feels neither accidental nor over-thought. It is a home that has been assembled over time, revised and refined and added to as circumstances allowed. Patrick is clear on this point. “I haven’t bought anything new for a year and a half,” he says. “At some stage you have to stop and just be in it,” he pauses. “I waited a long time for this. All my brothers bought properties twenty years ago, so when I finally bought this place my family were so happy! They could finally stop worrying that I would never settle down. My mum was so pleased she bought me the two fantastic paintings in the landing by a Northern Irish artist called Connor Maguire. They both have landscapes close to where I used to go on holiday as a child, so they are filled with memories.”
And that is exactly what Patrick has done. He has settled down and created a home that is both warm and individual, full of things that mean something and arranged in a way that makes you want to look more carefully. Friends, Patrick says, come and invariably discover something they had not noticed before. “There’s always that moment when someone goes, ‘How did I not see that before?’” he laughs. “I kind of like that. This place is a bit of a journey of discovery. I get excited coming home,” he says. “Every time I go away, I just love it. It really is a sanctuary.”
For Patrick McAleenan, a man who has lived in twelve flats, worked in six industries, travelled the world for work and arrived in St Leonards on a grey winter’s day knowing almost no one, the timing, as in all things, turned out to be exactly right and finally he has found his forever home. 

Address Book:
Find out more at southcoaststories.com and on Instagram @southcoaststories