What would the Georgian terrace house in Doughty Street, Holborn be without the legacy of Charles Dickens’ residence there (and his actual writing desk…)? The grey stone Yorkshire parsonage that was home to the Brontë sisters would be a pretty country residence, but the lingering energies of those extraordinary siblings raises it to another level entirely.

Archer Lodge in St Leonards is just one of those houses. Whilst not (yet) world famous, its charm and spirit are entirely down to the creative dreams and ambitions of a group of actors, musicians, engineers and composers who have come together to live there, creating something that is so very much more than the sum of its parts. The house is its residents and the unique energy that emanates from this sprawling red tile-hung Sussex-vernacular villa, in the heart of suburban St Leonards, is like nothing else you will have experienced. It is a collaborative commune with respect, creative endeavour and a love of words at its very heart.

Built in the 1890s by local Sussex architect Charles Archer Pigott as a show home for his Arts & Crafts inspired architectural language, the house’s ambitions in both scale and drama seem to have been tailor-made for the group of current co-owners that comprise the theatrical company Explore the Arch. The name is a witty play on both the name of the house and the traditional proscenium arch, which is so notably absent from theatrical productions produced here. Add in exploring and the name encapsulated what they do.

They take ideas and words, fashioning kernels from the cultural ether, looking around themselves and at the world in which they live, and create something within their home and present it to the world outside. Throwing open their doors and blurring the normally defined edges of what we consider private and public space, family and community, the real and the imagined, the theatrical and the every day.

Walking into the house on a glorious sunny seaside summer morning, the first thing you hear is music. Not the usual banging bass that has become the backdrop to our everyday urban lives, at Archer Lodge it’s the sound of a violin, a recorder, a flute.

The elegant notes seem to tumble from an open upstairs window, setting the tone for a journey through a house that is individual, inspirational and completely organic.

Later I stumble across the source of this angelic sound and find a room crammed with five teenagers, practising for a forthcoming performance at Cecil Sharp House in London, not an iPhone or game of Fortnite between them.

Folk-inspired music fit to stir the soul and, no doubt, the audiences that attend Archer Lodge for the series of multi-disciplinary performances that Explore the Arch produce each year.

Archer Lodge is situated on a wide leafy avenue in St Leonards, near the very aptly named Bohemia Road. Like walking into the pages of an Esther Freud novel, it is words and books that are the backbone of this home-come-creative-space – indeed you enter it under an arch of books, apparently suspended in mid-air.

Taking me on a tour of the house is Gail Borrow, one of the founders of the company, along with engineer Paul Beadle and composer Vladimir Miller. A further cast of writers, artists, performers and, of course, musical teenagers appear and disappear as the house welcomes like-minded individuals from around the world.

However, any sense of hierarchy or traditional domestic structures are firmly left at the large front door, under that book arch which feels like the house is beckoning you into a world that has been re-imagined by this inspiring group of creative explorers and literary adventurers.

Gail explains to me that the dramatic space Pigott created in Archer Lodge was the first thing that attracted them all to it. The sense of over-scale and of the building’s elegant grandeur perfectly lends itself to welcoming the public into its rooms. A generous hallway, decorated with a period Sanderson bird motif wallpaper and slate grey floor leads to two huge reception rooms and a large garden, all of which have been employed as stages in this very stage-less theatre experience.

It was, explains Gail, also the feeling of light and shade, the juxtapositions so loved by the theatre, which also lured them in. The darker hallway and West Room, which doubles up as the foyer and meeting room, are the antithesis of the sun-drenched East Room, terrace and garden all of which are saturated with light.

The sense of the darkness in the hall is further exaggerated by two large hand-painted canvases featuring the words of nineteenth century Welsh travel writer Richard Fenton. A water clock made by Frank Roper in the 1980s, the former vice principal of Cardiff College of Art, adding another intruiging distraction.

Another element that pulled the company all the way from Waterloo, where they had been based, living in separate flats, was the grid patterns in the original Victorian cornicing of the major ground-floor reception rooms. The company, who perform around four or five experiential productions a year in the house and its grounds, employ the ceiling grids for their props and staging.

Using skills Gail learnt from study of Javanese Wayang Golek puppetry tradition and through time with Australian shadow puppeteer Richard Bradshaw, after she left the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, objects appear to float, attached to strings that intricately connect the dado rails and ceilings. Inspired by scenes or words from the books from which they are performing, the individual props and words, made entirely from found materials, are dropped and rotated as demanded by each performance.

Around the house are elements left from their previous productions. Little paper puppets sit on hall chairs and the white nightshirts of Dickens’ Great Expectations Pip and his deceased siblings flutter at the tall landing window.

More remnants from the recent performance inspired by analysis of that classic Dickens work, entitled The House of Mrs Joe, which focused on the world of sister/mother figure of Mrs Joe Gargery, are scattered across the East Room. Dustpan brushes and an empty window frame, made from card, hang from strings, like birds hovering above your head. A large metal anvil sits in the centre of the room whilst musical instruments dot the edges.

As productions come and go, Gail explains, so does the furniture, much of which is sourced from local antiques dealers such as Teddy Tinker’s, Kings Road Antiques, La Marette Brocante and Grand Designs, all in St Leonards. You don’t get the sense that any objects or pieces of furniture become permanent fixtures in Archer Lodge. They are simply elements of the next production.

Gail and I take a seat at one of a series of long weathered wooden tables on the large terrace outside which were once the set for another production, The House of The Man Who Painted The Sea, inspired by Bulwer-Lytton’s 1830 novel, Paul Clifford.

The terrace overlooks the garden in which the company have created a series of outdoor rooms, which are used for rehearsals. Sofas and chairs are planted in little vignettes, as hidden walkways invite you to take a moment to sit still, take stock and contemplate life.

Back in the house Gail explains that the kitchen, filled with re-purposed antique cabinets, including one that is still lined with the newsprint from the Yorkshire Post of 1885, might have to soon give way to a new disabled bathroom for audience members.

“Where will the kitchen go?” I ask.

Gail smiles and shrugs, “No idea!”

It’s like that at Archer Lodge, there is no grand plan, things just seem to happen as and when they should, in a manner which seems entirely fitting.

Beginning to take shape in an upstairs bedroom known at the library, is the company’s Christmas performance. The House of Circus is being created from the Smart circus family archive with descendent and visual artist Greg Smart great-grandson of Billy himself. Magnificent vintage Billy Smart Circus posters line the walls.

In another bedroom are the initial words and ideas for the company’s August show, The House After Windrush, inspired by the book Lovers & Strangers: An Immigrant History of Post-war Britain by Clair Willis and Stories from Blue Latitudes: Caribbean Women Writers at Home and Abroad by Elizabeth Nunez and Jennifer Sparrow.

Most importantly perhaps, the performance will feature the words of Michael Braithwaite, a member of the Windrush generation whose story was one of the first about the recently revealed scandal to appear in the Guardian.

Fired up by the political situation unfolding every day, Gail explains how the company has been inspired by real life, art and literature for the performance which is set to open on August 6 and will run for two weeks.

The company, who were behind the successful Easter festival ATownExploresABook18, located in and around St Leonards, will also be opening their doors to the forthcoming first Hastings Literary Festival (31 August – 2 September).

Explore the Arch will be running a one-day Creativity workshop taking the idea of words and developing them throughout the day as a kind of Chinese whispers experiment showing how words can metamorphose and transform from group to group and person
to person.

In 2018 there aren’t many towns in the UK where a large Victorian villa could avoid the siren call of the property developer. So one can only celebrate that in St Leonards this large building has not become a faceless care home, or flat conversion and instead has remained intact, enabling a community of artists and actors to live out their dreams by the sea.

Blurring the boundaries between life, work, art and theatre, reality and imagination, Archer Lodge and its inhabitants bring life to the true meaning of bohemian. And long may it continue.