Angus Willis Home Store Opens in Hastings: Most Important Shop Opening in Recent Times «

Angus Willis Home Store Opens in Hastings: Most Important Shop Opening in Recent Times

Friday 17th February 2012

It is breathtaking: forget the Ivy, where I lunched on Wednesday with some career women just back from Barbados whose heads were excellently hard re: men. No sentimental nonsense. Forget even the Alice Temperley Show tomorrow, with Cinnamon Club after; forget the Harry Rollo perf tonight; forget (unimaginable) Robert Nevil in the gloved clasp of Majesty on Tuesday (she was in pistachio). Forget Götterdämmerung !

The Angus Willis Home Store, Hastings!

Exactly… words do not fail, they have no place.

The Graph is to feature over 3 pages: this is quite simply the most important store opening in decades.

Four years ago Angus Willis bought a perfectly appalling property in Hastings High Street – Georgian but twee-ified and rendered pustular with moisture-retaining blue fur carpet. And now….how has he done it? A complete transformation and as always with any Angus Willis interior, everything absolutely right.

The feeling is 1950s ironmonger but reaching further back to the 1890s, a coal-fire: almost Beatrix Potter: a shop in a home. Bare wood, racing green and chocolate, doors bashed up cream straight from the reclaimers’ yard banish any hint of story-book prettiness. But really, there’s nothing like it. It’s unique. In fact, illiteracy is called for: it’s completely and utterly and totally unique.

You can shop there too! I bought tea-towels, a wire-brush, 12 church candles for £22.50, a bath plug, and a milk jug for £37.50. At last I can style plastic milk bottles off my breakfast table. It’s taken 36 years to achieve. If you wanted you could get a whole set of Beryl or Denby ware. Angus offers one-off vintage: sets of china, furniture, linens, glass, garden implements, manly tools, as well as steady lines. Everything for the home.

A gay couple bought an old alarm clock while I was there for £140. The one who picked it out had a breakdown when Angus demonstrated its ring, but the other one drove the purchase through and gave their day shape and meaning.