Thursday 3rd December 2009
I have to tell you – I’m just back from Delia’s book-signing at John Lewis. It all fits in. Absolute arch enemy of Angus Willis, my visit to whose demesne in Hastings I was telling you about on Tuesday. Delia will have to wait….although I’m bursting to reveal all.
So, back to Hastings, last Saturday. As you know, Poor Little Rich Gay life is nothing without builders. They must always be in, preferably under the command of Bruce MacBain. This summer, Edward Jasper, the bed-linen specialist, had an entire floor of his London home re-modelled just for the three-week visit of his mother.
All the same, nobody, but nobody has reached the heights of the non-Bruce-MacBain-employing, self-designing food stylist, photographer and writer, Angus Willis. After the charity shops and the junk shop last Saturday, I visited his Tudor house in Hastings for what must be the sixth or seventh time. Opera have been in progress for at least three years. Never before have 1200 square metres been so exhaustively and minutely remodelled. On purchase there was an Aga, a reasonable builders’ merchant kind of bathroom, carpets, expensive kitchen cupboards – perfectly habitable, 3-bedroom house.
Actually it was horrid. Nasty, somehow squalid, with all kinds of idiotic, despoiling modern alterations and additions carried out in what was intended to be the Tudor spirit – such as the kitchen cupboards, now I think of it.
So it was out, out, out, back to Tudor, no mod cons allowed unless as they would have been when first installed or beyond. So, bakerlite light switches, reclaimed bogs and basins, baths made out of sawn-up barrels, ancient cast-iron radiators. There is one modern lav, masquerading as the kind of rough-hewn bench (see graph) that might have last been seen in the communal craporium of a medieval monastery.
And so throughout, no new materials permitted, only reclaimed wood, second-hand bricks, lime plaster etc.
Now at last the house is nearing completion – maybe another year and Angus and Fergus’s friends the Sir Wilfred Selves will be able to come and stay. Sir Wilfred has already spent an improvised night on a lylo that got punctured. But you can see what it will be and that’s quite something. I know I’ve condemned nooky, wooky, beamy cotty cotts as the last word in non PLRG. Here is the exception. It is a rebirth. That which was contaminated and bastardised has been refound. The house is now ancient again and therefore new. This is the fight against death.
The only mild drawback is that the insane ward of Hastings hosp is now lined with all the plumbers, leccies, brickies, plasterers etc who have worked on the house.
But that is a small price to pay.
And, Angus, you’ll be thrilled to hear, has started the whole process all over again in a shop on the High Street, which I also inspected on Saturday.
So there’ll be no end to it.
Tudor Dining in Angus Willis's Tudor House in Hastings
The Sir Wilfred Self Bath in Angus Willis's Tudor House in Hastings
The Very Spot where Sir Wilfred Self lay in Angus Willis's Tudor House in Hastings
Medieval-style Craporium in Angus Willis's Tudor House in Hastings
Bakerlite Switches in Angus Willis's Tudor House in Hastings
£4000 door in Angus Willis's Tudor House in Hastings
Tudor Lav Cistern in Angus Willis's Tudor House in Hastings
Tudor Sink by Angus Willis for his Tudor House in Hastings
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Graph!!! Graph!!! Simply dying with anticipation..
Here they are!
Graphs galore. Such a relief.
You’ve got to admire the rigour with which the aesthetic has been carried through – almost achieving the Gay Mother look!
Tudor authenticity is so problematic. Even old fashioned light switches and radiators speak to us of modern convenience. There is only one solution: rip out all electrics and plumbing, and hire a team of Poor Little Poor Gays to make fires, fashion tallow candles and heave around wooden buckets of sewage.
How true! I hadn’t thought of that
I’m sure it will come to this in due
Oh God in Greece we have people trying to remake Akropolis houses, some want it so that they can have movies made in it.
Has Angus thought of giving Kevin McCloud a lunch?
We really must visit your country one day to look at the Poor Little Rich Gay aspect. But no moussaka, retsina or Greek salad, please
He gave Delia a lunch and she helped with the washing up but it was not as it seemed
I found the TV series called the Tudors very interesting, The costumes were great. Was the show an inspriration for the house?
I must ask Angus Willis. I rather doubt it. He only watches ‘I’m a Celebrity Get Me out of Here’
Incisive as ever Laura!
Dennis Severs inventor of 18 Folgate Street and pioneer of Spittalfields reinvention did exactly that….no light switches or radiators for him, was he also a pioneer PLRG?
So thrilled to hear from a headless queen. Perhaps it is the Highest Queenaria for the home never to be complete. Val’s maisonette at West Norwood (local station known as West Norwood International after night-train to Paris once seen roaring through) was always going to have an enfilade rooms with upholstered walls and double doors connecting, but for 14 years you went round, perched on a hard chair and the tablecloth was newspaper.
For somewhere that’s the height of queenaria, it seems remarkably short of queenly comforts. It doesn’t look like it will be clean until at least 2013 and possibly not ready for members of even the lower aristocracy for several decades. Sir Wilfred is, as we know, a great adventurer. The fact that he laid his head there is no indication that we gentlefolk can do likewise.