Wealden Times | WT188 | October 2017 | Kitchen & Bathroom supplement inside

This page: Part of the St. Benedict
experience is breakfast in the dining
room just across the hall from the
drawing room, resplendent with
green and gold Watts of Westminster
wallpaper and a crystal chandelier,
served in silver chafing dishes in the
English country house manner
period of the house, from the rich red wallpaper, polished mahogany
furniture and Holophane-shade chandelier, to the taxidermy, specimens
under glass domes, brass-potted aspidistras and grandfather clock.
Taken separately none of those items are rare; indeed they’re particularly
widely available in the plethora of excellent antique and junk emporia
in St Leonards and neighbouring Hastings. And it wasn’t even the
concentration of so many of them together that made such an impression.
What struck me, as the lady who’d answered the door in a cook’s apron
– adding another layer of otherworldliness to the experience – led me
through a green baize door (complete with brass studs) and down to the
kitchen, was that there were no visible signs of any other century.
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