Surrey Homes | SH50 | December 2018 | Health & Beauty supplement inside

Above left: A tiled entrance porch leads out to the garden, with a bandstand-style summerhouse Above right: The lamp was made
from a 1920s candlestick, bought in LA and likely to be from a Hollywood film set. The lilies are from Shimizu Flowers in Hastings
which look as if they have always been there.
‘We scoured salvage yards and antique shops in St Leonards,
Hastings Old Town, Brighton, Bexhill and Lewes looking
for period appropriate fixtures and fittings,’ says Paul.
Partly built into a sandstone cliff with views across
picturesque St Leonards Gardens (also designed by the
Burtons), The Clock House is a stone’s throw from
the sea and the cool shopping hub of Norman Road,
where Kim has her boutique Siren, sellling Hollywood
vintage clothing and her own designs, although it
feels like it’s in the depths of the countryside.
The main entrance, situated on Maze Hill, sets the scene
and gives a taste of what’s to come in the rest of this fairytale
home. The jaw-droppingly beautiful hallway is complete
with two impressive painted religious statues, originally from
a Catholic convent in Ireland, draped theatrically with fake
fur stoles and adorned with antique crowns. Like patron
saints of The Clock House, they now welcome visitors.
‘It took four men to move the figures,’ says Paul. ‘They were
so heavy that once they arrived in the hall, they never left!’
Stripped and polished wooden floorboards and vintage
decorative wallpaper, offset an enviable collection of religious
iconography, including over-sized brass church candlesticks
and carved crucifixes and an organ, a Christmas present from
Kim to Paul.
‘At Halloween, we throw the front door wide open
for trick or treaters and I play the theme from The
Addams Family.’ A gilded nave-style ceiling and a
brass sanctuary lamp, complete with candles, cast a
golden glow that continues throughout this floor.
Unusually, the entrance hall leads directly into the master
bedroom, a gorgeously glittering boudoir of a room, which
Kim refers to as ‘my own mini-Versailles’. Imagine if Marie
Antoinette and cartoonist Charles Addams, creator of
The Addams Family, joined forces as interior designers...
The Denmans’ interior style is cinematic, Gothic and
palatial, all at the same time, with the surreal atmosphere
of Jean Cocteau’s 1946 film, La Belle et la Bête.
It’s difficult to know what to look at first when you
enter the ‘apartment’, which boasts a bedroom, sitting
room and an ensuite bathroom. It’s literally dripping
with delicious decorative and desirable objets,
surrey-homes.co.uk
86