Wealden Times | WT203 | January 2019 | Interiors supplement inside

Previous page: The main living area. Above: Looking down into the double-level living area from the glass mezzanine
Back in 2011, when Ian and Lisa decided to make the
move from Tunbridge Wells to Hastings, they had
an offer accepted on an old pub which they hoped
to convert into a house. But a bad survey put paid to that.
“I was standing in the street on a rainy day with the
survey in my hands feeling miserable, when I looked
up and saw a ‘for sale’ sign outside Bourne Hall, a
1930s Wesleyan Chapel. I thought oooh...”
Ian, who worked as a chartered surveyor for 25 years,
explains why he fell in love with this landmark building in the
heart of Hastings Old Town. ‘I love big spaces. As a surveyor I
specialised in shopping centres, I could walk into an old shop
and immediately work out how to cut and carve the space up.’
He’d worked with Tunbridge Wells architect Michael
Winter on a previous project and knew he was the
man for this job. Ian’s next task was to persuade the
planners that the hall could be turned into three luxury
townhouses of roughly 2,000 square feet each.
55 wealdentimes.co.uk