Surrey Homes | SH57 | July 2019 | Summer supplement inside

Above: A fairground coconut shy sign is mounted above the kitchen sink, and a painted metal spiral staircase leads up to an office space
to the advertisement from an 1864 newspaper, that Laurie
Parker has had enlarged and framed in one of the bathrooms.
But its policy to have a ladies’ day (as also stated in the ad)
proved too scandalous for the bourgeoisie of Victorian St
Leonards and it didn’t last very long in that incarnation.
Sold to a local girls’ school, they added a whole new wooden
vaulted structure at the back to house a swimming pool. In
the 1920s, the pool was boarded over and the space became
first a spiritualist church and then, after the local parish
church was bombed in WW2, a Church of England one,
where many marriages, christenings and funerals took place.
A couple who got married there in the 1950s, now in their
nineties, have knocked on the door since Laurie and Sol
have been in residence. (Oh, to have seen their faces…)
The Bath House’s last pre-Parker family role was as a glass
factory, making the specialist vessels for laboratories. By
the time Laurie and Sol first viewed the place in 2013, the
factory was long closed down, although all the stock and
machinery was still there. With trees growing through it.
But even getting to that viewing was a challenge, as Laurie
explains – and all the more extraordinary that they kept
going, considering they had visited Hastings only once, when
they started on their marathon Bath House journey.
“We came down from London and walked the dogs on
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