Surrey Homes | SH57 | July 2019 | Summer supplement inside

Above: A mezzanine provides an office space and seating
area above the kitchen Left: One of the children’s bedrooms
space, but luckily it slotted in to the millimetre.”
And it looks like it’s always been there, with lockers
containing different-sized bowling shoes and old cinema
seats to sit on to put them on completing the scene. The
fairground attraction effect of the bowling lane’s clown face
is set off by other items around the space, including a huge
neon sign saying ‘Carnival’ – by the late neon artist and
designer Chris Bracey, who owned Gods Own Junkyard
in London – over the double doors and a basketball hoop
arcade game. “Sol gave that to me one Christmas,” says
Laurie, “because I used to play netball at county level.”
It’s impossible not to have a go on it – or in my case,
about 500, because it’s so addictive – and then it seems
the most natural thing in the world to shuffle over to the
vintage shuffleboard table and have a few games of that.
Shuffleboard is an old pub game, like a miniature
version of curling, where you slide pucks along a
sanded wood surface and try and reach the highest
score level, while knocking off your opponent’s puck.
Photographer, David Merewether was much
better at it than me, but that didn’t put me off
trying and we had to tear ourselves away from these
distractions and remind ourselves we were there to
do a job. After a very short while at The Bath House
it is easy to understand how apt that carnival sign is.
It would be hard to imagine a better party house.
Adding to the convivial mood is the dining table
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