Wealden Times | WT233 | October 2021 | Kitchen & Bathroom supplement inside

Along the East Sussex and Kent coast some of the
country’s greatest military landmarks make their mark,
from the hulking masonry of the Martello towers to
twenty-eight miles of Royal Military canal. But if you ever
wondered where some of the country’s greatest engineering
projects were planned, well that would have been at 57 High
Street, Hastings, by one Lieutenant-General Sir John Moore.
Moore’s Georgian house, that once provided the backdrop
to this pivotal time in history, has itself seen many guises:
a furniture shop, a delicatessen and food shop and student
digs. When the Grade II listed building went up for sale
in 2018 – in a slightly sorrier state than Moore had left it
three hundred years before – the owners of Porters wine
bar next door, George and Charlotte Rendall, couldn’t
help themselves. “I had my eye on the property for years,”
says George. “When it finally came on the market, I knew
it would be a great place for a bed and breakfast.”
Re-christened, re-furbished and re-purposed, the building,
now called Moore House Hastings, has been completely
transformed by George and Charlotte into a fabulous new
B&B, although the term bed and breakfast falls somehow short
of what Charlotte and George have created. Where once there
was an unloved and, in parts entirely derelict space, rapidly
falling victim to the elements with holes in the roof, pigeons
as guests and water pouring down the walls, is now a space
of which the Old Town can be proud. Under the couple’s
Previous pages & below: Half of the double reception room, set
at the back of the building, houses the soft seating area. Charlotte
has not shied away from pattern: two different colourways of
the same Borastapeter Korallang wallpaper lines the walls here
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