Mad as a March hare
In 2022 I purchased Romney Bay House, a small hotel sitting all alone on a sand dune in Littlestone overlooking the sea, everyone thought I was mad, including my wife ….
Thanks to Putin invading Ukraine, the cost of living crisis and more recently the war going on in Iran, I decided to put the restoration project on hold until I felt either a) mad enough to start or b) certain we could turn this remarkable building into something truly special.
Peeping thought the keyhole
Well, as some of you know we’ve recently started work on the house. This is both exciting and terrifying in equal measure and almost certainly confirms I am as mad as a March hare.
I thought rather like Alice, in Wonderland, you might also like to take a peep through the keyhole and this is the first of many updates that I will be sharing.
Because this is the starting point I thought I should share with you some of the history of this extraordinary house, which has helped direct our vision to restore it and the way we want to run it.
A Hollywood cast of characters
Long before it was ours, the house belonged to a small cast of extraordinary characters – some well documented, others less so.
What we’ve found so far is fascinating; what we haven’t found yet is, in some ways, even more interesting, and that’s where we’re hoping some of you might be able to help – more about that later.
A house built on the edge of England
Littlestone on Sea sits at a wild and beautiful corner of shingle and sand on the Kent coast.
Dungeness to the west and Hythe and the White Cliffs of Dover to the east. Behind lies the famous greens of Littlestone Golf club and in front the openness of the Channel.
The grand Victorian resort that never was
In the late nineteenth century, an entrepreneur named Henry Tubbs had a vision to turn Littlestone into a grand Victorian resort, complete with a pier that would have ranked among the longest in England and a landmark golf course, still very much here.
The pier never happened; a water tower he commissioned drew water too salty to use and with it his Littlestone dreams went down the plug hole.
Fantastical inspirations
Then along popped up our house. It was designed and built in the 1920s by Sir Clough Williams-Ellis, one of the most distinctive architects of his generation.
Williams-Ellis is famous as the creator of Portmeirion, the fantastical Italianate village on the North Wales coast (later made famous as the setting for The Prisoner) and for many of the ornate, classically inspired ‘follys’ that adorn the parklands of so many grand country houses.
He was knighted in 1972 for his services to architecture and the preservation of the British countryside and its grand houses – he believed passionately that these should be preserved for future generations and was actively involved in the birth of the National Trust.
This is why we feel so strongly in getting the restoration right.
Who was it built for?
For a long time, the house was popularly said to have been built for Hedda Hopper, the American actress and later famously acid-tongued Hollywood gossip columnist (that’s her laughing in the image to the side) – a story that made its way into the guidebooks and many articles online.
It’s an appealing story, but not correct (although we are still trying to pick together her connection with the house – probably as a guest).
The house was designed and commissioned by Mrs Margaret Ethel Bray.
Billy Elliot fame
She was born the eldest of six children to Sir John Storey Barwick, a tremendously ambitious (and wealthy) self-made northern industrialist who married the daughter of Tyne and Wear shipbuilder George Short. He rose from a fitter at a colliery to become the director of a shipping company, steel and coal works, iron works, oil company and co-founded the Easington Colliery (of Billy Elliot fame).
Whilst we know a little about Margaret’s married status and the number of children she had we still don’t know much about Margaret Bray herself: who she was, and why she chose Williams-Ellis, not yet the famous figure he’d later become, to build her a house on an empty shingle beach.
The Bright Young things
What we do know is that, once built, the house quickly became a magnet for interesting people: Noël Coward is named as a guest, as is the Astor family, one of the great transatlantic dynasties of the twentieth century.
It isn’t hard to imagine the house parties, with an Art Deco house on a deserted beach, the Channel on one side and the marsh on the other.
From private house to hotel
The house’s life as a private residence eventually gave way to a more public one. By the early 60’s we believe it was operating as a small guest house that slowly grew to offer cream teas and then dinners.
At some point it became known as the Romney Bay House Hotel, a small ten-bedroom property known for its uninterrupted sea views, its position over the Littlestone golf course, and remarkable solitude and tranquillity.
Back to life
I bought the building because I’d visited it about 15 years ago and I could never quite get it out of my mind. It had this almost mystical pull that kept calling me – like the feeling you have when you know you’ve been somewhere before but know for certain you haven’t.
Shouldn’t really work as a hotel
It was always going to be too small to run as a traditional hotel but I felt that the Gallivant vision to create a place that felt much more like your best friends lovely house and not a hotel could work and so when I took a call from a local agent completely out of the blue that started with – ‘do you know the Romney Bay House hotel’ I jumped in the car the following day to meet the owners.
The plan, from day one, has been to bring it back – not as a pastiche, but as something that Williams-Ellis would enjoy returning to, restored with the same care that made this coast worth building on in the first place.
Work is now properly underway, and it’s a relief to say that, after a longer journey to get here than I’d have liked.
But restoring a building is also an act of restoring its story, and that’s the part we can’t do alone. Over the coming months, we want to properly unpick six threads:
- The architect and his client. How did a woman with no previous connection to Kent come to commission Williams-Ellis to build her a strikingly modern house on an all-but-deserted beach within easy reach of London?
- Margaret Bray’s own story. An unhappy marriage, family tragedy, a reported interest in Madame Blavatsky’s esoteric ideas, and a life on the edge of the “Bright Young Things” set, plus a family rumour worth testing: a possible connection to the Ferguson’s Gang, the secretive women who helped found the modern conservation movement and the National Trust.
- The Hollywood connection. Was Hopper really a guest, and how did she and Margaret know each other? What evidence exists for the Coward and Astor visits, who else came to stay?
- Littlestone’s lost ambition. After the First World War, there was a real vision of Littlestone becoming a “model” holiday village. What was it, who drove it, and how much did the 1929 Wall Street Crash have to do with it never quite arriving?
- The golf club connection. Littlestone Golf Club, founded in 1888, counted two future Prime Ministers among its early figures and drew political grandees who built some of the grandest houses in the village. Is there a connection here with the house or Margaret Bray?
We’re also building a historical timeline for the house to include everyone who has owned this house since it was built and events and happenings that may have happened within its walls.
If you’re a previous owner, know a previous owner, staff member, guest, or relative of anyone connected with the house at any point in its hundred-year history, I would be genuinely grateful to hear from you.
This building has clearly mattered to people for a long time. As we bring it back, we’d like its history to come back with it, as accurately and complete as we can make it.
Watch this space for the next instalment, and please get in touch if you can help in the meantime.
Harry
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If you have any information please write to – littlestone@maingalli.wonderwebsite.co.uk
