Every room needs a memory: Sigrid Cragoe on nostalgia by the sea
Sigrid Cragoe collects the things most people gave away. Boxes of other people’s holiday slides. Games that fell out of fashion. Scarves bought as souvenirs by strangers. She spent twenty years as a costume designer in Los Angeles, work that meant researching the past for a living, and she never really stopped. When she and her husband Harry took on The Gallivant behind the dunes at Camber Sands, the same instinct went to work on the hotel. We spoke about nostalgia, why she keeps reaching backwards, and what she is carrying into the new hotel, Littlestone, opening next summer.
The Gallivant has been open more than ten years. Does it ever feel finished?
No, and it never will, because the place keeps evolving. Every week I walk in and scope it. I can see what’s been well used and needs replacing, and I’m always asking the team, is there anything guests have mentioned, anything we could add to make people happier.
What sort of thing?
A new game, or a book, or a change of cushion or cover. It’s like a house. It’s like fashion, really. Trends move, people want to be surprised, and yet the atmosphere has to stay exactly the same.
Is that the hard part, keeping the feeling constant while the details change?
It’s the part I’m most careful with. People say the look isn’t forced, that it seems as though it’s always been there. That’s the thing everyone comments on, and it’s the thing I protect. There’s a plan to refurbish some of the rooms once the summer quietens down, one at a time, making each one a little better.
Where does nostalgia come into it?
For me the beach is the most nostalgic place there is. Talk to anyone and they have a memory of being a child by the sea, and it puts them straight on holiday. So I bring in small things that make people smile. On the table in the lobby, there’s a box of old colour slides, holiday snaps I found on eBay, with one of those little viewers you hold up to the light. Somebody younger comes along who’s never seen one, and they spend ten minutes going through a stranger’s holiday from fifty years ago. I’ve had a few enlarged and framed too. And the games, when did you last play Mastermind? These vintage-y games have half disappeared, and they bring the child back out in you. It’s not about finding something expensive, but to make people smile.
That idea of the seaside as somewhere to dress up for runs through the hotel.
It does, and people forget the coast used to be exactly that. We’re a little over an hour from London, and there was a time when you put on your best to come down. That’s what we’re bringing back, made to feel current rather than staged.
Is that where the Beach Concierge came from?
Exactly that. We’ll set you up out in the dunes with an umbrella and a chilled bottle of Oxney, the wine grown just up the road, and you sit out there with a cooler, big hat and a straw bag and feel completely away from everything. For me it’s all wardrobe, atmosphere, a lovely glass in your hand. It’s very easy to be glamorous in the summer on a beach.
You’re carrying that instinct into Littlestone. How is it different?
It’s a different job, because the history is already there. At Camber Sands, when Harry and I bought it, there was no story at all, we had to invent one from scratch. Littlestone has one of its own, and we keep finding more of it.
Tell me about the building.
It was designed by Williams-Ellis, the architect behind Portmeirion, so there’s a continental feeling built into the bones of it. Over the years, different owners added to it and stripped things out, so we’re going back through the architraves and the moldings, changing the windows and doors, taking it apart to put it back closer to what was originally there. We’re keeping the extra rooms, because we need them, but bringing the design home.
And you’re collecting for it already.
Souvenir scarves, the ones people brought back from Paris, or wherever they’d been. It’s the same theme, travel and glamour, and wardrobe. And it stays personal. At The Gallivant, it’s the finds from the area, but also our family photographs, our wedding, Harry and the children, that make it feel like arriving at our house. I want that same feeling at Littlestone, just a slightly grander version of it.
You have an idea for telling the building’s story to guests.
I have. So many people are writing to us who lived there or visited, with real memories of the place so, rather than postcards, this time I want a history tree at the entrance. A single piece, on canvas or a wall, showing everyone who owned it and everyone who passed through, done by an artist as something fun and a bit funky.
What do you still need?
The right person to make it. I’ve got the visuals in my head. So if there are local artists or artisans out there who’d like to collaborate, on paintings, sculptures, murals, plasterwork, furniture, please get in touch. That would be wonderful.
Sigrid is looking for artist and artisan collaborations for Littlestone. If that’s you, please write to sigrid@maingalli.wonderwebsite.co.uk. And if there’s a question you’d like to put to Sigrid, or a memory to share, send it as well, she’d love to hear from you.