A Victorian Renovation - Part 1.
Why we left our weatherboard home to restore an unloved Victorian townhouse (Lovingly nicknamed My Massive Semi! Pig snort).
Coming up for paid members - Watch out this week for a mid-week mini video tour of my walled garden!
One of the things I am most guilty of is assuming people know the things I know. We have spent nearly three years tirelessly renovating our Victorian Gothic home and garden in Emsworth on the south coast of England. It’s a place I am now intimately familiar with. I know all of its idiosyncrasies, problems and treasures. I have shared many photos and videos on Instagram about the process and have written extensively about it. But, it occurred to me the other day that a lot of you lovely people, the people that have joined me and support me on this new Substack journey, may not know a lot about it at all. I’ve certainly never really gone into why we left our last home. So, I have decided to do a little mini series just for you. I’ll be delving into each room and how we brought them back to life.
When I started this newsletter back in August last year, the first renovation series I wrote was about my beloved weatherboard home in The Surrey Hills. It will always be my favourite home, well, until we move again one day anyway! But, what happened after we sold up and moved to the coast in September 2020? Well, you’re about to find out.
Prior to the whole Coronavirus nightmare of 2020, the year so bad they named it twice, we had been talking about a move to the coast. It had always been our dream to end up by the sea, or at least have a holiday home there. The many months of lockdown had sharpened our minds and we found ourselves wanting to speed things up and not wait years to make those changes. My hubby, Mr C, wanted to be closer to his work as the journey there and back was slightly arduous. Of course, he had been working from home during lockdown, but at some point he would be asked to return to the office.
At the time I was a hairdresser by trade (Vidal Sassoon trained, I’ll have you know!), although my writing and Instagram career was really taking off too. I wasn’t enjoying the new reality of hairdressing with full PPE one bit and my monthly earnings were down due to so many people still too scared to go to the salon. More than anything else though, 2020 had taught us that life is short and precious. There isn’t enough time for “maybe one day”, that day is now as we never know if tomorrow will ever come.
Moving on.
We took a trip to the south coast one weekend in July and had the most life-affirming, uplifting time. On the way back to Surrey we decided to do a mini tour of some of the coastal towns and stumbled upon Emsworth. It’s a quaint fishing village on the south coast of England between Portsmouth and Chichester.
That weekend cemented our slightly rose-tinted thoughts of life by the sea firmly in our minds and by the time we arrived back home we had hatched a plan to put the house on the market and look for our dream seaside location. Missy, our dearest canine friend, would become a salty sea dog and we’d join the sailing club, rubbing shoulders with the Julians, Merediths and Tarquins of this world. In the summer we’d drink copious amounts of Côtes de Provence after a jolly old day on the ocean waves. Come winter we’d head off with our new found plummy friends to Val-d'Isère, soaking up the Après-ski in our salopettes. Life would be a dream, just not the dream I’ve just described!
This will be a renovation series of at least three parts. I’m so excited to share it all with you. If you’re in the process of restoring an old house, hopefully you find it useful. The renovation and design of the walled garden will be a separate series later this year. Read on to find out why we ended up buying a dilapidated monolith of a Victorian townhouse (lovingly known as my Massive Semi) and how we brought it back to life. If you’re currently a free subscriber, or you’ve just stumbled on my little space on here, you can get full access to this post and the upcoming series by upgrading to a paid membership. You’ll also get access to my archive, audio recordings, planned tours for 2024, be able to comment and join this wonderful, friendly community.