Sophie Goldhill loves the ‘shoulder seasons’ – May, September and October – by the sea, ‘when the colours are luminous and the sunsets expand longer’. She lives in an upside-down house in Whitstable, designed with her husband David Liddicoat. The couple, co-founders of architecture and interior design studio Liddicoat & Goldhill, moved to the south coast from Hackney with their children 10 years ago.
They bought a bungalow that they planned to replace with their own build, but every time Sophie drove into town, she passed a site with an incredible sea view. ‘It had lots of caravans and old ice-cream vans on it,’ she recalls. The plot came up for sale but was over budget, so they put in a bid with two other families, assuming it wouldn’t be accepted. Reader, it was. With planning permission to build three houses on the site secured, they bought it. ‘And we’re all still friends!’ adds Sophie with delight.
Having built their first home when fresh out of the Royal College of Art – a two-up, two-down called the Shadow House on a tiny garage plot in NW1 – she and David had followed it with a grander townhouse in Hackney. Both were in conservation areas, surrounded by Victorian buildings. This new coastal site called for something different; a house that could turn its back to the busy road and respond to the sea.
Their time in the bungalow inspired them to flip the floorplan here, putting bedrooms downstairs and living spaces above. ‘We found in the summer it was nice to be sleeping with nature at ground level – it’s very cool,’ explains Sophie. ‘A more conventional layout would work better in an urban environment because you want that connection to the garden,’ she adds, ‘whereas it’s perhaps less important to us because we have the sea to look at.’
That said, the garden is a beautiful place, designed with Chelsea gold-medalist Tom Massey and filled with native planting. They used crushed seashells for paths and reclaimed paving, in line with their approach indoors, where they salvaged doors from Antwerp City Hall and marble from the Belgium Stock Exchange for the bathrooms, and built a fireplace with the cornerstones from an old church.
‘It’s about injecting that visceral, tactile quality, especially in a new-build that can feel quite soulless,’ says Sophie. ‘Sometimes people think it’s an old warehouse renovation, which is great.’
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This is a cliché-free seaside home: ‘There are no painted seagulls or porthole windows,’ she says. Instead, it’s subtly connected to the landscape, with its timber structure offering an elevated response to the simple form of the beach huts nearby. Sandy textures, earthy colours and panelling evoke a relaxed vibe. ‘It’s that “shoes off, sand everywhere” aesthetic,’ she notes.
Colour directs activity and shapes how rooms are used. ‘The main space that faces the sea has a bright light, but rooms for working or sleeping have a darker, cosier feel,’ Sophie explains. ‘As soon as you step into the study, you hunker down a bit more, whereas you go into the main living room and you expand.’ A paint-applied finish called Kabric is used throughout. ‘It has a texture, so when the light comes, it catches it,’ she says.
The biggest challenge was working out how best to frame the view. ‘The horizon is the amazing thing about the sea; you feel like you can just take a deep breath,’ she says. ‘Your instinct is to expose it all, but we were trying to be considered about what’s the nicest bit of the skyline and where do we want to enjoy that.’ The living room is her favourite place for storm-watching: ‘When it does blow a hoolie, you can see it but you don’t feel exposed to it. I do a lot of sitting on the sofa with my mouth open in awe. It’s hypnotising.’
The couple next door are also architects and designed their own house, while the third was built by a local firm who are friends. ‘Ours is timber, the middle one is clay tile and the end one is brick,’ Sophie says. ‘Ours is quite long, the one behind is tall and the one at the end is wide. They are very different responses to three similar-sized plots.’
There is a shared area for sports and a communal gym – something Sophie and David would never have been able to justify purely for themselves. ‘It was really fun to have had that experience of building together,’ she says. Recalling Easter egg hunts and croquet on the lawn, she paints an idyllic picture of the magic that can happen when, with a little courage and creative thinking, good neighbours become good friends. liddicoatgoldhill.com
