Belmont House, in all its Regency splendour, stands sentinel over Lyme Regis, on Dorset’s Jurassic Coast. No ordinary maritime villa, it is painted a striking salmon pink, and its facade is ornately decorated with a parapet bearing six Robert Adam-style urns, a swagged frieze and keystones carved with Neptune and his wife, Amphitrite. Inside, period purists will be dazzled by the elaborate stone mouldings and gilded portraits and mirrors — although, for many visitors, it will be the house’s literary legacy that initially thrills.
For this was the home of John Fowles — the bestselling writer credited with bringing popular appeal (and sex appeal) to the serious novel — from the late 1960s until his death in 2005. It was here, in his writing room overlooking the sea, that he is said to have completed the intriguing twin endings of The French Lieutenant’s Woman. Meryl Streep as the cloaked Sarah Woodruff, sorrowfully walking the wave-lashed Cobb in the 1981 movie adaptation of the book, remains one of British cinema’s most enduring images.
After Fowles’s death, however, the already crumbling 1770s grade II* listed home rapidly deteriorated, so it is only thanks to an intervention by the Landmark Trust that it is now in such immaculate condition. The conservation charity— which generates income by offering its restored buildings as quirky holiday lets — bought the house in 2007 for an undisclosed sum, and has spent two years and about £1.8m reversing its decline.
“It was in a pretty dire state,” says the trust’s historian, Caroline Stanford. “The roof needed redoing and timbers were rotten, but there was a fabulous 18th-century kernel inside later accretions.” Those “accretions” included a modern flat, a large utility room, a two-storey Victorian building and a number of greenhouses, all of which were removed before the rear elevation could be rebuilt. Windows were replaced and interior walls stripped out so the original layout could be revealed.
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The home’s metamorphosis is just one of those celebrated in a new six-episode Channel 4 series, Restoring Britain’s Landmarks, which charts the work of the trust’s team — although this particular project has had its detractors. Fowles’s widow, Sarah, from whom the trust bought the house, was reportedly aghast at the way parts of her former home were dismantled. Yet it seems the general public has given it the seal of approval: Belmont, which sleeps eight and starts at £640 for a four-night stay, is booked solid until the end of 2016, and there’s little availability in 2017.
It’s not hard to see why. Outside, there’s a Victorian observatory tower, with a revolving roof, and a long garden (which Fowles, a keen naturalist, let run wild) that tumbles down to the esplanade, with a pebble beach, the Cobb and the Jurassic Coast beyond. Inside the four-bedroom house, not only can you look out to sea from Fowles’s writing room — complete with parts of his original library, salvaged from a Cornish bookseller — you get a masterclass in Regency restoration. Although, Stanford insists: “At Landmark, we evoke a period — it’s not a museum piece.”
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At its studio in the Cotswolds, the trust’s team of craftsmen, with help from Prince’s Foundation apprentices, have re-created damaged or missing fireplaces, architraves, shutters and skirting boards alongside traditional lime mortars, renders and joinery, and a bespoke paint palette of soft creams, green and lilacs. The whole place is furnished with gorgeous, hand-picked antique furniture, fine portraits and sconces, but Landmark is keen to stress that the success of the aesthetic at Belmont is actually down to a far less glamorous character than any colossus of 20th-century literature.
From the 1780s until she died in 1821, Belmont House was the holiday home of Eleanor Coade, the formidable London businesswoman who devised a formula for fired clay that enabled the mass production of high-quality, and virtually weatherproof, architectural embellishments and statuary. To this day, it’s known as Coade stone.
“Mrs Coade was an enthralling figure,” Stanford says. “She really did transform 18th-century architecture, enabling Robert Adam to create the classical detail that would have been prohibitively expensive for all but the most wealthy in real stone.” It’s not hyperbolic to say that this changed the face of Britain’s buildings: nearly every architect of the day used it, and there’s even some at Buckingham Palace. There are plenty of examples at Belmont, in mouldings and embellished fireplaces, on the ornamented facade and in the gate posts, now restored to their original position.
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The house has fortunately escaped the fate that Fowles dreaded: that it should be turned into a hotel, like so many other fine villas along this stretch of coast. He was keen that Belmont should be enjoyed by as many people as possible, particularly other writers, so each year two free study weeks are being offered to creative writing students from the University of East Anglia.
You’ll want to apply for the course quickly, though. It may be the easiest way to make sure you get to stay here.
landmarktrust.org.uk; Restoring Britain’s Landmarks is on Channel 4 on Wednesdays at 8pm