An artist’s home by the sea

Finding inspiration in a new timber-framed home-cum-studio on the Kent coast

You see the most remarkable skies here – like a miracle of heaven and earth together,” says artist Rachael Dickens of the view from her newly built home, between Herne Bay and Reculver on the Kent coast. A keen outdoor swimmer whose work is often inspired by water, Rachael was first drawn to this site by its setting. “I walk on the beach and swim in the sea nearly every day,” she says, “and the vision for the house was very much about being able to see the sea.” The result is an arresting contemporary home whose jet-black weatherboarding and corrugated roof echo the tarred fishermen’s huts and net lofts typically found in nearby Whitstable.

Rachael came across the plot by accident during a day trip to Whitstable with her sister in 2014. At the time, she was house-hunting without success in south London, after selling her home in Sydenham with a view to moving closer to Brockwell lido. (Rachael has been cold water swimming since 2006 and helped to reform the lido’s original 1930s swimming club: The Brockwell Icicles.) While walking along the east Kent coastline, looping back from Reculver, the sisters stumbled across a small 1930s bungalow for sale right by the shore, but it was in need of modernisation.

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from Home And Garden | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3aWq9IZ
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