Victorian B&B Recreates 19th Century Style

Aleksandr Groves cannot walk past a junk shop without stopping to look. He calls it a “life’s disease,” a habit that led him and his friend Paul Oxborrow to St Leonards-on-Sea, a seaside suburb of Hastings in East Sussex. There, they have spent decades transforming a dilapidated Victorian villa into the St Benedict Victorian B&B, a meticulously recreated 19th-century home.

The house stands as a representation of the era it mimics. Built in 1880 from red brick, the facade features wrought-iron lettering reading “St Benedict,” hanging lace curtains, and a stained-glass fernery. It looks exactly as it would have when it first opened its doors to the Victorian public.

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However, the structure is actually a modern invention. The current owners moved into the property in 1995, when it was still divided into three separate flats. They gradually took over the entire building, eventually converting it into a bed and breakfast that has operated for over two decades.

During the conversion, the original entrance lobby was lost to the elements. Groves described the situation as “just open to the elements” with a missing front door. To fix this, he had local stained-glass artist Alan Wright recreate Victorian patterns and run them across the entrance hall. He also installed an exuberant wallpaper featuring crimson and deep-pink florid movements, along with a high-Victorian brass chandelier and a marquetry cabinet.

Decorating the interior required handling a complex history. The original parlour floor had flimsy partitions between grand rooms facing the garden. Studying the house’s history, the owners discovered the Danvers family had combined these spaces about five years after the house was built. They restored the rooms to one vast drawing room, choosing a Zuber wallpaper from the 1850s.

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Groves admits the result is not historically correct. “It’s not historically correct – it’s just things that I’ve liked,” he says. He mixes 18th-century Dutch inlaid wood furniture with 19th-century pieces, including a vast Victorian gong in a mahogany frame. The woodwork, doors, picture rails, and skirting boards are painted in a dark red-brown color that captures the later 19th-century town-house look.

Outside, Paul Oxborrow secured the full garden by knocking through to a neighboring flat. He created a walled potager with different levels, rose arbours, and vegetables. Despite the chaotic mix of plants, weathered metal, and wisteria, the setting appears to have always existed.