In the heart of the medieval town of Rye in East Sussex, a former St John ambulance station has been transformed by Marta Nowicka. “As an interior architect, my passion is to purchase commercial buildings and change them to residential,” she says.
Marta was inspired by the rambling, ancient town in which the building sits. “Rye is full of historical narratives and spatial idiosyncrasies, which I wanted to work with, keeping indigenous flavours like the proportions of the bedrooms, the beams, bricks, peg tiles and the window alignments, with a new staircase creating a dialogue between the old and the new.”
Floor-to-ceiling picture windows frame the listed brick walls outside, marrying this rich history with the modern spaces that Marta has created inside. “The surrounding brick walls actually inspired the door and window, mimicking views into mediaeval walled gardens as depicted in Renaissance art, all aligned and diminishing in perspective,” she says.
This fusion continues throughout the house, not least in the main large living, dining and kitchen area that takes its theme from the communal spaces of medieval halls around a central hearth where families, indeed whole communities, would gather.
“To create a division of zones within the space, we cast the large concrete plinth in the centre of the room to set a double-sided woodburning stove and wood store,” says Marta. This central focal point is the hub of the house with a strong gravitational pull that holds the huge space together, making it feel cosy and warm despite its large scale and industrial structure.
Raw materials contrast with the rustic and the sleek. The clean-lined kitchen combines grey timber cabinets and Carrara marble tops. In a nod to the building’s previous use, Marta throws in hospital references with a brushed stainless steel kitchen island unit.
The original doors, stripped back and hung on the wall as a stunning feature, tower over the dining table. The table itself was a labour of love. “It’s actually made from a piece of driftwood that I found on Camber beach, which was 5m long,” she says. “It took some persuasion to get help to drag it off the beach before the tide came in and then to take it to Hastings to be planed into planks, meanwhile making a subframe for the base.”
Like the space it sits in, the table is adaptable. It can easily be moved by one person and can be either a square, seating 12, or a long, thin dining experience for 20-plus. The family spend most of their time in this space. “It’s fair to say that there’s always something on the go in here, so I tend to dip from the stove to my sketchbook. The open-plan area is perfect for our lifestyle as it enables the family to do everything in one space.”
On the other side of the central stove, the bank of replacement ambulance doors, which were remade to the original proportions and painted inky grey, ground the space and cosset the comfortable seating area. Modern Italian leather and steel lounge chairs contrast with the charcoal grey sofa. The coffee tables were made by Marta’s partner, Voytek, from sliced logs with castors added. A huge black-and-white botanical print by Paul Morrison and geometric floral cushions add a hint of femininity and romance.
The hallway is generously proportioned with wide oak boards on the floor, which are also used to clad the walls of the double-height stairwell. This continues upstairs where the original brick walls have been exposed to add yet another dimension.
Bedrooms are simple, almost monastically so, allowing the strong architectural shapes of the pitched roofs to do the talking. The broad oak makes another appearance in the master bedroom to create a floating wall to house a hidden shower and loo. Hospital references return in the form of a surgical trolley in the bathroom for the hand basin, surgical instrument cupboards for towels and linens and a vintage cadaver table in the main bedroom that serves as a dressing table.
Space, texture and light flow from one room to another and the ancient architecture outside is a constant presence inside. “If there’s anything I’d like to add it’s the importance of the views. We have views over cobbled Conduit Hill with the neighbouring ecclesiastical architecture of Alex MacArthur’s monastery, then from the bedroom, we have the wonderful bucolic hill view of Leasam House, and from our two-storey-tall modern window, we see the mediaeval wall and rooftops of Rye’s High Street. We are so lucky to have a full spectrum of visual experiences from the house, both contextual and historical, which encapsulate nature, seasons and weather.”
Extracted from The Romantic Minimalist: Simple Home with Soul by Atlanta Bartlett and Dave Coote (Mitchell Beazley, £30)
