Chapter 3: The House that Fagg built

As for the house itself, what is clear is that its main structure - four bays wide and two rooms deep, with a cellar, a central staircase and a low-pitched roof over an attic space, which is hidden at the front by a parapet - survives essentially as it was built. The frontage measures 40 foot (12 metres), thus exactly fitting the dimensions of the plot of land that Fagg had purchased. However, initially the house only had a small rear extension comprising the most north-easterly of the current rear rooms: the two other sections of the rear extension - one of two storeys, the other of one - were added at a later date. We will return to the back extension and its history in due course, but first let us deal with the main house.

Plans of the ground and first floor of Exmouth House

It is built of brick, the source of which is unknown but was probably local, the Hastings area being known to have had a large number of brickyards. Indeed the bricks might have come from the site of today’s Wellington Square: when the banking firm of Farncombe, Breeds & Wenham purchased this site from Edward Milward around 1815, the land was described as having ‘good brick-earth’.20 In any case, there was clearly an ample supply, as the same bricks seem to have been used for the brickwork around the site at the back and for the terrace at the front. For the house itself, a vast quantity of bricks must have been needed, including the cellar, which presumably was constructed first. This measures approximately 24 foot by 8 foot (7.5 by 2.5 metres), situated under the rear part of the sitting room and descended by brick steps from behind the main staircase. Accommodating this must, incidentally, have necessitated the digging of a further large hole in the sandstone rock: the front wall of the house and the terrace in front of it stand on the plateau of rock formed by the site-preparation already referred to, so the cavity for the cellar must have been separately excavated. The cellar as built is fully finished (and paved) with bricks, including an oval-topped light with a grille, beyond which is a small extension which houses a coal chute under the path beside the house. The cellar also contains hooks in the ceiling to hang game, which must be original, and deep alcoves surmounted by gauged brick arches which were once closed by doors, evidently for storage of wine; the doors have long since been removed, presumably because they rotted (as did the oak treads to the steps down to the cellar, which had to be renewed in 1996), but their hinges still survive.

Turning to the house as a whole, the walls to the main rooms are a massive seventeen inches (43 cm) thick (by contrast, the walls to the back extension are thinner, just ten inches wide (25.5 cm)). This is partly to accommodate the pair of sliding sash shutters which the house has at each of its four downstairs front windows, which fit into a four-inch pocket inside the windows, each fronted by a three-panelled moulded board and with a hinged flap covering them. View image. The shutters themselves have a similar three-panelled configuration. View image. It is apparent that they were originally painted white, and this original covering survives in decayed form on their outer side. (It seems likely that the dining room once had similar shuttering, but this has been done away with at some intermediate point, probably Victorian to judge from the contraption which replaced it. As for the comparable window at the rear of the house on the other side, no traces of shutters or of any cavity to hold them were found when this was replaced by the current French windows in 1993.)

Front door

At the centre of the façade is a front door, the main elements of which seem original, including a Greek key pattern in the lower panel (the upper panel is divided into two ogee panels which are probably a later adaptation: see chapter 4, below). This rises four steps from the terrace at the front with railings on either side which may be original, as may the stone threshold and the wooden step under the front door (however, the concrete steps appear to be modern, rebuilt when the garage was constructed in the 1970s). Inside, going round inside the front door and then down the corridor adjacent to the staircase, is an elaborate plaster frieze separating the wall from the ceiling, with mouldings and dentils. (This is interrupted by a wide inner door which is evidently a slightly later insertion: see chapter 4, below.)

The balcony

Above the front door at first-floor level is a pair of French windows which there is no reason to doubt is original. Around these, a balcony has been constructed, with a stone base supported on three brackets which have been stuccoed to match the adjacent walls. On this has been placed an elaborate wooden structure comprising arched openings to the front and sides, circular at the front, pointed at the sides, with sun bursts in each corner, the front opening flanked by smaller decorative panels. Below is a railing with - presumably separately manufactured -- panels of ironwork with intertwined Gothic arches.21 The whole is surmounted by a zinc roof.

20 J. Manwaring Baines, Historic Hastings (1955; revised edn., St Leonards, 1986), p. 161; also information from local maps kindly provided by Roy Penfold.

21 Similar but not identical designs appear, e.g., in L.N. Cottingham, The Smith and Founder’s Director, Containing a Series of Designs and Patterns for Ornamental Iron and Brass Work (2nd edn., London 1824), plates showing ‘Specimens of Balcony Railings and Window Guards’.