For me, a sauna was always a must,” says Alex Bagner. We’re peering into what was once the outdoor privy of a Victorian fisherman’s pub. “It’s a bit of a DIY job, but it works.” Bagner was born in Stockholm and has transposed the Swedish bathing ritual – an ice-cold dip followed by a stint in the sauna – to Kingsdown on the coast of Kent. “We do it all year round. People think we’re mad, but it’s starting to catch on.”
Alex and her husband, Chris, bought the Victory as a holiday home eight years ago. Chris’s great-grandfather owned the local Walmer brewery, and his mother grew up here, so they had a connection to the area and the Victory, once owned by the brewery. The pub served its last pint in the 1950s, but for many years it sat next door to the Zetland Arms, which is still open. “In that pure Kent way, I guess they thought, the more the merrier,” says Bagner.
The house is at the end of a private road that runs parallel to Kingsdown beach. A footpath spiked with blackberry bushes and wild fennel separates the row of fisherman’s cottages, bungalows and grand Edwardian houses from the shingle beach. In front, a line of unassuming beach huts faces the English Channel. “When we first started coming here it really was quite different,” Bagner recalls. “The Zetland Arms was deserted. On winter days, it felt like the end of the earth here. That was before High Speed 1 and Airbnb changed things quite dramatically.”
The couple, who now have three children, lived with the house for four years, “fiddling around until it was really falling apart”. They figured out how they wanted to use it before renovation work began. “We’re both into entertaining and hosting – not in a big showy way, but our house is always quite full. That’s how we’ve always lived.” The cottage now sleeps 11, in four bedrooms. (There’s a double bunk bed on the ground floor, two doubles on the first floor and a family room in the attic.) Wood panelling, narrow passageways and white floorboards mean it still retains “that cottagey sense”.
For more read the full of article at The Guardian
