94 SPRING 2019 HOMEA
lastair Hendy is a man
about whom superla-
tives are dropped lib-
erally and whose career
has been so multi-
faceted that he defies
pigeonholing with
aplomb. Neale Whita-
ker, one-time editor of
Vogue Living, once eulogised: ‘Bearing in mind
that a word doesn’t exist to describe what he
does, and in a publishing world that prefers
its talent to have one definable skill, Alastair
Hendy, the writer-cum-cook-cum-stylist-
cum-photographer-cum-designer could best
be described as a human magazine.’
Today, he continues to work as a photog-
rapher; has scooped a myriad of covetable
awards for his food and travel writing; and
offers style consultancy to brands, including
M&S and, formatively, Carluccio’s (where he
also worked as a chef) in the 1980s. ‘I wear
many hats,’ he says. ‘Life should be like that- one feeds another, and creativity is broad-
ened, boundaries becoming more fluid the
more you do.’ But despite his dizzying exis-
tence – lived between Shoreditch and East
Sussex – it is as the man who breathed life
into a formerly ramshackle Tudor house in
Hastings, his hometown, that he has earned
a truly captivated following, as well as thanks
to the world he has created in AG Hendy and
Co Homestores.
‘I saw this house on the market, a house
that had been on my radar over the years,’ he
explains. ‘It was really just for a nose around,
as I’d no intention of buying a beamy nooky-
wooky Tudor house. In truth I’d always thought
them a bit naff, as my experience had been
of the pub variety, decked out with horse-
brasses and all woodwork slapped with black
paint.’ Yet it was the first, and the last, house
he looked at. ‘My London flat is large spaces,
concrete and steel, and this was the opposite:
intimate rooms, wood, lime-plaster. It spoke to
me straight away, as there were direct similari-
ties: an honesty of materials, of structure – a
parallel narrative.’
Quite contrary to the vogue for buying
period houses and then kitting them out with
modern conveniences, Hendy did preciselythe opposite: to remove contemporary inter-
lopers and restore faithfully what had been
buried under 500 years worth of tinkering,
rebuilding and amendment. It must, I venture,
have been both thrilling and daunting. ‘I was
totally unfazed,’ he counters. ‘I love a new
challenge. You do have to go through years
of deconstruction, mess and mayhem, before
the ‘set-dressing’, the easy bit, happens. After
the completion of major structural repairs,
came the removing of the ugliness, the jarring
additions, and to putting in the things that
reflected the true character of the house.
The narrative took hold, and it became more
autobiographical, drawing on memories of
childhood, challenging the conventions of
traditional Tudor restoration make-overs.’
The key, he advises, when it comes to such
a monumental labour of love is to be wilful.
‘Never believe that the ‘expert’ is right or
knows best, or indeed understands what you
want; keep your vision on track; and remain
curious. One visitor on an open day remarked
to her friend “It’s been done up, but not done-
up”. Yes! I thought. That’s exactly it. Another- which made me laugh – was when a plumber
took a call outside the house to report back
to his boss, not thinking I could hear every
word, saying “It’s like something you go see
on a school trip”. Bless him.’
In truth, although grating modern additions
have been stripped away, the house remains
markedly more luxurious than its original
incumbents would have found it. ‘We have
electricity, running hot water, baths, central
heating and – wait for it – under-floor heating
in the kitchen,’ assures Hendy. ‘The pleasure
of the past occupying the present is the plea-
sure of illusion. The house is a living skeuo-
morph, it mimics the past and fools many
into believing they’re stepping into a Tudor
times when they are so not. There’s not even
a stick of Tudor furniture. Because it doesn’t
have any obvious modern trappings – it feels
unworldly, unrelated to today’s living. Yet it’s
totally in sync with everything we need and
crave. Bar a telly!’
It is a creation that has garnered a legion
of fans, some of whom regard a stay as some-
thing bordering on pilgrimage, particularly at
Christmas, when Hendy hosts open days, at
which regulars return year after year, keen for
their annual fix. The house is, I suggest, some-
thing more than the sum of its aged parts; it is
the creation of narrative that makes it really
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