10 April 3, 2022The Sunday Times
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swim in the pool. “We open the sliding
doors, turn on the music — we have
Sonos everywhere — and I love to
shower outside by the pool,”
Lipscomb says. “Then it’s coffee and
breakfast outside. The courtyard is
our living area as the weather
improves. We’ll use the outdoor
kitchen more and do barbecues. We’ll
get on our bikes and cycle down to the
man who sells crab and lobster, then
make an amazing salad at home. Then
we’ll walk with the dogs on the marsh,
or go paddleboarding or kayaking in
the afternoon if the tide is up. But
actually it’s very hard to leave Bliss
Blakeney, because you don’t have to.”
Instead they can watch the sailors,
swimmers, kiteboarders, windsurfers
and rowers in Blakeney Pit from one of
the balconies or from the telescope in
their “sea room”. “This view tops most
views across the coastline,” Broch says.
The house is easy on the eye too.
Designed by Waugh Thistleton
Architects in Shoreditch, east London,teched up with a plant room and
projector and equipment. It’s one hell
of a screening room.”
Life centres on the courtyard — a
suntrap and a haven from the North
Sea winds. “The courtyard was created
so that even on a windy day, it’s calm,”
Lipscomb says. “It feels tropical in
there when you’ve got the pool open,
the pink walls and the palm tree. We
painted the walls pink because the
world needs a bit more colour. It’s
meant to be a fun place to live. We’re
definitely not beige people.”
They’ve come a long way from
Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, the
town where they grew up, attending
the same school. “Daniel was my milk
boy,” Lipscomb says. “We lived on the
same road. We’re state school kids. We
didn’t come from much. This house
symbolises that people can dream. If
you dream hard enough, it doesn’t
matter how big it is, you can do it.”
A perfect summer day starts with
Broch, 54, doing a half-hour resistanceW
hen Daniel Broch
founded the
Everyman
Cinemas chain in
2000 he broke the
mould in the entertainment world.
“My wife, Lisa [Lipscomb], put
together the screening lounge in the
original Everyman in Hampstead,
north London. That was a seminal
moment because it created a new
lounge-type space — bright colours,
sofas — bringing that home effect into
the cinema, which had never existed.”
Now the couple have introduced
a new concept into domestic life:
Bliss Blakeney, their nine-bedroom,
10,000 sq ft house on the Norfolk
coast, is what they dub a “hometel”
— a cross between a home and a
hotel. “We [built] it as a home —
we have two kids and two dogs —
but we have lots of guests,” says
Lipscomb, 51. “We wanted a bit more
excitement than what you’d find in
a home, to create what you’d expectHOME
ENTERTAINMENT
This Norfolk ‘hometel’ created by the founder of Everyman
Cinemas has sea views, a Moroccan-style courtyard and,
of course, a screening room. It could be yours for £6 million
from a hotel. We just went a bit mad.”
When the couple bought the coastal
property in 2010 and moved from
London, it was a five-bedroom 1950s
house. They knocked it down and
spent what Broch estimates would
cost £4 million to £4.5 million in
today’s money building the ultimate
domestic resort: nine bedrooms, all en
suite; a Moroccan-style courtyard with
swimming pool and palm tree; a gym
and steam room; five living/lounge
areas, including one outdoors; four
kitchens; four balconies overlooking
the sea and a separate 1,200 sq ft
home working hub.
One wing of the house, the Cabin,
has four bedrooms and can be closed
off and rented out as a holiday let — the
Brochs let it for £3,500 a week. Oh,
and there’s a magical cinema room
done up like a forest. “We thought we
should have our own little Everyman,”
Lipscomb says. “The acoustic sound
quality... I mean, you are at the
movies, no joke. That room is totallyit’s modernist cool — built from cross-
laminated timber from Finland — and
is done up in pop-art colours that call
to mind seaside candy. The tone is set
with the bright yellow front door and a
disco ball in the front hall. “The yellow
door is ridiculous but welcoming,”
Lipscomb says. “This is
a brave house and it needs brave
colours. And you’ve always got to have
a disco ball in your life.”
Lipscomb is “obsessed” with
colour: there are no white ceilings;
they’re all painted in different shades.
“If you go into a Barratt home or a
Berkeley home they’ll have white
ceilings,” Broch says. “We think
people deserve more. The idea is, how
do you treat a room like art? If you lie
down in bed, what do you want to look
at: a white ceiling or a great colour?”
Broch also feels strongly about
landings — he thinks they are mostly a
waste of space. At Bliss Blakeney they
made the upstairs bedrooms smaller
and the landing bigger and turned it
into a chillout area they call the
library, where they hang out with their
daughters, drink coffee and watch TV.
“In an ordinary house the landing is
just a corridor to get to somewhere
else. For us, it’s another lounge.”
There are no desks in the
bedrooms. There are myriad nooks,
tables and lounges where people canHUGH
GRAHAM
@HughGrahamSTAINMENT