Real Estate

Perfectly preserved Art Deco mansion untouched for 87 years for sale


A virtually untouched Art Deco home, that was the height of luxury when it was built in the Thirties, is for sale for only the second time in its history — with most of its original interiors and furniture still intact.

Cragg Hill, in the Yorkshire seaside town of Bridlington, was built in 1932 for the director of the Bridlington Steam Laundry, Mr Blackstone, a successful businessman.

From the hand-carved wood-panelled double staircase to the imported American flooring and high tech (for the time) touches, he spared no expense in designing and decorating his family home to the highest standards.

Blackstone commissioned well-known local architects Blackmore Sykes to design the five-bedroom house with a Lutyens-style Arts and Crafts look set in a large and extravagantly landscaped garden.

Most of the original furniture — much of which is still on display in the house — was bought from the Ideal Home Exhibition of 1932 and includes bespoke pieces in everything from Tudor-style wood to sleek, Modernist chrome by Ernest Gomme, the go-to furniture designer for well-to-do homeowners at the time.

Some of the furniture is still in the same spot as it was 87 years ago — even though the house was sold by Mr Blackstone’s daughter in 2000 to Richard and Paulene Wilcock, an architecture journalist and teacher, both serious Art Deco enthusiasts with their own impressive collection of furniture and crockery from the era.

“When we came up here we met the daughter, Mrs Leicester. She was in her late-seventies or eighties and she’d lived here all her life,” says Richard Wilcock.

“She had a photo album of pictures from when the house was first built. All the furniture was in its original position. She hadn’t moved a single thing. She said ‘well why change anything if you like it?’”.

Since the Wilcocks moved in almost 20 years ago they have made some changes to Cragg Hill, but many things remain as they always have been.

Alongside Art Deco features such as geometrically tiled fireplaces, panelled glass windows and original Thirties light fittings, the house retains touches that seem positively antiquated today.

Step back in time

There are electric servants’ bells still in complete working order — which the current sellers prefer not to tell people about lest they find themselves summoned by overenthusiastic house guests calling for an early morning tea.

The house also had one of the first private telephones in Bridlington, which is still in situ in a specially designed, wood-panelled nook under the main stairs and uses the original telephone number — Bridlington 78.

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The Thirties calling: the house had one of the first private telephones in Bridlington, which is still in situ in a purpose-built vestibule

This proved something of a headache when the Wilcocks tried to get internet access installed in the property and the phone lines had to be routed back to a junction box half a mile away.

There are also reminders to an old-fashioned way of life in the arrangement of the rooms, from the servants’ quarters, harking back to a time before the Second World War, to Mr and Mrs Blackstone’s separate bedrooms, both with Art Deco twin beds.

The furniture in Mr Blackstone’s room was made from limed oak with moth-repelling cedar wood carcasses, while Mrs Blackstone’s was dark enamel with chrome handles.

“The beds in Mrs Blackstone’s room had the original mattresses on when we bought the house,” says Wilcock. “One bed had clearly been slept in a lot and the other was pristine and looked unused. We’ve changed the mattresses but kept the bed frames, although we’ve moved them into the guest rooms.”

The two Art Deco bathrooms are still virtually unchanged with their original tiling, one orange Aztec pattern, the other blue, cast iron baths and unusually shaped chrome taps. In the kitchen is one of the first Agas, installed in 1951 and recently refurbished by the Wilcocks.

Bringing the house back to life

One of the first things the Wilcocks tackled when they moved into the house was the elaborately designed but wildly overgrown garden, which had been landscaped in the English woodland style made popular by the Queen Mother at Frogmore House in Windsor with York stone beds and a sunken area.

“Once we cleared away all the brambles all these amazing original plants like blue geraniums revived and came back to life like something from a fairytale,” says Wilcock.

Built the year before the Great Depression and seven years before the Second World War, the house remained frozen in time throughout the Twentieth century, as the fortunes of its inhabitants declined.

Wilcock explains how the money from the Bridlington Steam Laundry, which relied heavily on local guesthouses for business, would have dried up with the advent of package holidays abroad.

“When we bought the house Mrs Leicester was living on housing benefit and living in three rooms. She obviously couldn’t afford to heat the whole thing,” he says.

“Her second marriage had been to the local railway keeper, he was very good-looking and all the women were in love with him but he had no money, so the house gradually deteriorated until it was rescued by us.”

The house is for sale through Willowgreen for £650,000.



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