The Wash House

The Wash House is a full restoration of a 19th-century wash-house in Bexhill-on-Sea.

The existing building, once utilitarian and overlooked, has been transformed into a space of calm rigor and refined materiality. Brickwork, original roof structure and industrial heritage remain legible and respected. Inside, reclaimed oak beams and subtle modern interventions create an atmosphere where the building’s former purpose is acknowledged but no longer dominant.

Rather than erasing signs of labour, the design honours them: the patina of old brickwork becomes part of the interior texture; the old wash-house footprint becomes a series of generous spatial volumes; daylight is invited in through carefully composed openings and reveals; and the new elements are quiet and precise, deferring rather than dominating.

This is architecture of restraint, the essential preserved, the redundant removed, the new inserted with care. The outcome is a home that pairs memory and contemporary living, heritage and calm modernity.