A charmingly restored Tudor house in Hastings

MAY WE SUGGEST: A specialist in historical paint techniques has faithfully restored his Georgian house

In the mid-Nineties, Alastair and John bought two floors of a warehouse in Shoreditch, east London, which had yet to be gentrified. It was an empty shell with no amenities and they had to cut a hole in the floor to install a staircase. Today, the huge, light space upstairs is hung with blown-up travel photographs and features a necessarily large dining table that seats 20 at one end, and comfortable sofas at the other. Downstairs, the bedroom and bathroom seem almost inconsequential next to Alastair's kitchen, where a huge professional oven presides over one wall. Elsewhere, storage cupboards and shelves house a vast collection of china and pottery, and a subterraneous cupboard holds his hoard of herbs from around the world.

An army child, Alastair went to boarding school in Sussex, and spent weekends and holidays with his grandparents in nearby Battle. Having long been associated with the area, he looked in its direction when he and John began to search for a second home outside London in 2006. The property they found was in Hastings, which was once ranked the thirteenth most deprived town in Britain and had for years been in the doldrums. Recently, however, thanks in no small part to Alastair and other forward-thinking people, its fortunes have begun to look up. In 2012, the award-winning Jerwood Gallery opened on the seafront, showing nationally acclaimed contemporary exhibitions. Hastings Old Town centre - six or so streets that were fortunately saved from demolition in the Sixties, when the council finally woke up to the fact that the heart of the place was being destroyed - is a wonderful mixture of medieval, Georgian and Victorian buildings. There are now homes, as well as shops and galleries selling everything from contemporary art to antique furniture, silk flowers, vintage clothes and books. Added to this is the fact that families, in search of a better quality of life, have decamped from London - earning themselves the local sobriquet of DFLs (Down from London) - and are restoring houses that in the capital would have been beyond their wildest dreams.

In his search for a Hastings home, Alastair had initially been reluctant to view the Grade ll-listed sixteenth-century house in the Old Town. 'Too many houses in the area had been modernised and in the process lost much of their character,' he says. From the beginning, however, the house took a grip on Alastair and, although much had been obliterated, the bones of the house were all original and he was able to see its potential. He bought the house, not realising that it would be the start of a five-year restoration project.

He took a crash course in sixteenth-century building practices, scoured Ebay and local restoration centres for materials, scavenged oak from the seashore and teamed up with local craftsmen who took a real pride in their work, to create an interior that takes you back to a simpler time. He describes his efforts with a laugh as 'turning it back into a hovel, really. As Dolly Parton once said, "It costs a lot of money to look this cheap".'

Not content with one restoration, he then started looking for a property to open as a restaurant and shop, and in 2008 bought an old bistro on the high street. Originally Georgian, the building had Victorian and Thirties overlays and had been updated in the Eighties with downlighters, layers of lino and stuck-on tiles. 'We stripped everything back and used recycled tongue and groove to restore it, taking care to go with the evolution of the building,' explains Alastair. 'That way, you don't feel it is a pastiche.'