One of the first people I got to know via Instagram (when I started posting regularly about three years ago) was Wendy Aldridge from Homeplace. Homeplace sells a beautifully edited mix of contemporary and vintage homeware and Wendy’s taste in interior styling, especially mid-century, is impeccable. As well as the shop, Wendy also has an apartment in Ramsgate that she lets out for holidays. The apartment ‘The Homeplace Holiday Let’ has been decorated throughout using Wendy’s eye for design and examples of many of the items that she stocks in her shop.
I was lucky enough to host a ‘No Rules Interior Cool’ workshop there with Lisa Dawson back in the Spring and instantly fell in love with the apartment and Ramsgate. In fact, all of us on the workshop fell in love with the apartment so much that when Wendy mentioned that she’d had a cancellation for Easter, I snapped it up for my family’s Easter holiday.
The apartment is a basement flat of Victoria Mansions, a huge Victorian villa on the promenade in Ramsgate, The view from the front door is of the sea front and a quick trot across the road and you’re on the beach.
The apartment itself is huge and sleeps 6 across 3 double rooms.
Huge Front Room - we held a workshop for 20 in here!
The front room and kitchen are knocked through to provide maximum light from the front bay windows and large sash windows at the back. Wendy has cleverly joined the colour scheme together by using the main colour from the front room - Farrow and Ball ‘Downpipe’ - as the accent colour in the kitchen on the window frames, door frames and skirting boards. Wendy has also made the most of the remaining original features in the apartment - the floorboards and the windows - by making them focal points in the room.
The kitchen is large and airy and big enough to house a dining table for 8. The kitchen was made from the existing carcass, updated with new doors and a stainless steel workshop. There’s a dash of 80s geometry in here too with the grid patterned square tiles and stainless steel hood but, as ever, Wendy blends this effortlessly with the Victorian architecture and mid century furniture.
One of the two beautiful Homeplace Holiday Let bathrooms - this got over 6000 likes on Instagram when I posted it.
This is the main bedroom at the back of the apartment - all of the furniture, accessories and art is a mixture of new and vintage and all is sourced by Wendy herself. I especially love how she gives a nod to the apartment’s seaside location using quirkier than usual motifs - the vintage toy yacht here is an example, along with the seagull taxidermy in the kitchen!
Ramsgate itself is up and coming and, if I were to consider a job move to London, I think I’d seriously consider living here and commuting the hour to London. Ramsgate is awash with huge Victorian villas, some beautiful, some tired and in need of refurbishment, (LOADS of doer-uppers) but all still intact and authentic. We especially loved the houses built into the cliff, the cinema, the beach, the harbour and the flea markets.
My family and i also fell for Margate with it’s cool restaurants, Turner Contemporay gallery, flea markets, boutiques, the newly restored Dreamland amusement park and our absolute favourite - The Shell Grotto.
We also checked out Broadstairs and Whitstable - both well worth at least a day trip each with their beautiful beaches, cool architecture and quirky boutiques. And oysters of course!
We absolutely loved our trip to the this corner of Kent and the Homeplace Holiday Let in Ramsgate and we’d definitely go back to explore it all more deeply. For more info and to book the Ramsgate apartment click here.
Wendy now has a second holiday let in Porto which she’s decorated beautifully and I can’t wait to visit - For more info and to book the Porto apartment click here.