Period rooms in Beach Town
Littlehampton's first resort development, Beach Town, began around 1790 with tall terraced lodging houses facing the sea. The Sussex Extensive Urban Survey describes three-storey houses over basements on South Terrace, some bow-fronted and probably with canopied balconies from the start, others four storeys high with full-height canted bays, and mirrored pairs of three-storey brick houses on Norfolk Place. Rooms in houses like these have the height and proportions that cornice was designed for.
The streets laid out later carry the theme on in other styles. St Catherine's Road and Granville Road were set out on curving lines between about 1880 and 1900, with large semi-detached villas on Granville Road, and in the early 1900s more big villas went up on Beach Road, Fitzalan Road and Norfolk Road. Even the newer Beach Crescent, built after the old Beach Hotel was demolished in 1994, was designed in a faux Regency style.
Matching what is already there
In older houses the job is often to replace a damaged length of cornice, or to carry an existing profile into a room where it has been lost, perhaps after a ceiling has come down or a wall has been moved. We study the profile, its depth and how far it projects, and find the closest match among fibrous plaster sections, so the new run sits naturally beside the old. Where a ceiling rose has cracked, or been painted so often that its detail has filled in, a new one can be fitted in its place.
Getting the scale right
The size of a moulding should follow the room. A deep cornice suits a tall first-floor drawing room in a seafront terrace; the same profile would crowd a back bedroom in one of the town's smaller Victorian cottages, where a neat cove or slim cornice looks better. In twentieth-century semis and bungalows the standard 127mm cove is usually right, especially after a textured ceiling has been plastered flat. Panel mouldings and dado rails can add detail to the long hallways and stairwells of the bigger villas without changing anything structural.
Beyond the cornice
Fibrous plaster covers more than the line where wall meets ceiling. In a hallway of one of the larger villas, a pair of corbels can carry an archway between the front door and the stairs, and a niche can hold a lamp or a vase at a turn in the landing. Where a front room lost its original fireplace decades ago, a plaster fire surround can bring the focus back. Pieces like these are fixed, jointed and finished in much the same way as a run of cornice.
Fitting and finishing
Cornice goes up after the walls and ceiling are plastered and dry. Mitres are cut so the profile runs unbroken round each corner, joints are filled until they vanish, and the run is kept straight even where an old ceiling dips. Decorating follows once the adhesive and filler have set, and picking the cornice out in a slightly different shade from the ceiling shows off its profile.
If the ceiling needs work first, see plastering over Artex in Littlehampton or plastering and skimming in Littlehampton. Our coving, cornice and mouldings page shows the full range, and our Littlehampton area page lists everything else we do in the town. Send a photo of the room or call 07824 165672 for a free quote.
