Isabel Allen charts the rise and re-rise of Marine Court – a 1930s behemoth on the South Coast that is enjoying a new lease of life under the custodianship of its current residents and owners.
Below is Isabel Allen’s editorial for AT336, the March-April 2025 issue of Architecture Today. Read the digital edition of the issue of Architecture Today here.
It looked so promising. Built in 1938, Marine Court in St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex, exemplified the optimism and glamour of Seaside Moderne; faith in the healing power of salt water bathing and sunshine; clean white lines and clear views; louche living by the sea.
Designed by Kenneth Dalgleish and Roger K Pullen, the building is a half-way convincing replica of the Queen Mary ocean liner. Stylistically, it teeters on the threshold between Brutalist megastructure and Art Deco schmaltz. A showy, outsize intruder, dwarfing its genteel Georgian neighbours, and stealing their view. Those were the lucky ones. The unlucky ones were bulldozed in the name of progress. The sales brochure boasted of having replaced ‘picturesque and spacious but rather obsolete Georgian houses’ with ‘an ultra-modern colony of flats, huge yet in perfect taste.’
A postcard from the 1930s advertising the development.
Pitched between a luxury apartment block and a high-end hotel, the commercial proposition was to peddle a coastal dolce vita to a sophisticated London crowd. A promise of cocktails on the terrace, Turkish baths and tea rooms. Of fresh sea air and sunsets. Of waiters, porters, valets and maids.
The punters weren’t convinced. Sales were slow. The developers went into liquidation in 1939 and the air force requisitioned the building. Like so many war heroes, the building struggled to settle back into civilian life. Its post-war history becomes a little hazy. Nightclubs, parties, squats, cults. A general lack of maintenance and care. There were mutterings that the building might be beyond repair.
But residents love the building. So much so that, in 2010, they bought the freehold. They embarked on a renovation programme that shows no sign of slowing down. It’s a gargantuan undertaking. The paint is still peeling; the pipework still chunters; the building still creaks. But the fire safety and electrical systems have been brought up to date; lifts are now working; the structure is sound. Just as importantly, there’s a distinct air of excitement. A palpable sense of pride that Marine Court’s current custodians are giving their building a brand new lease of life.
This is the spirit that has saved so many of our finest buildings. The kind of story that inspired us to launch the Architecture Today Awards for buildings that have stood the test of time.
