The late-19th-century house is situated on the corner of two quiet, pedestrianised streets in the middle of the town.
Davide Lovatti
‘It was a Friday in July 2020, still deep in COVID, when we first viewed the house, ‘ says Julian Chichester of his rambling, late-19th-century townhouse on Portugal’s south coast. ‘We had absolutely no intention of buying it. But, within 24 hours, there was a bank manager, a lawyer and a surveyor all involved, and we had sent the money over by Monday.’
Julian and his wife Holly had long based themselves in Spain and Portugal for holidays. When their children were small they acquired a small plot of land in the rugged and rural Spanish region of Extremadura. ‘We built a one-room hut with three walls and basically camped out there for about 10 years,’ recalls Julian. ‘It was magic. But, in the end, we realised that we needed to be more in the centre of the action.’ A couple of decades of visiting friends in the hills of the inland Algarve led them to fall in love with this part of the world and so they found themselves in a small fishing town in 2020 with a large and, as it turned out, rather demanding house on their hands.
Walls in Farrow & Ball’s ‘Setting Plaster’ pick up on the original tiles on the first floor and an antique plaster foot. A collection of 19th-century Fajalauza lebrillos (bowls) from Andalusia are displayed above the gilded antique table from Lee Wright.
Davide Lovatti
There were plenty of reasons to fall in love with it. The property has an unusual situation, on the corner of two quiet, pedestrianised streets in the middle of the town, so the light streams in from both sides. This is especially magical in the main sitting room, which occupies the corner of the building and has glorious floor-to-ceiling windows. A short walk brings you to the sea, with the salt marshes characteristic of the area and several barrier islands. It is a similar landscape in many ways to where they live in the UK, on an estuary in Hampshire. ‘I think a lot of people come to the Algarve to play golf,’ remarks Holly. ‘But we love the sea and we love boats, so the fact that we can just jump on one here is hugely important.’ The region is also known for its wonderful bird life and Julian remembers seeing flocks of flamingoes flying over on some of his early visits. ‘It felt like a good omen.’
Of course, not everything was destined to go smoothly. When they bought it, the building was split into two parts with a restaurant on the ground floor (‘a pizzeria, done out in pink stipple’, says Holly) and a dwelling on the first floor. The generous outdoor spaces were part of the appeal, with a terrace on the first floor, a huge rooftop with its own kitchen and another small terrace perched above that. But the previous owner had concealed a raft of structural problems under a superficial smartening-up. ‘It looked like it needed a lick of paint, and maybe a bit of wiring and plumbing,’ says Julian. ‘But the reality was that everything was falling apart under the surface. The roofs were leaking and falling in, and what looked like lovely pine floors were rotten.’