\n On the north Norfolk coast, in the heart of Wells-next-the-Sea, a red-brick building with a striking gable end has a history far removed from its current life. It began as the church rooms for the chapel opposite, then spent decades as a youth hostel. Now, thanks to husband-and-wife architects Tom and Eleanor Leahy, it has been given a new lease of life as ARC Next-the-Sea, a 10-bedroom holiday home and the latest addition to the couple\u2019s growing portfolio.\n<\/p>\n
\n (Image: Dan Casson\/courtesy of ARC)\n<\/p>\n
\n Tom and Eleanor, both 36, split their time between London and the Cotswolds with their daughter Joy, nearly two, and twins Daphne and Albert, who arrived earlier this year. Between running ARC and raising three children under two, they have somehow found the time to turn what has been called an \u2018ugly duckling\u2019 into a swan.\n<\/p>\n
\n The project began with the Youth Hostel Association\u2019s widely publicised sell-off of hostels too small to operate. Tom looked at five or six properties before this one stopped him in his tracks. It had originally been somewhere between a church hall and a library, where badminton was once played, before the YHA converted it into a hostel around the millennium, with kitchens and lounges downstairs and bunk rooms above.\n<\/p>\n
\n (Image: Dan Casson\/courtesy of ARC)\n<\/p>\n
\n What drew him in was the building\u2019s front. It is a fine example of a Norfolk gable end in red brick, a style Tom says has Dutch origins, brought to the county by merchants.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u2018It\u2019s a proud piece of architecture,\u2019 he tells me from his home. \u2018The church rooms originally didn\u2019t have any eye-level windows on the ground floor, just higher windows that started about head height, a bit like a traditional reading room. You could hardly see outside from anywhere in the building\u2019\n<\/p>\n
\n (Image: Dan Casson\/courtesy of ARC)\n<\/p>\n
\n The layout was just as unforgiving. Downstairs alone held three tiny dining rooms, two or three windowless lounges, two commercial kitchens and bedrooms with no windows at all.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u2018It was a really horrible rabbit warren,\u2019 Tom says, explaining that they ripped out almost everything internally, keeping only the original spiral staircase.\n<\/p>\n
\n On the ground floor, they dropped every window sill to create vast two-by-two-metre windows the length of the building. Upstairs, 10 generous dormer windows gave every room proper daylight for the first time.\n<\/p>\n
\n (Image: Dan Casson\/courtesy of ARC)\n<\/p>\n
\n \u2018We\u2019ve gone from a building without windows to a building with loads of windows,\u2019 Tom laughs.\n<\/p>\n
\n One planning condition required obscured glazing on the new dormers, so guests could not see into neighbouring gardens.\n<\/p>\n
\n Tom explained: \u2018Rather than just do frosted glass, we worked with an artist called Jack Brindley to create a contemporary stained glass design on all of the windows on that floor.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u2018It harks back to the building\u2019s church heritage but also gives a very warm yellow colour into all the bedrooms. The way the stained glass has been done, each window is different depending on its orientation to the sun.\u2019\n<\/p>\n
\n (Image: Dan Casson\/courtesy of ARC)\n<\/p>\n
\n Ten bedrooms sit across the property – eight upstairs, each with a dormer window and en suite bathroom, and two accessible bedrooms in the ground-floor wings for wheelchair users or anyone avoiding stairs. The bathrooms share dormer windows two at a time.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u2018We\u2019ve put an amazing mirrored wall in there so it feels as though each bathroom has a full dormer,\u2019 Tom says.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u2018The style is very crafted, almost like a yacht interior with lots of continuous oak joinery that wraps around every room.\n<\/p>\n
\n (Image: Dan Casson\/courtesy of ARC)\n<\/p>\n
\n \u2018That joinery language does quite a lot of hard work. So many walls are given over to glazing that furniture cannot be pushed back against them, so the oak becomes the service core, absorbing toilets, bathrooms and storage.\u2019\n<\/p>\n
\n Underfoot, a clay tile floor runs unbroken from the pavement outside, through the ground floor and out again to the swimming pool. The pattern shifts subtly from room to room, with the tiles changing orientation to mark out the kitchen, dining area and lounge. \u2018It has an almost 1930s quality that harks back to the building\u2019s construction, but is now quite contemporary,\u2019 Tom says.\n<\/p>\n
\n A pair of church pews, bought at a local auction and repainted to complement the floor tiles, became one of the project\u2019s best budget buys. The dining table, made by a carpenter, ripples gently along its length.\n<\/p>\n
\n (Image: Dan Casson\/courtesy of ARC)\n<\/p>\n
\n \u2018It\u2019s got a waviness because we\u2019re by the sea,\u2019 Tom says. \u2018But each wave is a place setting, so it makes it very easy to lay a beautiful table.\u2019\n<\/p>\n
\n There is a careful playfulness around shapes and forms throughout. It is partly inspired by a painting of a 17th-century church that the Leahys used as a driver for the interior scheme.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u2018When you see the building alongside it, you can understand the connection,\u2019 Tom explains.\n<\/p>\n
\n The Leahys replaced the old hostel porch with a two-metre-wide double door, copied from an archive photograph of the church rooms. Straight ahead, the surviving spiral staircase rises through a beautifully top-lit brick shaft.\n<\/p>\n
\n (Image: Dan Casson\/courtesy of ARC)\n<\/p>\n
\n From the entrance hall, guests move left or right around the building\u2019s core before reaching the kitchen. There is not a single corridor on the ground floor, with the kitchen flowing into the dining area and the dining area into the lounge. As Tom puts it, guests pass \u2018through four arches between the entrance and the kitchen, which gives you a real sense of how bespokely crafted the house is.\u2019\n<\/p>\n
\n From the fully fitted oak kitchen, sightlines stretch clear through the dining area and out to the garden.\n<\/p>\n
\n The lounge beyond, reached through a pair of arches, was built deliberately oversized, big enough for yoga classes or workshops, with windows on three sides framing the swimming pool.\n<\/p>\n
\n (Image: Dan Casson\/courtesy of ARC)\n<\/p>\n
\n \u2018Because the pool\u2019s slightly raised, there\u2019s a very fun relationship between people in the pool, kind of at eye level with you when you\u2019re inside the building looking back,\u2019 Tom says.\n<\/p>\n
\n Outside, the transformation is just as dramatic. A bare gravel car park has become a landscaped garden with a year-round heated swimming pool, hot tub and outdoor kitchen, all visible from inside, with the pool and barbecue area clad in knapped flint, the traditional East Anglian walling technique. The garden earns its keep in every season. In winter, the lounge\u2019s wood-burning stove, glazed on three sides, becomes the heart of the house, with a hidden television tucked behind the joinery for quieter evenings.\n<\/p>\n
\n (Image: Dan Casson\/courtesy of ARC)\n<\/p>\n
\n \u2018It\u2019s a really cosy thing for long evenings,\u2019 Tom says. Come spring and summer, the pool and outdoor kitchen are back in use as early as March, helped by a vast sandy beach on the doorstep, Holkham Hall next door, and a fishing harbour that still lands crab and lobster.\n<\/p>\n
\n The Leahys are already part of local life, renting the neighbouring Women\u2019s Institute hall for yoga and other events, and hosting the WI\u2019s summer party in their own garden this year. ARC Next-the-Sea welcomed its first guests in March 2026, and bookings have come in thick and fast.\n<\/p>\n
\n (Image: Dan Casson\/courtesy of ARC)\n<\/p>\n
\n For Tom, the appeal is simple: 10 super-king en suite bedrooms in a house that never feels like a sprawling estate. Two electric car chargers, solar panels and air source heat pumps provide all the heating, hot water and pool heating, making it entirely fossil-fuel free, and, with room for four dogs, ready for a north Norfolk holiday.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u2018It\u2019s very contained,\u2019 he says. \u2018You can sit in the lounge or kitchen and basically watch children in the swimming pool without having to worry. People are together rather than in different corners of the house.\u2019 .\n<\/p>\n
\n finestretreats.co.uk\/rentals\/house-wells-next-the-sea-arc-next-the-sea-584773.html\n<\/p>\n
\n Because we\u2019ve got so many windows, we can\u2019t push things against the wall, so the joinery itself is the service core of the building…\n<\/p>\n
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