Town and country: Chic developer Marta Nowicka has perfected the art of property-hopping

As an interior architect and property developer specialising in the conversion of commercial buildings, Marta Nowicka spent her early career working on some of London’s hottest interiors. Her portfolio included the concept for Fabric nightclub, the design for Cyberia, London’s first internet café, and homes for artist friends including Michael Landy and Gillian Wearing.

She had also bought and converted an Edwardian warehouse near Old Street, where she lived with her son, as well as No 16 Charles Square. The 17th-century building was the Labour Party’s headquarters for Tony Blair’s 1997 election win and Ken Livingstone’s 2000 mayoral triumph. Nowicka gutted it, while working with English Heritage to respect the property’s Grade II* listing, and turned it into five rental flats, which she is now selling.

Old Street warehouse

Nick Rees

But she also had an itch to work on a project in the countryside. She set up a Rightmove alert for properties near Rye, just in case anything in the right price bracket came up. “Sadly my father passed away and he left me a small amount of money,” says Nowicka. “He was an architect but he was a keen sailor and a fisherman and I thought it would be a wonderful legacy to invest that money into a property by the sea.”

The first thing that came up was a former coastguard cottage in Camber. It had been let for years and was vandalised and gutted after the tenants moved out. “Someone had stripped all the metal out to sell, even the floorboards were up because they had stolen the pipes,” she says. “It had been painted bright blue, red and green and there was graffiti on top of that. The windows had been smashed and boarded up so there was no natural light. It was quite scary.”

So what on earth persuaded her to buy it 16 years ago? “I put my phone torch on and I could see that all the original features were there, even if they were beaten up.” A whirlwind, tight budget renovation ensued, complete with rewiring, replumbing and endless paint stripping. Nowicka kept the patinas left in the plasterwork from layers and layers of old wallpaper, as well as some of the “crazy painting” on the stairs.

Once it was ready, Nowicka and her son, then eight, would go down to Camber at the weekend and stay until the last possible moment, leaving at 5am on Monday to get back to school. “We would eke out the last minutes because it was so lovely. We had loads of friends coming down, too. I think that first summer we had 90 people stay. It was crazy. I remember when September rolled in I was exhausted but it was a lot of fun.”

Rye ambulance station

Wojciech Ketz

Gradually people would ask to stay in the cottage when Nowicka was not using it and word spread. In the meantime, Nowicka’s son started secondary school locally so the pair moved down, but they quickly discovered that Camber was almost deserted midweek in November. “Coming from London it was too isolated for us.” So she started looking in Rye, with its year-round community, and found a former St John Ambulance station up for sale. “I bought it then and there, it ticked all the boxes. It was a commercial building with potential but it was very unloved. It needed a complete re-imagination.” The transformation into a four-bedroom home was not without its planning battles but eventually, the pair were in.

By now they were moving between the three properties — the London warehouse, the seaside cottage and the ambulance station. Rye served as the inspiration for the EF Benson’s Mapp & Lucia novels — which gave Nowicka an idea. “In the books everyone moves out when the holiday season starts and they rent their places out,” she says. “All our neighbours were doing it and I thought it was a good idea, rather than places standing empty.”

A peripatetic lifestyle grew organically from that. About 10 years ago, while on holiday in Poland, she had an epiphany and created her brand, DOMStay, to rent out the properties. They can now be booked as holiday lets on domstay.com. The three-bedroom Coastguard’s Cottage costs from £250 a night, while the Rye ambulance station and Clerkenwell warehouse, which both sleep eight, start at £350.

All three have been beautifully designed with an eye on their history and modernity, a calm palette and natural materials. “They’re our homes as well so they have that personal touch,” she says. “We have our books, records, good music systems, umbrellas, plants, hotel-quality linens. A lot of holiday lets are just a commodity and they can be quite depressing. We want to create a home from home.”

Nowicka’s son is now 24 and has moved into his own home, but the property dance goes on. “If he is coming to stay for the weekend he’ll phone before to ask which house he’s coming to,” she says. “We don’t plan to change anything, except maybe we’ll block out more time and plan ahead to be in each space, rather than letting ourselves be governed by demand for the holiday lets.”