Remember when movies used to start with a shot of dust being blown off a leather-bound tome, the cover slowly opening, and a voice reciting the opening words: "Once, a long, long time ago." Having decided to sell her rambling, art deco home in St Margaret’s Bay, Nula Perrin researched its history and found herself opening up a story from a great era of film making. George Ward reports

The house sits on a steep slope looking out to sea at St Margaret’s Bay. When Nula and her husband Simon moved in five years ago, she soon became aware it was more familiar to many locals than seemed normal.

Research revealed the answer: many of its most striking features were bought at auction when the neighbouring Granville Hotel was demolished in 1997 and its contents auctioned.

The Granville deserves its own chapter in showbiz history. St Margaret’s Bay had been a favourite of film and stage stars since the days when Noel Coward and Ian Fleming lived there. The hotel was used by both as an overspill for entertaining.

The porch visitors recognised at Colton, she discovered, was the hotel porch where Fleming, Sir Noel, Princess Margaret and Audrey Hepburn, among others, lingered. Other celebrities linked to the area include Peter Ustinov, who discovered it when based there while serving in the Army in 1942.

The house he moved to after the war was later bought by Miriam Margolyes, star of the Harry Potter films.

Also lovingly incorporated into Colton are the hotel’s lead canopies, terrace section and weather vane.

The various elements have been artfully merged to create a house of great character and drama, with planning permission gained for a dramatic extension that would include garage, swimming pool and cinema room.

From the entrance on Granville Road the visitor walks down to the porch with its art deco sunray, a portent of the art deco details throughout the house.

Mature trees frame the house, thanks to the the Earl of Granville who gave each houseowner £80 with which to plant trees in what had been a treeless area.

These now shade the village and have tree preservation orders.

A sun lounge to the right of the house sports a child’s size decorated loo and wash basin.

A bridge connects the terraced garden with the front door, a wood-clad whimsy that will have played the part of a drawbridge to generations of children.

To each side are the lead canopies that came from the old Granville, recycled as roof extensions to the original house.

On the seaward side the terrace has been glassed in to bring it into the main ground floor living area.

The original floorboards still act as a floor plan for the layout of the rooms as they used to be.

But now the kitchen, a small snug and main sitting room with stylish modern stove flow smoothly into each other.

The skill has been in maintaining a sense of identity for each area while doing away with the partitioning walls.

"You’ll see there’s no big screen TV here: we didn’t want anything to detract from the views out to sea," said Nula.

Colton is set comfortably back from the shoreline, far enough and high enough not to be threatened by coast erosion.

Yet its location also means views of the sea and the busy to-ings and fro-ings of vessels in the Channel are framed by the trees that the Earl of Granville was so keen on establishing.

The result is a pleasant balance of rural and marine vistas.

All the windows have wooden shutters but, as Nula points out, privacy is not a problem in this secluded cliffside property.

The curved roof of the extension that links the house to the old garage caused them a few headaches while they searched for someone who could work curved lead and plasterwork to the required standard.

A very art deco circular arch leads through to the converted garage which is now an office. Again, a separate room is created with no need for a door to give it its necessary sense of privacy. Upstairs in the main bedroom a door from the Granville has been made into a mirrored wardrobe, bouncing the coastal light back into the room.

The attic bedroom has planning permission to extend on stilts on the landward side, with a new window to make the most of the views on the seaward side.

Thanks to its connections with a great era of the British silver screen, the house can boast a star-studded past. Now it’s still looking forward to coming attractions...

FACTFILE

Colton, Granville Road, St Margaret’s Bay

Price: £1.2m

Contact Nula Perrin

01304 214467

Accommodation includes four large en suite bedrooms, two shower rooms/wc, large kitchen, six reception areas, utility room, large pantry/cloakroom area, car park, driveway, security gate entrance for cars & separate pedestrian buzzer entrance, summerhouse, staff lodge, and three lawned gardens.