“I think if you're brought up at the coast it holds you very strongly by the heart,” says Anne Neill.
“My father built a house on Yarmouth seafront in 1964, so I grew up with the beach over the road. I lived in Norwich for a good few years, but the coast always called me back.”
For years Anne, who ran her well-known boutique Walkers in Norwich from 1990 until 2018 before relocating it to Lowestoft, had been on the waiting list for a beach hut.
And when she heard that a row of brand-new huts were due to be built on the promenade at Pakefield, she jumped at the chance to become an owner.
Having worked in fashion all her career, Anne took great delight in decking out the hut, which she named Beach.Hut.Style.
“They came as basically a garden shed in terms of just the bare wood,” she says.
“Outside it’s painted ice grey, with an ice turquoise stripe.”
Anne rents out Beach.Hut.Style to holidaymakers for the entire summer season and also uses it as a photoshoot location for her fashion business, capturing images of seasonal collections for the Walkers.Style website, so attention to detail was paramount.
“The internal spec was a really high priority because I wanted it to be visually perfect for photographic purposes and I wanted it to be really super comfortable for my guests,” she says.
“I wanted my guests to walk in there and get that wow factor feeling that you get when you walk into a lovely hotel room.
“I specifically bought key pieces, like really comfortable armchairs and a Fermob bistro set.”
Anne lives in Ile de Re for half of the year and to give Beach.Hut.Style a certain je ne sais quoi, she sourced all the décor pieces from there.
“I collected all the artefacts for inside the beach hut,” says Anne. “So it’s got a French flavour.
“Another thing that was very important to me was that when I’m drinking a cup of tea, whether it is at the beach or anywhere, I want it to be in nice china. If I were frying bacon for a fry-up breakfast at the beach, I want it in a decent frying pan.
“All the things I put inside the beach hut I really wanted it to be as good as you would have at home. I wanted my guests to be able to sit on comfy chairs, drink their tea out of lovely china and actually feel like they were treating themselves to a really great day out.”
Perched on the North Sea coast at the mercy of the elements, regular maintenance is key to keep Beach.Hut.Style looking at its best.
“As you can imagine, being right out by the sea, they get weather beaten , so we actually re-paint ours every year,” says Anne.
“I don’t want it ever to look shabby, and also by being very good with maintenance it stops the wood from going rotten, and so on. It gives it longevity.
“It’s not just for the guests hiring the hut out, but for the passers-by too. I think walkers enjoy looking at all the beach huts – they choose their favourite colours and some of them have got funny little names like It’s Wine O’Clock Somewhere.
Anne loves her spot on the promenade, where she can walk her Welsh terrier Gryff and indulge her love of sea swimming.
“The beach immediately outside the beach hut door is dog friendly, but also I’ve only got to walk a few hundred yards to get to the beautiful golden sands.
“I’m a keen sea swimmer – I'm not strong enough mentally to go in there in the winter when it’s really bitterly cold, but in the spring and autumn when it’s chilly it’s really nice to be able to get back to a hut and get changed in the dry and the warm. You can have a nice kettle of hot water ready to make some hot tea.”
And thinking ahead to when she retires from her fashion career and has more spare time on her hands, a beach hut plays a big part in her plans.
“I wanted to spend my later years back in the place that I love the most, which is by the beach. And with a beach hut I’d never be lonely because you’ve got all the dog walkers, all the couples, all the families, the kids – whether it’s winter or summer there’s always someone to pass the time of day away with and enjoy the fresh sea air.”
To find out more about booking Anne’s beach hut, visit the website, beach.hut.style
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