Stepping off the deck

For the past 20 years, Sir Peter Blake’s widow Pippa Blake has lived on the Chichester harbour sea front in a 1940s bungalow where just recently “a forward-thinking architect tore down walls, built a balcony and clad it in concrete”. Having spent a lot of time in New Zealand she was inspired by the islands’ “batches” [sic], holiday homes that are “often no more than a shed with corrugated iron for a roof”. Although some passers-by now dub her house “The Nissen hut”, after the prefab steel structure used for weapons storage in the Second World War, Blake is delighted by the transformation. “It’s like a load has lifted off me,” she says. “I have a lot more pleasure being in the house.” The decking was another nod towards New Zealand: “It’s a very antipodean thing to have,” she says. “You step out of the house and there’s the sea.”