A restored Georgian home and shop: Step into Home Store, set within a three-storey Georgian townhouse in the Old Town area of Hastings, and three things hit you immediately: the scent of an open fire, the subtle colours of chocolate brown and muted green and the sound of feet treading on dusty floorboards. This is experiential shopping taken to extremes. Over the three floors, each room in the shop, which specialises in simple, functional and utilitarian products for the home, is artfully laid out as if in a house: kitchen and housekeeping area on the ground floor, up the stairs to the study and linen room and up once more to reach the bathroom at the top. I had always wanted to have a shop," says Alastair Hendy, who has worked as a food writer and photographer for 15 years. He moved into the area six years ago, and when he found the building 12 months later he looked beyond its state of disrepair and saw its potential. It had been a restaurant and been through a series of botched renovations," he says. There were false ceilings in nearly every room and peeling plasterboard walls throughout. Gutting and restoring it was a slow and careful process, taking three and a half years. Sash windows were reinstated and copies of original tiles from the kitchen were commissioned. The hardest part, Hendy says, was finding builders who would do what he wanted, namely return to original finishes and detail that were in keeping with the period of the house. Hendy was meticulous in sourcing materials from salvage yards. Builders love new materials and hate salvage," he says. My first builder thought I was mad stripping away the modernity and putting back the old until people started remarking how good it looked. Then, he was so proud of it he had a T-shirt made with his phone number emblazoned on it to wear while he worked. Hendy has filled the spaces with beautifully simple and functional items for the home. The kitchen and utility area has mounds of vintage Denby and Woods Ware china as well as groupings of bone-handled cutlery and pressed glass. There are brushes made from horsehair and pear wood for every corner of the home, and ostrich feather dusters (the dust sticks to the fibres rather than simply being pushed around). Nowadays we seem to have only one pair for everything and they are stuffed in the back of the kitchen drawer. But here is a collection, each with its minute purpose - from the 6in lamp wick trimmers to the 13½in tailor's shears, each quite beautiful to behold. This is living history that you can buy and, crucially, use. Upstairs there is more: a study, full of wooden and dark-green desks with vintage swivel chairs; next door the linen room, light and pale, with glassware and felt slippers; upstairs again and the bathroom: a collection of mirrored cabinets line one wall, bouncing the light around the room. Curiously, the bath is plumbed in - 'Well, I may want to live here one day," Hendy explains. Downstairs is the only 'new build" area of the home, an extension at the back of the store. Hendy is about to open this as a cafe and will be cooking and serving basic seafood fare that you can share with friends and eat with your hands. Revival is in the air in Hastings, which is one of many British seaside resorts to have seen more prosperous days. Fishermen's net huts are on the beach and there is still an active fishing fleet. And a major new cultural venue has just opened in the form of the Jerwood Gallery for contemporary art. Nevertheless, some would see it as brave, if not foolhardy, to open a store like this and on this scale while the threat of a double-dip recession looms. Not at all," Hendy says. People shop, no matter what. So in a recession it is the practical things, like brushes, that sell. So why not make the practical a luxury, and give it a quality? 36 High Street, Hastings (01424-447171)