Rockfish
Sidmouth

Exposed red brick arches line both walls. Original timber roof trusses — repainted cream — span the full height of the room. Skylights flood the space with Devon coastal light. None of this was touched; all of it was worked with. The space planning organises the room into booth-flanked dining runs — dark oak dividers with oval hammered glass inserts glowing amber in the evening — running towards the open kitchen. Copper dome pendants and gooseneck sconces throw pools of light against the brick. In the evenings: copper and amber against dark timber and pale brick, something genuinely historic and entirely its own.

The bespoke booth dividers — dark oak with hammered glass ovals, catching light the way the sea surface does at dusk — are bespoke interior architecture made only for this room. The material palette is drawn from the working coast — dark stained timber, copper, navy leather — and the building’s Victorian heritage. Nothing introduced that the building couldn’t absorb.

The tile murals in the arched recesses are the project’s most singular element. Lisa Helmanis painted every illustration: harbour scenes, boats at anchor, red cliffs, the sea in different weathers. Drawn in ink, printed onto ceramic, then hand-laid into the brick arches. Not prints acquired for the occasion, but the designer’s own hand recording the place.

In the bathrooms, a second tile programme — anchors, lighthouses, seahorses, scallop shells — extends the same sensibility into every corner. The tactile quality of the hand-drawn line, rendered in ceramic, brings a warmth no reproduction could provide. A concept-driven seafood restaurant the sea cadets hall was always waiting to become.