I’m standing in the courtyard garden of Seafort in Elie, looking out to sea.
I lean over and look down. The water is right below me, waves lapping gently against the thick stone base of the wall.
“That’s it at full tide,” owner Linda Smith says. “When the tide’s right out that’s all beach, right the way to the harbour.”
Seafort sits on South Street, facing on to Elie Beach, and is just a minute’s walk from the centre of the historic East Neuk holiday town.
The house dates from the late 16th Century. “We gave a piece of one of the ceiling beams to a local historian who had them sent for analysis,” Linda explains. “According to the dating the wood dated from 1596.”
It’s thought Seafort was built to house workers who were constructing nearby Elie Castle.
Linda bought the property as a holiday home in 2004 and set about renovating it.
“The house had been owned by the same woman since the 1950s and needed a lot of modernisation,” she says.
“I’ve explored the history of Seafort a little bit and, interestingly, it seems to have had lady owners for at least the past 100 years.”
One of the first projects Linda embarked upon was the conservatory that occupies a large footprint to the rear of the house and enjoys unparalleled views out to sea.
“Originally I wanted to put the conservatory across the whole width of the house,” Linda says. “However the buttress on the back is apparently the main reason the house is listed and we weren’t allowed to cover that up.
“They said we could go outwards, though, and that has actually worked out better.”
She isn’t wrong. The far end of the conservatory is just a metre from the seawall. Sit at the dining table and it’s easy to imagine you’re on a ship out at sea.
The large conservatory is where Linda spends most of her time in the house. The dining table seats 12 and there is another area with comfortable armchairs. Double doors open into the L-shaped courtyard garden which has a gate in the seawall leading directly onto the beach.
The whitewashed two-storey-and-attic building is entered from South Street. A small vestibule has stairs to the first floor and a door into the living room.
It has oak flooring, a feature gas fire under a timber mantelpiece, and glazed door to a small sun porch. The charming kitchen has handmade floor and wall units. A corridor off leads to the downstairs bedroom which has an en suite and shuttered windows facing South Street.
On the upstairs level are three large bedrooms, two of which look out across the Firth of Forth. Off the back bedroom is a fixed staircase into the attic. This has a shower room with Velux window and a large storage space with window that has been used as a bedroom area.
The house certainly needed modernised: what is now a utility room was an outside loo. Linda had Seafort re-plumbed and rewired; replaced the pantiles on the roof; and put in a new handmade kitchen and bathrooms.
Linda, who lives in Edinburgh, has used Seafort for holidays – fitting in with a long tradition. “In previous times, wives and children would come to Elie for the summer with the men staying at home to work and joining them for weekends,” she says.
The house could make an excellent family or retirement property. Alternatively, it could be a lucrative holiday home, with Elie being the jewel in the East Neuk’s crown.
New owners might wish to do some further modernisation of their own and must prepare themselves for higher than average maintenance costs – the price of living beside the sea.
Most will surely agree it’s worth it to live in such a location.
Seafort, at 4 South Street in Elie, is on sale through Rettie for offers over £760,000.