In common with their counterparts elsewhere, estate agents in Hastings are known for a bit of creative flair, but even they were a little surprised to hear their town described on the local television news last week as “Notting Hill on Sea”. The one-time seedy East Sussex resort, reported the programme, has become home to a bulging population of haute-bohos.

Among the celebrities colonising the town, it ventured, are Josephine Fairley, the magazine editor turned bestselling beauty guru, and her husband, Craig Sams, the founder of Green & Black’s organic chocolate and chairman of the Soil Association.

They bought their first property in the town in 1994, and in 2005 took over Judges bakery, where locals can now stock up on organic pastries stuffed with sustainably caught herring; they also plan a holistic health centre.

So who are the other haute-bohos of Hastings? Well, it isn’t easy tracking them down, but certainly they are in the vicinity. Alexander McQueen, the fashion designer, is nearby, and certainly fits the profile, though to be strictly accurate, he lives in Fairlight Cove, five miles along the coast. Arguably, the town’s most famous (and possibly most prosperous) son is Simon Fuller, the multi-millionaire pop impresario and svengali to the Spice Girls. He attended the local grammar school, where his father was headmaster, and retains strong links there.

While “Notting Hill on Sea” might be coming on a little too strong, there is no doubt that a town that just seven years ago was nicknamed the Costa del Dole is slowly improving. Its reputation plunged in the 1970s when slum landlords bought up fading seafront B&Bs and stuffed them full of the unemployed. The stucco peeled, the gardens on the seafront at St Leonards, originally the posh part, to the west of the seafront, became the haunt of winos, and property prices plummeted: by 1993, one-bed seaside flats that had changed hands for £50,000 in the late 1980s boom were trading for £20,000 each.

It didn’t help that while other railway lines improved, it took 90 minutes to reach Hastings by train from London (and still does). Even in 2000, it was possible to buy a flat for £30,000. The only — minor — celebrities living in Hastings at that time were Fiona Pitt-Kethley, the poet, and her husband, James Plaskett, a former British chess champion, who lived next door to Yates. However, they moved to Spain in 2002.

But attitudes are changing. For a start, Hastings itself is the real star of Foyle’s War, the second world war detective series on ITV, which stars Michael Kitchen as Detective Chief Superintendent Christopher Foyle of the town’s police department, and slowly, a town that was once a fashionable literary watering hole (Lord Bryon’s widow lived here, and Lewis Carroll was a regular visitor) is on the up.

“DSS tenants have been priced off the seafront,” says Mark Rush, a director of Rush Witt & Wilson estate agency. “The government has come down heavily on houses of multiple occupation after a terrible fire in Brighton. It is mostly singletons and young couples who have moved in now, many attracted because they see it as good value: you can still buy a two-bed flat on the seafront for £140,000.”

Even better, you can buy a sturdy, six-bed townhouse for £250,000.

“Where else in the southeast can you do that?” asks Martin Levinson, 46, who started to invest in Hastings four years ago.

Gradually, the London-based Levinson, who used to run an advertising firm, bought eight properties, and turned full-time developer. When he spotted a townhouse for sale in the charming Old Town, a three-minute walk from the seafront and now the most desirable area to buy in, he put in an offer.

“We swapped a two-bed flat in Highgate for a four-storey house in Hastings, and had a bit of cash left over. Hastings is the sort of place where you go for a walk and it takes ages to get anywhere because you keep bumping into people.”

But not, so far, too many Alist celebrities. Not that he is bothered, and neither is Elizabeth Leigh, 41, a London-based photographer, who with her husband, Andrew, 45, is renovating a four-storey townhouse in the Old Town (Andrew’s parents live in the area). They bought there a year ago for £310,000.

You don’t come to Hastings to spot movie stars, but to mix with creative types; those who have been driven out of the capital because their fluctuating earnings will no longer support London rents and mortgages.

One of Leigh’s favourite haunts is Porters wine bar, with its live jazz. “Occasionally, somebody well-known will walk through the door, have a glass of beer and take the microphone,” she says.

Now that is something that does not happen all that often in Notting Hill.

On the market

A Grade II-listed, three-bedroom house in Sinnock Square, in the heart of the Old Town. It is for sale for £320,000 with Freeman Forman, 01424 773 888, www.freemanforman.co.uk

In the Old Town, a three-storey three-bedroom Grade II-listed house is for sale for £225,000. The 19th-century home has been restored. Rush Witt & Wilson, 01424 442 443, www.rushwittwilson.co.uk

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