RENOVATING an East Cliff property has sparked a Dover electrician's interest in one of the house's previous owners.

Peter Smith, 53, and partner Anna Marcellino, a nurse at Kent and Canterbury Hospital, bought the house eight years ago and decided to give it a complete overhaul.

It was while having work done on the fireplaces in his new home that the quest for historical research was sparked for the dad of one.

He said: "I had someone in to do the fireplaces and when he saw the one in the end room he wanted to buy it.

"He said it was from around 1800, hand-carved Italian marble and asked me who used to live here as they must have had money to import the fireplace from Italy. I didn't know who lived here before but decided to find out."

Peter's research through local history books, the internet and contact with the Greenwich Naval Museum and English Heritage uncovered a tale of Napoleonic war heroics, spy missions, torpedo and mine experiments and debtor's prison.

Peter said: "The caves at the back of my house are from Captain John Smith's grotto. He was given the land after he resigned from the Army in disgust at the court martial of Lord Sackville. In 1791 he built his folly which had buildings with up-turned boats on the roofs and caves dug into the cliffs behind. It was probably the only building here at the time."

After Captain Smith's death in 1804 the property passed to one of his three sons, Admiral Sir Sydney Smith.

Sir Sydney (also spelt Sidney) was thought of as something of a maverick by his Royal Navy superiors but is the man credited by Napoleon Bonaparte for thwarting his advance into Turkey from Egypt.

Peter said: "Sir Sydney's younger brother John was the British ambassador in Constantinople. Because of tha,t Sir Sidney was sent to establish links between Turkey and the British in 1799 as Napoleon was on the verge of attacking.

"There was a huge fight in Acre for six weeks and Napoleon was eventually defeated. He lost 14,000 troops and had to escape to France in a fishing boat."

Sir Sydney may have been the man who led the effort to repel Napoleon but his achievements were overshadowed by those of Lord Nelson.

However, on his return to England he received a handsome pension of £1,000 for his services.

He came to Dover, and lived in East Cliff from that year, commanding a fleet on the English Channel.

His adventures continued with service in the Mediterranean and exploits under cover of darkness sailing to France to spy on the fleet.

He also worked with American inventor Robert Fulton during 1804/05 on developing torpedoes and mines to be used against the French fleets, was involved in the fight, under Prime Minister William Pitt, to abolish slavery and sank so much cash into his experiments building two prototype catamarans in Dover that he ended up in the King's Bench debtor's prison in 1805.

Despite that, he was promoted to rear admiral in 1810 and knighted in 1815. He died in Paris in 1840.

One tangible piece of evidence of Mediterranean influences on the colourful Sir Sydney has been uncovered by Peter.

After lifting up the floorboards in the living area of his property Peter uncovered a sunken Georgian bath which seems, unusually, to have feeds for both hot and cold water – fashionable in the Mediterranean at the time but not in England.

The bath is now a centrepiece of the room and, instead of covering it with the new wooden flooring, Peter has made two wooden hatches that can be lifted to reveal the bath.

Peter said: "I found it when I dug out the suspended floor. There was a fire at the end of the pipes so he could have had hot water. This is a man who designed his own ships so hot running water would not have been rocket science to him.

"It seems to me Sir Sydney gets no credit for anything yet it was him who did so much to win against Napoleon. I think he has been hard done by but he was such a fantastic character that it would be good to have the fact he lived here in Dover recognised.

"It is part of our heritage."

Peter now plans to gather his information and ask The Dover Society to help him get an official plaque on the house to say Sir Sydney lived there from 1799 until 1820 when he moved to Paris.

The former Astor school pupil said: "Sir Sydney has not been recognised here even though they have a huge memorial to him in Paris. I would like to get the plaque and do more research."