National Trust – Bermuda’s Architectural Heritage Series – Sandys. (1999) 

“In 1789 widow Mary Sermour, relict of Edward Seymour, mariner, owned the Sea View property with a house on it of no great value.  She left it to her daughter Frances Jane, wife of Cornelius Bedlow.  Bedlow was the son of a Smith’s Parish shipwright and, perhaps with the aid of his wife’s inheritance, he was able to purchase Torwood next door.  He died in 1813 and left the house he had obtained by marriage in the first place, which in the style of the times he described as a ‘mansion house’, back to his wife for her lifetime and then to his three sons, of whom the eldest, James, eventually became sole owner.  Torwood went to his daughter Jane.  

“For reasons that are not clear, Sea View’s assessment dropped from 100 pounds in 1820 to 50 pounds in 1823.  Perhaps James Seymour Bedlow was in the middle of radical alterations and the house temporarily uninhabitable.  At any rate the value rose again to 200 pounds in 1826.  This rise clearly indicates the date of construction of the front part of the present Sea View, the architectural style of which is consistent with this period.  In 1828 the valuation had risen still further to 300 pounds. The sons of James Bedlow emigrated to St. Croix and Puerto Rico leaving their grandmother to live on in the house until she died at 93 in 1840.  James Bedlow’s widow died in St. Croix in 1856.

“Sea View was then bought by John Dalzell Gilbert and passed from his heirs to the Reverend Albert V. Sullivan in 1922.  He sold it to Herbert Eugene Davis and Edith Mott Davis in 1930.  Mrs. Davis’ family were the Mott of General Motors, several of whom bought land and houses in Bermuda at that time.  During the Gilbert ownership the house had been further enlarged despite the eventual financial distress of the family,  but what is pre-Davis and what was changed in the quite radical alterations effected by the Mott fortune is now not easy to determine.  The house has been so greatly renovated and ‘improved’ over a long period that only the original part, dating to the 1820s, now remains distinctive.

“The Davis daughter Dorothy married landscape architect Bayfield Clark and during their marriage the extensive garden at Sea View was created.  It became one of Bermuda’s most beautiful and unusual properties.  Unfortunately when the house was sold to its present owner the Clarks auctioned much of the sculpture that gave the garden its focus and distinction.”

The last owner mentioned by the National Trust, Freddy Yearwood, owned the house from 1984 to 2002, during which time in the late 1990s it was rented to the musician David Bowie and model Iman.  It was subsequently subdivided into four lots comprising Sea View, Sea Gardens, which became the Yearwood’s home, the Red House and the beach at Cambridge Beaches, with Sea View retaining over 2 acres and access to the beach.