It’s Friday, which suggests it’s time for Listing of the Week, our brand-new series in which we highlight a house that’s captured our eye over the previous 7 days. Now, if there was ever someplace to press the limits of what specifies a contemporary house, it’s this: an 1880s train carriage-turned-contemporary home in Dungeness, Kent.
As anybody who has had the satisfaction of going to Dungeness can confirm, the shingle-strewn peninsula feels rather post-apocalyptic. Typically described as the UK’s only desert, the otherwordly headland has its own micro-climate and a flourishing wildlife scene of types native to the land. We believe the setting is fitting, then, for this likewise striking house that had a previous life as a train carriage in the 1880s.
How did such an uncommon house happened? Well, in the 1920s, Southern Railways offered their employees the possibility to purchase rolling stock and carry it onto the beach– much of whom bought the chance. If you were to stroll throughout the shoreline here at that time, for example, you may discover around 30 train carriages-turned-homes sitting quite on the shingle.
Throughout time, the staying carriages have actually been thoroughly reached produce interesting modern houses. The existing owner of this specific area is just the 2nd individual to live here– and certainly, has actually gone to remarkable lengths to thoroughly protect the initial carriage, which forms the heart of the house that stands today. And what a great heart it is: enter the carriage, now the living location, and you feel as if you have actually been carried back in time. A number of its lovely initial functions stay undamaged, such as a match strike and painted characters on the woodwork.
It may take a specific character to think about a life on what can seem like the edge of the earth– after all, to live here is to reside in a location rather like no other– however that is exactly the appeal. Think of the excitement of switching a city horizon or rolling hillsides for everlasting views of shingle and sea beyond. And where else might you encounter weathered shacks and run-down cruising boats on a lunch break walk your area?
There’s likewise a growing neighborhood of creatives and designers getting away to Dungeness, developing fellow modern architectural marvels in reaction to its wilderness and stringent preparation constraints. There’s the now-infamous garden of Derek Jarman, Possibility Home, in addition to Shingle Home and Pobble Home, for instance. Houses here are hardly ever offered, so make like the old train employees and buy this chance rapidly.
