"Hermit Crabs" - new projects finding homes in long abandoned railway structures

[runs as required]

NOYES  FLUDD

may have featured in Grand Designs. It is owned by Phil Dyke, Civil & Mechanical Engineer and his charming wife February ('Febbie') Deeplake, a professional carriage finisher, trimmer, painter and liner; who prides herself on her painstakingly built-up multi coat finishes “so deep you can fish in them”.  

Three children and many more ducks and black Labradors complete the household.

 

They devised the project for a flood-proof home-based pair of small businesses: agricultural and restorative engineering alongside high-class bodywork and carriage restoration. 

Phil Dyke hit upon adapting the long abandoned remains of a small station on a branch line laid on the banks of a drain leading off into the north Norfolk sea marshes and saltings.

• The raised platforms are utilised as access to the “Ark”, a floating house workshop between the platforms. It is built upon a marine ply buoyancy platform restrained by sliding up and down against greased timber posts. Services are via coiled tubing and overhead cable.
•  The glu-lam “Ark” is an open single storey structure with a recreational roof deck, useful for outdoor sleeping on hot nights. 
• The main floor is subdivided as necessary by fire proofed modular partitions that separate living from work areas deemed noxious. Spaces expand and contract as business and family needs demand.
• The derelict station buildings are used as a “Trombe wall” to store heat and release it at night. They also house the fire hazard forge and metal working areas. 
• The whole platform area is enclosed by a glasshouse (familiar throughout the Fens) that affords year round reasonably wind and water tight well-insulated accommodation for the Dyke household s and their projects. 
   

 

 

Noyes Fludd was a small station and passing place on a “no-hoper” of a line cheaply constructed in the early 1900s by the West Norfolk Railway.  

This was during a brief spell of positive thinking by rural lines about resources that might be tapped by extending low-cost lines into promising hinterlands of oil-bearing shales, clay bricks, pressed and fired using cheap ‘sea’ coal imports from the north-east. 

The line was to terminate in a resort with a beach, with east-west facing hotels for morning and evening sunshine, plus a gated Colonial style Township for week-end and holiday Villas. 

In the post Armistice 1920s, cheap war surplus lorries dispersed such dreams along the new arterial roads..

 

 

 

Edited February 27, 2021 by runs as required
reducing acres of white space