C O N T E X T 1 2 4 : M A Y 2 0 1 2 29 Among the first built was one owned by the music-hall star Marie Loftus. She showed off her railway carriage house to her theatrical friends and soon more carriages were being converted to elaborate verandahed bungalows. By 1910 there were over 90 properties. For a short while from 1915 BungalowTown, with its celebrity residents, was touted as the British Los Angeles. It was even home to a film studio, but this was short-lived and it closed in 1922. In 1940, fears of German invasion following Dunkirk (or an opportunity by the establishment to clear unpopular, unregulated development so close to the sea) led to the government giving the owners just two days notice to leave and the subsequent demolition of most of the bungalows. At Dungeness in the late 1920s railway carriages were brought off the end of the Southern Railway line and scattered around the beach for working-class holidaymakers from elsewhere in Kent. One carriage is even reputed to be QueenVictoria’s Pullman, although it is not even clear it is a Pullman, let alone who travelled in it. Amid the many long-stationary railway carriages sits a new take on railway carriage housing. Architect Simon Conder designed a building that retained the existing 1870s railway carriage but stripped it back to its frame, with peeling paintwork, no windows and open ends. Inside the carriage a kitchen was constructed and around it, enclosing it completely, a whole new house. The outside of the house is clad in timber, with few windows around the curved rear, but it is flat and fully glazed on the front looking towards the sea. The scheme could be considered either a nose thumbing at the planning rules or something new in the original anti-establishment spirit of the area. Probably the largest collection of surviving carriage houses sit in pockets along the entire Sussex coast, scattered among later seaside bungalows. Few of the houses in this general area have as much character and style in their conversion as those of nearby Bungalow Town had, or which the Sutton on Sea examples retain. At Pagham in the 1930s almost 300 bungalows were built using two carriages each. Most of these still exist. More survive at EastWittering, Felpham andWinchelsea.The Golden Sands holiday park at Lancing was originally established with railway carriages as holiday homes. While the site survives, the carriages have been replaced with caravans. Some of the 30 or so surviving 1930s houses at East Beach Selsey are interesting because many of their 1890s carriage bodies were originally first-class compartments, later rebuilt in the 1920s by Pullman.Two 1897 carriages were even imported for service from Delaware, USA. One of these,Tulip, retains its polished timber finishes and elaborate carvings. Externally the conversions at Selsey were generally simple timber bungalow encasings The reinterpretation of an earlier railway carriage house at Dungeness by Simon Conder now places the original carriage inside a new building. (Photo: Chris Gascoigne courtesy of Simon Conder Associates) The Golden Sands Holiday Park at Lancing,West Sussex still exists but the railway carriages have now been replaced by caravans. (Winton Collection, Shorehambysea.com)
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