Tag: Gentrification

The Dungeness Railway Carriages: From Poverty to Staycations

~ july1966

Dungeness is a place where the peculiar becomes perfectly normal, including old railway carriages transformed into extraordinary homes. Staying in one of these beautifully converted relics has got me thinking about their remarkable history, the poverty of their original occupants and how yesterday’s makeshift accommodation has become today’s expensive architectural statement. A fascinating story of survival, reinvention and gentrification.

How John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath Visits Dungeness in Kent

~ july1966 ~ 1 Comment

There can be few places as bleak or fascinating as Dungeness, where abandoned railway carriages once provided shelter for families with little money. Their history echoes the desperate poverty of Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. Today, these humble refuges have become luxurious holiday homes, an extraordinary transformation from places of necessity into playgrounds for the comfortably affluent.