Grandad who MOVED his 12-ton BUNGALOW 20ft to stop it TOPPLING into the sea!
Sound impossible? Scan this QR code to see how he did it
countenance his plan not working, however. ‘It will, even if we have to cut the place in half and pull it over half at a time. Nothing’s impossible,’ he says.
I leave him hauling gigantic yellow plant pots filled with crocuses and daffodils from his front garden into his car boot. he’ll spend the rest of the day dismantling his front steps and paving slabs. On Wednesday morning Lance takes delivery of chains and a cable, lent by a farmer, to attach to the telegraph poles. he is expecting a digger and driver he’s hired.
sleep lost through stress is not a problem, remarkably. ‘I lay my head on the pillow and it’s like someone’s switched a light off. Tracey’s the one that has the dreams. Things worry me, but not so much I’m going to break down. It’s no use breaking your heart over things you’ve got no control over.
I think, “This has happened. I’m still alive. Let’s make the best of a bad deal and crack on.”’
Then the council’s building inspector drops a bombshell: because the erosion seems to be gathering pace, Lance has to have moved his home by the end of
today. A crowd of television and radio crews join staff from the council, and Coastal Protection east, a government body in charge of the Norfolk and suffolk shoreline, creating a tense, game-show-on-steroids type atmosphere.
‘We’re giving him until the end of the day to see if he can make progress moving it back from the edge,’ Councillor Carl smith, leader of Great Yarmouth Borough Council, tells me.
This week, he says, has presented ‘an ever-changing situation’ for the community, ‘ and it is soul destroying. Watching your home being destroyed is not very nice. There are tears. There’s frustration. We’re frustrated.’
By mid-afternoon, the digger manages to pull the house forward by 6in — but then the 32ft telegraph pole at the back of the house snaps in half. Lance’s shoulders droop.
‘ I’m a bit sad and obviously worried,’ he says. As close to defeated as I have heard him, he is still far from throwing in the towel. ‘The building inspector is pleased we’d made some headway.’
Certainly, the end- of- day deadline seems to have been waived. The following morning, a local company, rD Groundworks and Civil engineers Ltd, has donated another digger and a dumper truck, so they have two vehicles to pull. Lance’s spirits are tested again, however, by another visit from the council’s building inspector, mid-morning.
The council is giving him one
hour to make significant progress moving his house — or will serve him with a section 78 (an order that declares a building is in such peril immediate action is necessary to remove danger).
‘Because my house is closer to the sea than the other two houses on the list, mine will be demolished first,’ says Lance, despair tangible now. This time his now ten-strong crew of friends and volunteers decide to use one digger to lift the side of the house as the digger at the front pulls it forward.
Therelief is palpable when — miraculously — the house moves. Within an hour, it is 16ft away from the coast, and, ‘ the building inspector has given us his blessing to continue,’ says Lance.
By Thursday evening his house is almost 22ft back from the cliff, the ground behind cleared ready for Dune Falls to be pulled a further 42ft in the next few days. Water and power need to be restored, and it will be a couple of weeks before Lance and Tracey can move back in.
That the wooden frame of his house has buckled, his windows are bent and his floorboards broken doesn’t detract from his sense of triumph. ‘I’ve put my hands and my heart into every piece of this house,’ he says.
‘This should give me another few years.’