The house that Deeping built

DEEPING SOS The house that Deeping built

by Dave Turner

On the night of 8th August 2020 little did we know that when we went to bed at around 11.30 pm, just four hours later our lives would be thrown into absolute turmoil. This was when a fire broke out on the wooden decking at the rear of the bungalow and within an hour our beautiful home and everything inside it was totally destroyed; despite the best efforts of the local voluntary fire service the bungalow could not be saved. The Red Cross Emergency response team arrived in the early hours of the morning and were amazingly helpful, providing us with an emergency loan to buy some clothing as well as caring for us in the Red Cross ambulance.

As well as the Red Cross we were so grateful for the immediate help the Deepings Lions gave us with an emergency mobile phone as well as clothing and various other items we were so desperately in need of. I have been a member of The Lions for over ten years and never have we needed their help and support than that first morning.

The following few weeks were very painful as we hunted through the charred remains of our home looking for any items that may have survived the fire and the fire services hoses. Amazingly we did recover a few items: some photographs of our travels and family, and our passports amazingly survived as did a box containing a lot of religious artefacts, medals and rosaries belonging to my late mum.

We spent the following night and a further three weeks at my partner Olwyn’s brother’s house in Langtoft where we then spent the following days doing the necessary paperwork for insurance etc., only to find to our horror that we had let the house and contents insurance lapse… we were devastated.

This is when the local community came on board to help us. Our next door neighbour, Mim Slater, who had been the first on the scene of the fire, set up the Facebook page ‘SOS Donations for Beech Close couple’ and the response was utterly amazing; items of furniture , clothing and kitchenware were donated to us, the local Scout hut being the centre for collection. As well as this, local tradesmen and companies began to offer their help in rebuilding the bungalow, and a Just Giving page was set up by Joe Wray with an initial target of £1000; the sum eventually raised was a magnificent £5500, on top of which a local company, You Garden, donated a cheque for £5000. It completely floored us that people who knew nothing of us could be so kind.

The autumn and early winter months were extremely frustrating as we waited for planning permission to come through which it eventually did on 3rd December, my birthday. It was the best birthday present I received that day.

January 2021 and early February brought very cold wintry weather which once again stopped any building work from starting, but start it eventually did in mid February when Colin Virge, Steve Evans and Andy Spridgeon commenced the building of the bungalow. Despite working during the week on their everyday house building jobs they kindly gave up virtually every weekend in March and April to rebuild the outer walls up to the roof level; needless to say we owe those guys a huge amount of gratitude for their amazing efforts.

All this time Mim and her neighbour Clare Virge were still manning the Facebook page and keeping us informed of all the offers of help that continued to appear. One in particular still to this day brings tears to our eyes and that is when Devonports Kitchens & Bathrooms offered to install a brand new kitchen and bathroom for us as a donation. Olwyn and I went to see them in their showroom and, trust me, the tears of gratitude certainly flowed... a most wonderful gesture on their part on top of many fabulous offers of help too numerous to mention.

As the final blocks were laid I took some of my mother’s religious medals and placed them in between the blocks, ensuring that she was hopefully looking down on us and keeping us safe.

May and June saw the bungalow really take shape as the roof trusses were delivered and placed into position. We had been desperately searching for a roofing company to install the roof but it was proving very difficult as most companies and tradesmen where incredibly busy. Then out of the blue Dave and Andy appeared on site asking if we were looking for roofers and they told us they would build the roof free of charge as we already had bought the materials, a fantastic offer that we gratefully accepted.

Later that month as the windows and doors were installed the bungalow was finally watertight and we could then commence work inside. Olwyn and I laid the underfloor insulation which, having never having attempted anything like this before, was difficult to say the least, but once completed after a lot of cursing and swearing the screed floor could be laid and after four days of allowing the floor to dry and harden we could start marking out the internal stud walls. had already made the window templates for the builders to work to and now he came to help and advise us on stud wall construction, which, after one incorrect wall had to be taken down and rebuilt, between us Olwyn and I successfully built all the internal walls which on completion gave us immense satisfaction.

As summer wore on and Covid would not go away it was becoming increasingly difficult to find the people to do the other internal work. Thankfully Olwyn’s brother Keith Griffiths was for many years a fully qualified electrician at Ketton cement works and he offered to do all the internal electrical wiring which I think according to him was about 1.5kms of wiring in total. Under his guidance we set the light switches and sockets into position and suddenly we could see light at the end of the tunnel.

July brought about an amazing two weeks of transformation of the bungalow internally as Paul Smith agreed to fit the plasterboard and do the plastering, initially in between his other jobs but as luck would have it (for us anyway) a shortage of certain materials meant his other work was put on hold so that he could give us 100% of his time for two whole weeks. The bungalow was transformed in that time from a work site to a home.

Once the plastering was complete Lee Sutton and his son Ollie, who had already been and laid all the heating pipes, arrived onsite to fit the radiators and install the gas boiler.

It was now mid July and we had a target date of returning home of 1st August. The kitchen and bathroom were completed in a matter of days by Steve Devonport and his team of fitters and that date suddenly looked achievable, but there was to be one final hiccup in our planning and that was finding a tiler to tile both the bathroom and kitchen floors. All were incredibly busy, but once again lady luck was on our side as a previous customer of Olwyn, for whom she had made curtains for her home, offered for her tiler husband to do the work as soon as he became available. The other side to this story is that everything

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in the bathroom had been fitted without the floor tiles being laid all except the toilet… yes, we had no toilet, but on Friday 6th August we finally moved back into our now carpeted bungalow with a porta potty sitting in the corner of the bathroom. A week later the floor tiling was completed and the permanent toilet was fitted by Devonports.

Many people had questioned how we would feel returning to our home which we had escaped from exactly 12 months earlier by the skin of our teeth (five minutes according to the fire service) but in truth we had what was probably our best night’s sleep in all that time.

It has been a remarkable 12 months in many ways, that neither of us would want to go through again, but having said that we have been bowled over by the people we have met through the fire happening; people who did not know us at all have become friends. The community of the Deepings has shown what a local community can do in a time of crisis for us and, believe me, we will be for ever in debt to everyone and every company that came forward and helped us. We can both still remember sitting outside the remains of the bungalow three or four days after the fire, going through the wet and fire-damaged photo albums when a couple appeared and offered to take them away and try to repair them, an offer we accepted. Later that day the couple’s granddaughter appeared with a box of homemade biscuits. ‘These are for you,’ she said, ‘because I felt sad seeing your home burnt down.’ That small gesture meant as much to us as any of the other offers of help.

There are too many people to mention individually in this piece and I apologise for that, but I am sure you know who you are and that we both will be eternally grateful to each and every one of you.

At the time of writing (early September) we have been back home almost four weeks now and it really does feel like our home again. There is still exterior work to be completed on the bungalow and the rear garden still looks like a storage yard, but eventually 20 Beech Close will be back to the lovely home and garden we so tragically lost on that dreadful night in August.

Dave & Olwyn send grateful thanks to all involved!

Tesco (Clothing & Toiletries), Colin Virge & Steve Lewis (Builders), Forterra of Whittlesey (Blocks), Leon Delegate & Jamie West (DT Architects), Deeping Direct (Storage), Simon Bateman (Mick George), Richard Edgington (Carpenter), Castle Roofing (Materials), Dave & Andy (D&A Roofers), Steve (S&J Windows), Jamie Ling (BEW Electricals of Peterborough), Lee & Ollie Sutton (Heating Engineering), Paul Smith (Plaster board & plastering), Steve & Sarah Devenport (Bathroom & Kitchen), Ashley (AMC Rendering), Phil Laughton (Grounded Landscapes), Tamsin Bennelick (Planting Seeds) Quadrant Building Control of Stamford