Chris Randall had the vision to transform a dark and dingy warehouse into four spacious and light homes, as  Hannah Morgan explains . . .

Chris and Pamela at Hutton Cranswick railway station

How many times have you woken up late, scrambled into your clothes, dashed out the house without breakfast and still managed to miss your train to work?

Imagine, then, the unhurried luxury of tucking into toast and coffee at leisure before locking the door behind you – and stepping straight on to the train that’s just rolled up outside your door.

In less than half-an-hour you’ve swapped the peace and tranquillity of rural Yorkshire for the buzz of the city, yet your stress levels are still barely twitching. It’s a commuter’s dream, which is exactly why retired businessman Chris Randall embarked on a three-year, all-consuming, project to convert his former fibreglass warehouse on the edge of the railway station at Hutton Cranswick, near Driffield, into four beautiful homes for commuters.

It was an ambitious dream.

Within a short space of time he had gone from successfully designing and installing playground equipment around the world to converting a vast, tired, listed building into four luxury properties.

“I had no experience of anything like this, so the whole project, from start to end, was a huge learning curve,” says Chris. “Nothing was straight forward. Every single step threw up another unexpected challenge and, as a result, the project ran way over the estimated budget. But I went into it knowing that if we were going to do something on this scale, we had to get it right first time.”

Chris and his wife, jewellery maker Pamela Dickinson, were especially keen to maintain the building’s integrity. Since it was built in 1846, it has been inexorably linked to the Scarborough-Hull railway line, first as a goods storage warehouse and later as a fibreglass factory after Chris bought it in the mid 1980s.

Their aim was to turn the warehouse into living spaces which maintained the fabric of the building – including a series of arched openings and huge pitch pine beams – while reflecting the demands of modern living. Two  houses would be created – one each on the south and north ends – with the middle section becoming two apartments.

Although they stand alongside the railway platform, all four properties are private. The two end houses have enclosed, sun-trap courtyards, the stunning penthouse apartment overlooks the countryside one way and the village the other, while the studio-style ground floor apartment offers the best one-way platform views through slatted blinds.

This apartment features high oak beams, a mezzanine storage area and a spacious, open plan kitchen

Bespoke iron staircases designed and manufactured by Chris, urban-style kitchens, mezzanine storage areas and industrialised details hint of the structure’s transport history, but it’s the extraordinary use of light and space which brings the accommodation sharply into the 21st century.

Light pours in from all angles. The vast doorways have been turned into stunning windows which pull soft countryside light into the property from all angles, at all times of the day. Velux rooflights draw shafts of light from above, which bounce through internal windows, off strategically placed mirrors, and through the iron banisters. Low-energy lighting systems, neutral décor and the over-riding sense of space and fluidity confirm the success of Chris’s visionary design.

But the labour of love almost became a labour of love lost, when the project was hampered by unexpected set-backs and challenges.

“We had a lot of sleepless nights and there were times when we wondered what we had taken on, but once you start on something like this there is no going back,” says Chris. “The most challenging aspect of converting a listed building is understanding the thinking behind the restrictions, and getting other people to understand your concept for the building.”

The brick and slate roof warehouse was designed and built by architect George Townend Andrews, who worked extensively with George Hudson of York, the flamboyant politician and entrepreneur, who developed many main line railway stations in the mid-19th century. Together they were involved in the building of York station, Hull Paragon, and the smaller stations leading to Scarborough, most of which were based on the Italian neo-classical style.

On the day the building at Hutton Cranswick station opened, 6th October 1846, three celebrated steam engines – Hudson, Ariel and Antelope – passed along the tracks.

The former warehouse at Hutton Cranswick railway station has been sympathetically converted into luxury apartments in a three-year labour of love

By 2006, however, the building was tired and ripe for new development.

Pamela recalls the cavernous space. “It was dark and smelly – it was difficult to imagine it as anything but this huge warehouse,” she says. “But Chris had great vision. I remember the day we climbed up a very wobbly, very tall ladder to see what was behind a layer of black plastic that formed a make-shift ceiling and, as we peeled it all back, we saw row after row of these fantastic wooden beams. It was wonderful.”

It wasn’t so wonderful for Chris when he had to painstakingly clean them all by hand, rather than sanding them down, to retain their grain and character.

“It was a terrible job, but now you can see their age and history,” he says. “You can see a cut-out where a winch used to be, and all the bolts and fixings. We wanted to keep that sense of history. We wanted to have echoes of the past within a modern context, rather like a background noise.”

Which leads to the obvious question of whether life next to a railway line could be just a little too noisy for some; but the timely arrival of the 10.01 from Scarborough to Hull quashes any misconceptions. The train slides to a graceful halt outside the bedroom window and moves on again with barely a judder, no more noisy than cars passing by on a road. There are no trains at night, and the silence between them is broken only by the call of song birds and a few cars passing through this pretty East Yorkshire village.

“It’s been a very long project,” says Chris, “but it’s been worth all the ups and downs. We wanted to do something with the building to give it a sustainable future and converting it into homes seemed the best way of doing it. You can step out the door and straight on to a train, and within 10 minutes you’re in Beverley or, in 25 minutes, in the centre of Hull. It’s commutability at its best. But there’s the added satisfaction of knowing that, another 150 years down the line, this building will be just as viable and fascinating as it is today.”

For information about renting any of the properties, contact Martin & Co, Beverley : (01482) 887000 or Plum Property Management, Beverley: (01482) 476476.

Anyone who has further information on the building’s history or historic photographs of the warehouse and station at Hutton Cranswick, should contact Pamela on (01377) 254186.