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A couple who bought a Second World War water tower to convert it into their “dream” home are now running out of funds and time following a tragic motor neurone disease (MND) diagnosis.
Mary and Sean Davies bought the water tower located at the derelict Nocton Hall RAF Hospital site in Lincolnshire in 2018 for £25,000, hoping to give the building a new lease of life and transform it into a seven-bedroom family home.
Mary, 56, who has been project managing the build while working at a farm to bring in additional income, and Sean, 54, a tree and landscape officer for Newark and Sherwood District Council, initially budgeted around £350,000 to cover the conversion.
However, with unexpected delays and costs along the way, such as a £10,000 sprinkler system, the couple estimate that the whole project, including the purchase of the building, will set them back more than £500,000 once completed.
The couple, who describe themselves as “the underdogs”, have since launched a fundraiser to help cover the remaining costs – and with Sean’s recent motor neurone disease (MND) diagnosis, which is currently incurable and progressively damages parts of the nervous system, they want to avoid “sacrificing” any more time.
Mary said: “Anything’s possible at a price, it’s whether you can afford to pay that price – and in our case, we can’t.
“I try and take deep breaths, I try, but psychologically, emotionally, you’re just up here juggling balls constantly and feeling like you can’t stop.
“Having that financial security would make a huge difference. I’d feel like I can breathe again.”
Sean added: “MND feels like a death sentence.
“I saw my father die from it. What it means is, you gradually lose all your muscle control and, eventually, you’re drowning in your own saliva.
“This is a fantastic opportunity. We’ve got a building that’s already built – all the cement, everything’s there… but our biggest sacrifice is time.
“The only thing we really have is time and, if you give time to one thing, you can’t give it to another.”
Mary and Sean, who have five children, explained that they have been married for 30 years – and for 25 of those years, they have either lived in council or ex-social housing.
Prior to the water tower, they said they were living in a four-bedroom terraced council house in Dunston – the village over from Nocton – and ended up buying the property under the Right to Buy scheme.
Sean, a public servant, discovered the nearly 15m-high water tower after he started looking after the Nocton Hall RAF Hospital site in 2006 – and this is when his “vision” for their new home was born.
“He came across the water tower and came home and said, ‘That water tower will make a nice home’, and I looked at him like, ‘You’re crazy’,” Mary said.
“I’d just given birth to my fourth child, so I thought, ‘Whatever’, and it went from there.”
Both Mary and Sean have personal connections to the former 740-bed hospital in Nocton as Mary said her father was assigned to work there as an electrician in 1976 and Sean was a patient there in December 1977.
The couple said the previous owners of the water tower “toyed with the idea” of selling for around two years, but it ended up taking more than 10 years before they purchased the historical building.
“From 2006 to 2016, it took us 10 years to convince them to sell it to us, and then it took nearly two years to purchase it,” Mary said.
“It was just one of those things that took over our life.”
From their research, Mary and Sean said the water tower is one of three identical towers remaining in the UK – and they want to “preserve this wonderful building” with the conversion.
The couple purchased the water tower in November 2018 but explained that it then took nearly a year to obtain planning permission.
After moving into the tower, which did not have a toilet, shower or heating, they said they ended up living in a caravan and buying a second-hand storage container while works took place.
“We had a makeshift kitchen on that ground floor, and it was warmer inside the fridge than it was outside of the fridge,” Mary said.
“We were in the caravan, we had a Portaloo which would freeze when it got below a certain temperature, so you couldn’t flush, and we had no bathing facilities for just under two years.
“We had to go into the caravan with a bucket – you’d just fill up a bucket of hot water and throw it over yourself.
“We had purchased a second-hand container, and Sean had put a wood stove in there, so our teenage son and daughter ended up living in the container from December 2022 to April 2023.”
The tower is very “robust”, with some of the brick walls measuring 48cm thick, and Mary and Sean said they have had to meet certain planning conditions, such as limiting the “openings” during the conversion.
They have used materials such as timber and aluminium and said that, to get water, electricity and sewage works to the tower, which has a holding tank next to it, it has cost around £55,000 – and on top of that, there is the £10,000 sprinkler system.
They are hoping to transform the building, which now measures around 15.3m tall, into a seven-bedroom home, with four bathrooms and a garage, and had budgeted around £350,000 – but they now anticipate it will cost them more than £500,000 once completed.
Mary and Sean said most of the materials have been purchased but they still need to install the staircase, which will cost £10,000, make the final payments for the windows and plumbing, and finish off the bathrooms.
Mary said they have done their best to cut costs where possible, including buying items second-hand on Facebook Marketplace, but even after borrowing £100,000 from family, they are running out of funds.
“It’s not like we’ve been frivolous. We’re being as tight and as strict as we can, and we’re still struggling to find the money, and I lose sleep over it,” Mary said.
“It’s all-consuming and nobody wants to be indebted to anybody.”
Sean was diagnosed with MND last year, and with the disease gradually getting worse over time, the couple want to complete the project “sooner rather than later” so that “Sean can enjoy it while he’s mobile”.
They have even included a downstairs wet room to ensure it is wheelchair accessible.
Feeling “weary” and with nowhere else to turn, they decided to set up a GoFundMe page, which now has a target of £20,000, and they have raised more than £5,000 so far.
They said it would mean everything to them to reach the target and it would help them “sleep better at night” and allow them to finally spend much-needed quality time together as a family.
“It’s all-consuming and we didn’t imagine it to take this long, we thought it would be about a year,” Mary said.
“The tower, to us, represents our parents’ lives because of the inheritance on both sides, our life savings and our life too. We’ve literally put everything into it.
“(Reaching the target) will enable me to focus my mind on Sean, rather than having to think, ‘How on earth am I going to be able to afford this?’”
Sean added: “It would mean a break. It would mean, ‘OK, we’ve got this far, we’re safe and we’re stable’.”
To find out more, visit Mary and Sean’s fundraising page here.
