Deep in the Norfolk countryside, Ben Emerson is working away in a wartime Nissen hut, his brother-in-law’s VW camper perched high on a ramp.
A Beetle owned by his friend, Darren, waits its turn for attention, with his own 1971 Bug keeping it company.
A scale model camper climbs the roof of the hut, while inside the front section of the real thing looms over the workshop, a loose headlamp peering down, keeping an eye on the restoration work.
In the bowels of the hut is Ben’s pottery studio, where ceramic Beetles, campers and VW badges jostle for space with astonishingly realistic metal-effect jerry cans, artillery shells and tin mugs all thrown on the potter’s wheel.
Outside, Ben’s 1975 Devon camper, his daily driver for the past 13 years, stands guard, looking out over the flatlands beyond.
There’s enough here to keep an air-cooled VW enthusiast occupied for hours.
Ben grew up with Volkswagens
The son of “real old hippies”, Ben, 46, grew up with the twin influences of Volkswagen and pottery, his father’s converted panel van giving him an early taste of camper freedom, and his uncle, Murray Fieldhouse, something of a ceramics celebrity.
- Ben in his pottery studio
“I grew up with it all as a kid,” he says, in the studio where he recently started holding private pottery classes.
“The people around me were classical 60s studio potters who had opted for a bit more of a bohemian lifestyle.”
His father was a model maker who used to work for Airfix as a toy designer before working in architectural and industrial models, a path that Ben himself followed after graduating from a degree in art and design at Loughborough University.
The seeds of his Volkswagen passion took root in his father’s splitscreen converted panel van, a late sliding door model.
It holds vivid memories of camping trips to Cornwall with the family, with sisters Chloe, Maxine and Maria, and older brother Gary, a professional mechanic who owns a 1976 Devon camper with a 2-litre Subaru conversion.
- Ben (second left) aged about 3 or 4, with sisters Chloe, Maria (left), Maxine and their mum.
“I remember dad’s camper was quite basic; he had converted the interior and my mum made some sponge cushions out of blue fabric with little yellow stars on it,” he says.
Happy memories in the VW splitscreen converted panel van
“I have memories of us all being together, having good times in Cornwall. It was a 6-volt model, and I remember how we all used to hope we would be able to get up the hills on the way to Cornwall and how the lights used to dim as we slowed approaching the top of the hill.
“My dad would coast down long hills to save petrol with his foot on the clutch, which is probably not legal.
“I remember it breaking down once and him managing to repurpose a piece of chewing gum to block an air leak into a carburetor, which was quite clever. A little bung had come off and he warmed up the chewing gum in his hand and plugged it.
“He’s always taught me how to keep things running, and I’ve taken it to the next level in restoring them.”
On one trip through London, Ben’s father was forced to slam on the brakes, his unrestrained young son flying through from the back and smashing his head on one of the cabinets.
“It was probably when I had the sense knocked out of me and became a VW obsessive,” he laughs.
The camper was swapped for a Volvo Estate
At the time, the family was living in Ealing, West London, where Ben was born, and the camper was swapped with a grandfather clock restorer for a Volvo Estate just before they left for a complete lifestyle change in Norfolk in the early 1980s.
- Ben’s 1975 Devon Camper
VWs didn’t reappear in Ben’s life until he was a teenager at college in King’s Lynn, where a friend owned a camper van.
“This was in the heyday of the ‘90s when all the parties and raves were kicking off,” he says. “We’d go to parties and crash out in the camper afterwards and recover.”
After graduating, Ben worked in Norway, where he lived with his then girlfriend, now wife, Lisa, returning to the UK when she became pregnant with the couple’s first son, Jacob.
They settled back in Norfolk after a brief spell working in London, and in the late 1990s fate intervened to reignite Ben’s latent love of VWs when a friend from university’s 1968 Westfalia camper, a California import, landed in his lap.
“My mate Darren had got a job in Holland and ended up loaning it to me for two years to use,” he says. “The deal was that I could use it if I did some work on it.”
Ben starts a part-time restoration business, Tincan VW
It not only made Ben hanker after his own bus, but working on Darren’s camper provided the spark for Tincan VW, a part-time restoration business Ben combines with his work as an art and design teacher at the College of West Anglia.
“It escalated from there, and I started doing other people’s cars,” he says. “I’ve since done up his ‘64 panel and now I’m about to start on his little red 1969 Beetle out there.
“I don’t advertise, but I would like to get more work in. I’ve taken on full restos for people and do little services for my friends.”
With the pottery and restorations, and a full-time job, you’d think there was little time for anything else, but Ben is also in the process of turning a meadow behind the workshop into a niche campsite for vintage campers, and has already converted an outbuilding into a toilet block.
“I would like all these different elements to come together somehow into a business – my love of ceramics, VWs and camping,” he says.
Having enjoyed Darren’s Westfalia, Ben started looking around for one of his own, and in 2006 he found Elsie, a green 1975 Devon camper that’s been his daily driver ever since.
- Inside Ben’s Devon Camper
“Ironically, I found her at the end of the road here at the old garage,” he says. “After about six months of tyre kicking and price haggling I finally bought it for £800.
“The garage owner knew whose it was, and the best offer he’d had was from someone who wanted to use it as a fishing hut, park it up next to a lake somewhere.
Ben wanted to bring the 1975 Devon camper back to life
“But he wasn’t going to have that, and I turned up with my mate’s van at one point and convinced him we were the people that were going to bring it back to life.”
In truth, Elsie didn’t need a huge amount of work before she was pressed into service as Ben’s commuter vehicle, just a fresh lick of paint, new brakes and minor details like new window rubbers.
Lisa was on board with the purchase, knowing that it would give Ben a project to work on and provide some camping fun for the family, plus the small matter of starring at the couple’s impending wedding.
“We were married in a field with teepees and numerous camper vans, used it as our marriage carriage and then our little honeymoon machine up to the west coast of Scotland,” says Ben.
“We pulled into a terraced campsite on the coast with an unbroken view of the sea. We noticed people with beekeepers hats on and thought ‘well, they must be from London’.
“Then the kids came in looking like they had chickenpox – there were midges everywhere. We did Glencoe and all that stuff, it was amazing.”
Travelling with Elsie, the 1975 Devon camper
Since then Elsie has transported the family to the South of France, Holland, Austria, and all over the UK, including regular trips to shows like Busfest and Vanfest.
“The weather in Britain can be quite appalling, and when I see other people huddled in tents, I’m glad I’m in my camper van,” says Ben.
“You don’t have that war that people have when they have to put up tents, and it’s also a lot quieter in the bus because it’s slightly soundproofed.”
Travelling so far in an old camper may sound like tempting fate, but Ben says he has “always managed to crawl back home”.
“I carry less and less spares as the years have gone on,” he says. “Initially, I’d take a full tool kit and a basket full of bits and pieces.
“Having rebuilt engines, I got to a point where I was more confident and started to trust the engine. The only time I’ve had to abandon it was when it blew a valve once and I had to dump it at my brother’s.
“The worst experience I had was losing a sump bolt and seeing engine oil pouring out down the road behind me. I had enough oil with me, but didn’t have a sump bolt. I somehow found something that was suitable and plugged it up.
“Probably the most chuffed I’ve been was in Scotland where the road from the campsite to the main road was a steep gravel hill. All the cars were getting stuck and the farmer had to pull them up with a tractor, and mine was the only vehicle that could get out up the hill unaided.”
Adding a 1971 VW Beetle to the collection
Six years ago, Elsie was joined by a 1971 Beetle, originally a 1300cc but fitted with a 1600cc engine.
“It was initially bought because I was restoring the bus again and it seemed sensible to use a vehicle that I was so familiar with in terms of mechanicals,” says Ben.
“A colleague had it for sale and I managed to buy it for £850 as a runner and drove it for a couple of years as a ratter.
“Eventually I decided it was probably due some attention itself and decided to give it a full restoration. I was doing that alongside a 1968 splitscreen panel van which belonged to someone else.
“Every now and again my mate would say ‘no more work this month’ and I would turn my attention to the Beetle.”
They remain the only two VWs Ben has owned, and he’s in no hurry to let them go.
“I haven’t really got any desire to ever get rid of the camper, it’s served me and the family so well for so long,” he says.
“Lisa keeps saying I should sell the Beetle – ‘it’s worth so much!’ – but I’m not sure.”
None of Ben’s sons have shown any particular interest in getting their hands dirty in the workshop, though middle son Elliott, 17, has discovered that it does have its uses.
Using the camper as a party bus
“He’s lately discovered how useful it is to have a party in the garden and stay in it, so it’s a bit more interesting than he first thought,” smiles Ben.
“They’ve all got a great affection for the vehicle I think.”
So what is it about these air-cooled VWs that got under Ben’s skin and wouldn’t let go?
“They’re well built and incredibly simple – everything was designed to be serviced and worked on,” he says.
“They are also vehicles of an era that was exploring ideas, with their own little quirky approaches to design like rear-engined and air-cooled, before manufacturers all converged on an agreed design.
“I guess I’m an old style hippy at heart, and the whole creative lifestyle and creative thinking with the pottery and the VWs go hand in hand – the VW scene is a very creative environment.”
In this quiet corner of West Norfolk, Ben is on a mission to keep both pottery and classic VWs alive, a talented artist combining his two great loves in ceramic and metal.
View the gallery below to see more pictures from photographer Simon Finlay
