So glad to read all this and will be following your progress on this bike! Funny--there's a kid in my neighborhood with a Lenton "fixie"--I ran into him as I was coming out of my LBS and gasped out loud when I saw it. Turns out that he'd found the bare frame in the trash and fixed it up--nothing else original but he did appreciate the history of the frame and was glad to have it. My Lenton had replacement handlebars and brake levers and had been converted to single-speed--I'm still figuring out how to put it all back together again. Still, I love it--it's a lively, nimble ride compared to my other bikes. And the patina of the polychrome paint is pretty unique and looks better ding'ed and aged than regular paint does, IMO. I hope you can salvage it, but it does look like a classic Cape Cod bike--that salt air is brutal.