An Old Car and a Wartime Memory.

I started my banking career in Welshpool, Montgomeryshire in March, 1964 as a young lad of seventeen. A year or two later I thought about buying my first car. Several of my older friends had fine veteran or vintage cars but my ambitions had to be rather more modest! So I was thrilled when, in 1966, I was told of an Austin Seven, laid up a few miles outside Welshpool, which had not been used for several years. Excitedly, I made arrangements to visit the car’s owner and to look at the car with a friend. It turned out not to be an Austin Seven but a larger car – a 1937 Austin Ten Cambridge saloon! It had an old Montgomeryshire registration number – EP 6915.

The car’s owner, Mrs. Harriet Lloyd-Jones of The Cottage, Maesmawr, Welshpool was probably in her late 70s or early 80s when I first met her. Widowed before the war, she had purchased the car new in 1937, traveling down to Longbridge with the owner of Ballard’s Garage in Welshpool to collect it. I still have the Austin’s original log-book showing the registration date of 4th June, 1937.

The Cottage at Maesmawr, was a large house and even in the 60s had no running water or electricity. The Austin was kept in the old stable block and I remember taking some black and white photographs of the remains of Mrs. Lloyd-Jones’ hansom cab which were lying outside the stable block. I cannot recall the car’s original mileage but it was clear that she drove only a few hundred miles each year. I learnt later that she normally used the car once a week for a trip into Welshpool - a round journey of about fourteen miles. Because the car had been standing for a few years it took a bit of effort to get it going again; memories of plugs and points being cleaned, a can of fresh petrol, much Redex being used, and turning the engine with the starting handle. All to no avail! The poor car had to be towed ignominiously down a country lane before it finally started. That day we had to use a 12-volt battery standing on a running board because the two 6-volt batteries had gone flat over the years. Later, the garage in Welshpool recharged the car’s batteries, which were the original ones, at a cost of 12/6d (or 62½p in today’s money!). Subsequently both batteries were replaced with new ones; one of the original batteries from 1937 was quite dead but the other was used on a friend’s tractor in Mid-Wales for several years afterwards.

It was quite common in the 60s to buy ‘an old runner’ for very little money and I bought the car for £5 which was about the going rate in those days. How times have changed! After I bought the car, the old lady gave me very explicit instructions as to what had to be done each day before starting the car. In particular, the radiator had to be filled with warm water which then had to be drained off at the end of the journey. Another instruction was to keep the leather seats aired throughout the Winter by using hot-water bottles as she had done. All this was done from a house with no running water and electricity. My last memories of Harriet Lloyd-Jones was when I visited her in the Cottage Hospital in Welshpool probably in the late 1960s; she lay there, a tiny lady with the most beautiful blue eyes and white hair, but she wasn’t able to see her old car which I had parked outside her window. She died shortly afterwards.

After I bought the Austin, the car was in daily use for nearly thirteen years. She made several trips up to Scotland and on to the Scottish islands. In all those years I had only three major breakdowns - once, when the crankshaft broke, and twice when I had been driving the car too fast and the engine suffered from valve-bounce when the valve pins came out! I recall a journey up to Durham University in the 70s with two bank colleagues and all our luggage in the Austin. The car was ‘sailing along’ the A1 with the speedometer showing 72 mph., but the car was happy too!


Driving the Austin during those years was tremendous fun - the car drove well and was very comfortable. In many ways it drove like a modern Mini and, by tweaking the brake adjusters regularly, its breaking powers were as sharp as any car on the roads. Many people in Welshpool remembered the car from over the years and indeed so many regularly waved to me in Montgomeryshire and Shropshire that I felt my arm was permanently in the air! It was quite a common occurrence for someone to wave me down in a village and offer me a brand new spare part which they had retrieved from some dark corner. Shortly after acquiring the Austin in 1966, I discovered that after cleaning the brass windscreen winding chain the windscreen actually wound open until it was almost horizontal. It was a wonderful way to drive in hot weather with the windscreen, sunroof and windows all fully open although I wonder now how I never got hit in the face by flying stones. In foggy Winter weather the opening windscreen was a real asset because I could see further and hear better, but passengers were not always so appreciative! I recall a February drive from Chester to Anglesey one year in a fierce snow blizzard to go to a vintage car rally; it was probably just as well that I drove there on my own as the windscreen was wide open for the whole journey. Happy days!

Early in the 1970s, Lloyds Bank sent me on a course to its regional Overseas Branch, then in Liverpool. Although my father had worked in Liverpool many years before, I didn’t know the place well and certainly didn’t know anyone in the Bank there. One day I was talking to a Bill Osborne from Birkenhead who worked in the Overseas Branch and I recall asking him about some foreign business we used to do for a corporate customer down in Welshpool. Surprised at the coincidence, he told me that he and his brothers had been evacuated during the war to Welshpool. “In fact,” he said, “you wouldn’t know it, but we stayed at a tiny place outside Welshpool called Maesmawr.” In the 1960s, Maesmawr was little more than Maesmawr Hall, a derelict smithy, and The Cottage. “That’s strange.” I said to Bill “That’s where my old car comes from!”

He just looked at me and said “EP 6915 ?” I was absolutely flabbergasted and almost fell off the stool!

It transpired that Bill and his two brothers had been evacuated to Maesmawr in September, 1939 and had stayed at the Cottage for some four-and-a-half years with all three sharing a double bed. The car, of course, was still quite new and Bill confirmed that Mrs. Lloyd-Jones generally only used the car once a week. However, once a year as a treat for the brothers, she would save up sufficient petrol coupons to take them over Plynlimon for a day’s outing to Aberystwyth and then to Borth for a swim. “Coming back at night” said Bill “it was often cold and we put a brown rug over our bare knees to keep our legs warm.” Today, over sixty years later, that same brown rug is still on the back seat of the Austin.By the end of 1979 I was busy making arrangements for joining the Directing Staff of Operation Drake in Indonesia for which the bank had exceptionally given me leave of absence. The Austin had had to be laid up in a garage and for a few months she didn’t feature high in my list of priorities. Later the following year, after I had returned to the U.K. and had worked for a spell in the expedition’s operations center in the Old War Office, I decided that I did not want to resume my banking career. Money was short at that time and eventually and reluctantly I recognized the need to sell the Austin.

Fortunately a friend in North Wales bought the car from me. He kept it standing outdoors for a few years before eventually crating it and putting it into store. The car’s condition had deteriorated considerably and sadly he never found the time to put her back on the road again. It would take much money, work and loving care before the old Austin could be restored and running once more – and I do not have the finance at the present time. It is my dearest dream to be able to own EP 6915 again and have her in working order one day. Maybe, one day …….

Christopher M. Owen,

Update

The Austin came back home in the Summer of 2002! However, she is in an extremely sorry state and her restoration will be a major project and will undoubtedly cost much more than she will ever be worth in monetary value. Some people are bemused at this and cannot understand the logic! However, when she is restored I know I will once again have an extremely reliable and comfortable car capable of coping with every-day motoring conditions. With such a lovely history and all those memories, how could I not restore her? A small start on the restoration - the blackened radiator cap is solid brass and is gleaming once again! I am hoping that I will be able to start having work done on the Austin by the Summer of 2004. If finances permit, I am still hoping that she will be completely restored and running for the 4th June, 2007.
The dream is still alive!

Supplied new by : Glamorgan Motors Ltd, 10 City Road, Cardiff.

First registered to Mr Lewis Bowen, St Mellows, Nr Cardiff. on 26 January 1931.
It then passed to his sister Miss Gwladys Bowen of the same address on 7th January 1936.

The car was last taxed up until March 1940 and the last petrol ration coupon is stamped 8th Feburary 1940.
The car was insured from new by Atlas Insurance Company, 92 Cheapside, London EC2.

The car was kept under cover in Miss Bowen's garage unused for 36 years until her death, it was then sold by the Executors Dept of Barclays Bank on 22nd February 1976 to Mr Charles Couling of Wokingham, Berks.

To bring the car back to roadworthy condition Mr Couling fitted new tyres, battery, hoses, coil and door glasses.
He then gave it a good clean and it passed it's first ever MOT in March 1976.

On 18th November 1992 the car was purchased by Jim (great parks run) Richardson, the current owner.
Jim has had the engine reconditioned, the interior repaired and replaced where necessary.
The car has also been rewired and repainted.

" Well done Jim the car looks splendid - better than new. "