59 replies to this topic

[dolomite]

Brilliant!  But how on earth did you find it?  I am full of admiration (and some Greene King Abbot Ale).

 

Now we have the WHERE, all we need is the WHY and WHEN

Largely by accident. A bit of Google searching brought up the ‘Thatched Pubs Project’ website. I skipped through a few of its pages at random and one that caught my eye was the pub with its own airfield. It struck me that could perhaps be the kind of place that 1930s Bentley boys might like to pay a visit, so I looked more closely at that pub and the more I examined it the more similar it looked to the original photo. 

[BRG]

Stellar work, sir.

 

Roadhouses (as they were sometimes called in the interwar years) along the trunk roads often had extra attractions.  Local to me was the Ace of Spades on the A3 Kingston By-Pass at Chessington had a ballroom and a swimming pool, as well as having an airstrip, although where that lay in what is now a largely built-up area is not clear.  But unlike the Fountain, the Ace which was an unthatched mock Tudor building from the 1920s now only survives as a golf equipment store these days, although the name is still used for the A3 underpass that is there now.

[Doug Nye]

The BDC advises me that they did indeed organise a Club run to The Fountain and that the one of which they have found record took place on June 21, 1936.  It was a significant event but not totally for positive reasons.

 

In September 1935 - after experience of a couple of 1920s 3-Litre Bentleys - G.K. Pelmore had bought a 4 1/2-litre which impressed him so much that he wanted to join the relevant owners' club, only to find (to his amazement) there wasn't one.

 

So he printed some cards seeking potential interest from like minded owners and - on March 14, 1936 - at the opening Brooklands Meeting of that year, he placed the cards on any Bentley he found in the car park.  Twenty-six owners responded to meet at his London flat, and it was there that the Bentley Drivers' Club was founded, with the first committee meeting following in Forrest Lycett's London flat on May 1 '36.

 

The first Club general meeting was then held at Bush House in the Strand, London, on May 19. An inaugural run - attracting an entry of 31 - followed on May 24, from the Berkeley Arms Hotel, Cranford, West London, along the Great West Road to The Old Bell at Hurley "...where tea was taken".

 

A second run was then organised for June 21, 1936 - from The Barn Club on the Barnet Bypass (North London) to The Fountain Hotel on the old Roman Road we know as Watling Street.

 

BUT June 21 saw torrential rain and when the BDC members pulled into the large car park at The Fountain they learned that the marquee in which their teas had been laid out had just collapsed under the rain, wind and - the coup de grace - a tremendous hailstorm...  

 

The Fountain's owner - Lt Cdr Harrison - promptly had his staff prepare a replacement tea indoors for 55 expected members. The BDC news sheet reads: "A slight pause in the rain permitted Members to talk together outside and it was decided that on the return they should visit a place near Great Offley where there was a short hill which it was thought might be usable for a future speed event.

 

"The majority got beyond Dunstable to the spot, but three 3-Litres, a 4 1/2 and a blown 4 1/2, also a 6 1/2, got caught in an extra vicious storm and decided to put in at an hotel in Dunstable, where they did their best to get as wet inside as they were out, but with very considerably more moderation...".

 

Given that a return run to The Fountain might have been made in later years, of which the BDC have not yet found reference following my request - I think we can date that photograph as having been 'most probably' from that second-ever BDC run - June 21, 1936.

 

Well now - at least that has scratched that particular itch.  On, inevitably, to the next one...

 

DCN

[jtremlett]

...I think we can date that photograph as having been 'most probably' from that second-ever BDC run - June 21, 1936...

I suppose so, although I can't see any evidence in the photograph of there having been torrential rain shortly before, as I might expect, and three of the cars are open with no hoods up or any kind of covers.

[BRG]

I suppose so, although I can't see any evidence in the photograph of there having been torrential rain shortly before, as I might expect, and three of the cars are open with no hoods up or any kind of covers.

It looks bone-dry and not a sign of a sou'wester so perhaps it was a later return engagement to make up for the disappointment of a collapsing marquee.  

[Doug Nye]

I made allowance for that in my previous post - but in August here we had rain all morning, then a violent hailstorm, followed by brilliantly clear sky and sun - and within about 20 minutes the road surfaces were bone dry.  Then it clouded over, and hail fell yet again.  And the roads just about flooded. So reading the BDC Bulletin reminded me that unpredictable British summers are no new invention.  I am seeking confirmation about any return visits members may have made to The Fountain.  Of course, the photo may not depict an organised Club event at all ... just local Bentley owners on a pub run.  That's why the word 'probably' features above.

 

DCN

[marksixman]

A simply amazing amount of research and information, in a very short space of time.

 

Congratulations to everyone involved.

 

Long Live TNF !!

[Catalina Park]

Look carefully at the windscreen on YO5902 and you can see the wipers have been working recently.

[Gary C]

It's a great story, Doug, anyway.

[Vitesse2]

This is very much on my home turf within the Borough of Elmbridge.

 

The White Lion Hotel in Cobham to which Eoin Young referred is still there although it now retirement apartments.  It is at the junction of the A307 Portsmouth Road (formerly the A3) and the A245 Stoke Road.  For a while it was the Vermont Exchange, an American style burger and beer joint.  It dates from the 16th century although it was given a new frontage in Georgian times.

 

The former LIttle White Lion was presumably so named to differentiate it from the Hotel and might be the first pub that you pass if leaving Brooklands to head back to London, as it sits on the former A3 Portsmouth Road.  It was also next door to Thompson and Taylor's garage which had Brooklands connections.  But I do not recall it ever being thatched, and indeed there is a shot from 1911 which is said to show the pub in the distance.  It is clearly tiled not thatched.   And no sign of the Snack Bar, but that would have come later, I suppose.

 

So perhaps the search continues.

Re-reading Charles Mortimer's 'Brooklands and Beyond', he mentions the White Lion in a second-hand anecdote about bike racer and tuner JS Worters wining and dining a Mr Hatch, the competition manager of Blackburns, who were based in Bookham. On the 1921 census, Worters was living in Ockham.