Doug Nye: Rambling Through The Archives

We have had quite positive feedback about the GP Library archive photography that illustrates these weekly rambles (I would have taken a dim view…) but I must confess that under my slightly disorderly filing system – thousands of images stored under ‘P’ for ‘Photograph’ – what I discover does often come as quite a surprise.

Just this morning has proved the point – in spades.  Here’s a nice acid-free clear plastic folder, containing some interesting looking Goodwood-type prints.  Coo – they must be another Goodwood set because here on top is one of Geoff Goddard’s lovely shots taken in the paddock during the 1958 Easter Monday meeting.  There’s bespectacled BARC Secretary John Morgan on the left, plainly enthusing over Mike Hawthorn’s soon-to-be-victorious works Ferrari Dino 246 Formula 1 car. Beside him, immaculately suited  with vast cravat louchely knotted around his neck, stands Ferrari team manager, the multi-lingual Romolo Oscar Tavoni. Beyond, the other side of that familiar chestnut paling fence, pack the spectators that day.  This is the familiar Goodwood paddock scene almost exactly as it prevails today.

So what other pix have we got in this folder? Aah – looky here – the rare 1939 E-Type ERA, cornering at Woodcote in the hands of soon-to-be Le Mans 24-Hour race winner – for Jaguar in 1951 – Peter Walker. The poor benighted E-Type never matched the success of it’s A- to D-Type ‘Old English Upright’ predecessors, but through the late-1940s into the earliest 1950s, it certainly looked the part of a potential world-class challenger…

Next print – oh splendid – the first batch of seven brand-new rear-engined Cooper cars all lined-up in the little park on the opposite side of Hollyfield Road, Surbiton, from the Cooper Car Co’s garage factory. This dates from Spring, 1948, and seated in the cars are – from left to right – John Cooper himself in the ‘eared’ 1,000cc works chassis, George Saunders, Charlie Cooper, the kid Stirling Moss, Eric Brandon (wearing his favoured beret), Stan Coldham (the racing butcher) and finally Stirling’s German ex-PoW mechanic Don Muller. Look at those related spares. Racing for fun was becoming serious…

Oops – now the selection leaps back in time, it’s pre-war, it’s Brooklands, just outside the still surviving Clubhouse – centerpiece of today’s wonderful Brooklands Museum – and here’s 1931 Le Mans 24-Hour race winner Earl Howe with his Alfa Romeo 8C-2300. As the highly respected and politically well-connected elder statesman of British motor racing in the run-up to World War 2, Howe was instrumental in persuading Freddie March that loaning of some Goodwood Estate land for an RAF satellite aerodrome was the right thing to do. Without that conversation RAF Westhampnett/the Goodwood Motor Circuit would never have been created.  That, as Henry Ford observed, is the characteristic feature of progressive history – “It’s just one damn thing after another…”.

Ooh – another surprise in this folder. Goodwood Motor Circuit’s 1930s predecessor, Donington Park, May 9, 1936. And you will seldom see a wider handicap race line-up than this one, seven-abreast. Left to right J.P. Mellor’s Fiat, the four MGs of N. Robinson, H. Prestwich, D.S.Handley and N.J.Else, with J. Stancer-Beaumont’s Ford Special and (right) Ken Wharton’s Austin special. The latter proved to be Britain’s most versatile professional racing driver into the 1950s, handling everything from trials cars to rally cars, to sports cars, to racing saloons, to Formula 3, Formula 2 and the Formula 1 BRM V16… Typical of the unstructured way it was…

And finally, another surprise at the foot of the folder – a really rare shot from a rare race. This is the Limerick Grand Prix in Ireland in the 1930s, Ian Connell’s 2.3 Alfa in the pits while the nattily-blazered ‘mechanic’ stretching underneath the car’s tail fuel tank to plug a leak with chewing gum is none other than tall Hugh G. Conway – future specialist Bugatti guru and luminary of the Bugatti Owners’ Club, and engineer-designer of the equilateral curve heptagon 50-pence coin. His wife Eva assists to the right, displaced ‘proper’ mechanic John Renwick to the left. How’s this for pit-lane race-wear?

So, for always interesting – time-devouring, daylight-burning – unexpected discoveries we have plenty of diversions tucked away around here, filed under ‘P’ for photograph…whenever we go in search of Goodwood-related memorabilia…

Images courtesy of The GP Library