Hunting & Proteus - Ide Hill, Kent 1989 1
This week's Thursday throwback is one of the best of all. I originally posted these two slides in August 2018. Here it is clearer than ever how much better the quality of these scans are than the ones previously posted.
Here's what I wrote about it back then.
"Little hints of history in the background - there's a Pace sign in the background so this was almost certainly Pace before becoming Proteus and then switching to Hunting after. The Pace brand was originally created by Victor Gauntlet who after selling up the company then formed Proteus fuels and many Pace branded garages moved with him. The Hunting brand is a very rare sight indeed. It's also very unusual to see pump globes being manufactured as late on as the 1980's. The photo also captures a Rover P6 being filled up by Mr Len Nye who was the owner of this lovely garage for many years. There are other images of this garage around on Flickr - see first comment below. From these we can see it was branded National in 1979. Nothing remains in the present day sadly."
Subsequent to my originally posting these images, various people got in touch with me about them, a family member asking for copies, Len Nye, the proprietor had been her grandfather, and a local historian who passed on to me extracts from a book that showed an image of the garage from much earlier on in time.
It would seem the garage first opened in about 1933 and it was run by the Nye family until its closure. A 1934 image shows that there was a tea room behind the garage in that era. It also mentioned that Len Nye worked 364 days a week and even opened on Christmas Day morning!
These two images are a priceless little piece of history and along with the other two added below, show an era now long since passed.
Here's the Streetview where two modern houses can be seen standing where the garage once did.
www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.2462354,0.1276837,3a,75y,14.34h...
Hunting & Proteus - Ide Hill, Kent 1989 1
This week's Thursday throwback is one of the best of all. I originally posted these two slides in August 2018. Here it is clearer than ever how much better the quality of these scans are than the ones previously posted.
Here's what I wrote about it back then.
"Little hints of history in the background - there's a Pace sign in the background so this was almost certainly Pace before becoming Proteus and then switching to Hunting after. The Pace brand was originally created by Victor Gauntlet who after selling up the company then formed Proteus fuels and many Pace branded garages moved with him. The Hunting brand is a very rare sight indeed. It's also very unusual to see pump globes being manufactured as late on as the 1980's. The photo also captures a Rover P6 being filled up by Mr Len Nye who was the owner of this lovely garage for many years. There are other images of this garage around on Flickr - see first comment below. From these we can see it was branded National in 1979. Nothing remains in the present day sadly."
Subsequent to my originally posting these images, various people got in touch with me about them, a family member asking for copies, Len Nye, the proprietor had been her grandfather, and a local historian who passed on to me extracts from a book that showed an image of the garage from much earlier on in time.
It would seem the garage first opened in about 1933 and it was run by the Nye family until its closure. A 1934 image shows that there was a tea room behind the garage in that era. It also mentioned that Len Nye worked 364 days a week and even opened on Christmas Day morning!
These two images are a priceless little piece of history and along with the other two added below, show an era now long since passed.
Here's the Streetview where two modern houses can be seen standing where the garage once did.
www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.2462354,0.1276837,3a,75y,14.34h...