Early Motoring

King George V in his 1910 Daimler

Royal visit, Annesley July 1914

Clear Road Ahead?

Nottinghamshire-born author, Fred Kitchen, has a nice description of the first appearance of the motor car in a village (albeit in Yorkshire) where he was working as a farm hand in c.1907.

"With a throb and a rattle, out would come the car, with the old groom pushing behind".

Writing about the village squire he says:-

"He was a progressive, up-to-date, sort of chap, and the first person to introduce a motor car into the village.

"It was quite an event, watching him turn out with his car, and all the womenfolk stood at their doors, with arms folded in their aprons, to watch the squire glide down the hill.

"The road descended from his entrance-gates down the village to a sharp turn at the bottom leading on to the main road.

"At this corner the gardener's boy was posted, to warn all traffic - there seldom was any - that Alderman ------- JP was about to descend.

"At the entrance gate stood the gardener, in green apron, keeping the road clear of children and hens..... and presently, with a throb and a rattle, out would come the car, with the old groom pushing behind.

"Having got safely through the gates, the alderman would call out briskly: 'All clear, Binns?'

'Yessir, all clear!' the gardener would reply.

"Then would Alderman -------- JP glide slowly but majestically down the hill, past the admiring gaze of his neighbours, with the gardener and the groom pacing behind.......

"Before venturing on the main road - which was really only another by-road - the car was stopped, and the waiting boy addressed thus: 'Anything coming from the right?'

'No, sir!'

'All clear from the left?'

'Yessir!'

And the car would proceed with caution".

This story is recounted by Fred Kitchen in his autobiography 'Brother to the Ox' (1940).