Qui Me Comitat Vincebit
Shelsley Walsh - VSCC
As this was the Centenary Festival meeting at Shelsley I thought I might get
an entry with the HWM, as in its first life it had been especially commissioned
by Phil Scragg a wealthy textile magnate from Macclesfield for British speed
hill climbs In fact Scragg had been a frequent competitor at Shelsley and held
the sports car record in a variety of cycle wing cars from my HWM through the
Monzanapolis Lister to a LolaT70,he said he just liked to see the wheels for
accurate placement! In 1959 he won the first Autosport Sports Car Hill Climb
Championship in my car.
The days in between the Ring and Shelsley were filled with hard work to remove and repair the drive shafts, which had both sheared their keys and friction welded themselves together again. Perhaps one could rely on this method of fixing as being the final solution but we chose the more conventional route of using 60 tons to separate them and then spent a fortune cleaning them up and cutting an additional keyway. Much thanks to David Morris and Hamlins in Bridgwater who let the job jump the queue so the car could get to the centenary.
I arrived at Shelsley just as the very wet VSCC meeting was finishing to get the sensational news that despite our very own Martin Morris’s best efforts in Humphrey (and no doubt others’) David Leigh had made FTD in Basil Davenport’s 1924 GN Spider. I’m sure this must have brought a smile to the usually dour faced but good-hearted Basil in that great paddock in the sky, still doubtless dressed in his brown grocer’s coat unless he really did leave it to Tom Threlfall!
The following day there were some odd showers but nothing too serious and the paddock was stuffed with famous hill climbers past and present. It really was a journey down memory lane as in the 60s Martin and I used to go to the National Hill Climbs towing the ERA on a trailer behind his Speed Six Bentley. On arrival we would offload and he would enter the open racing car class and I would do the vintage class with the Bentley---happy days. I should add that even then Martin was usually in the run off for the fastest ten cars for hill climb championship points.
Some of the past stars were not performing like Phil Chapman and Peter Boshier Jones,others like David Good and Tony Marsh were there to have ago .Then there was Peter Westbury who only came for the beer and ended up being shoe -horned into someone else’s overalls ,and was then dispatched up the hill in the Felday Daimler which he had built and won the championship in. A notable West Country hill-climber of the past who now sells books etc celebrated so hard that he fell senseless down the steps near the bar leaving a naive lady to enquire whether he was epileptic to which he accurately replied ‘no madam I’m P*ssed’.
David Good who used to hill climb R1B only has one full arm and was
given a drive in Donald Day’s car, Donald of course only has the other arm ,and
I’m reliably informed that David Good said that a two-seater ERA would be ideal
for them both to drive!
Only one result warrants particular mention and that was the staggering time of David Morris in Humphrey in the run offs at the end of the day. The car had not run completely cleanly all day and in an attempt to compensate for that David really TRIED on his last run of the day and he broke Mayman’s R4D pre-war record with a time of 34.31". This was the only record to be broken at the meeting and a great reward for the father and son preparation team and all achieved without the aid of the evil -smelling eye-rotting brew being burned by some of the other ERAs present!
S.C.
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