Memory Lane Mailbag

FOLLOWING your article about the origins of H Tuckwell & Sons, the Oxford haulage contractors (Memory Lane, December 17, 2011), I enclose this picture which your readers may find interesting.

It shows a trailer belonging to the company being towed by what looks like a Bullnose Morris car.

As you recalled, Harry Tuckwell started his business in 1840 and it is still going today.

I seem to remember that one picture you published showed a Tuckwell steam wagon with a top speed of 12mph and with a trailer 5mph!

This latest picture has another piece of Oxford history – it was taken outside the goods shed of the London Midland and Scottish Railway at Rewley Road.

As many of your readers will know, the old station has been reconstructed at the Buckinghamshire Railway Centre at Quainton, near Aylesbury.

Coincidentally, a Castle steam locomotive, 5080 Defiant, is now on static display there, and I remember driving it when it was in steam at Tyseley depot near Birmingham about 20 years ago.

Another intriguing link between the past and the future is that the line that led from the Rewley Road station and goods depot, to Bicester and Bletchley (Milton Keynes), is going to be upgraded and electrified!

Plenty of memories – and future hopes – have been provoked by this picture!

PAUL APPLEFORD Banbury

Champ was truly great

YOU published a nice piece on a truly terrific speedway rider, Arne Pander (Memory Lane, June 24).

Oxford Cheetahs’ first Great Dane was so good that for many years during the 1960s, we judged all our other riders against his achievements.

At his best, he kept the crowds coming when he raced against some of the best riders speedway has seen.

Just to have the names of Fundin, Briggs and Craven on the Sandy Lane race night programme ensured that Arne would be trying his best to beat them, with fast gating and good clean racing. When he did, the supporters loved it.

Unlike some of today’s riders, Arne never took anyone out to the fence to stop a rider overtaking.

The way he won his races was through great track craft and the professionalism that ensured his machine was fast and in tip-top condition.

In the days when bikes often broke down during a race, Arne had very few mechanical failures.

He was a great mechanic, a perfectionist and his bikes as a result were immaculate, making him a real match for the top boys.

There are some great riders out there today and thanks to British Eurosport, we can watch them on TV nearly every other week during the season as they race Grand Prix style for the annual world championship.

If you can watch it, have a look and you will see what a spectacular sport speedway is.

If only Arne Pander was young again and could compete, I am sure he would be world champion.

JOHN FRAY London Road Wheatley Oxford

Strawberry fields forever

THE British strawberry season is in full swing, but does anyone remember when the Waterperry Horticultural School used to sell strawberries at its shop in the Oxford Covered Market?

Anyone who did will not forget the scent, which was so powerful that it filled the place.

The variety on sale was Royal Sovereign which, to my mind, was the finest strawberry ever.

The trouble with Sovereign is that it is prone to become infected by virus.

Some years ago, a programme was put in place to reintroduce virus free stock and these were the plants that Waterperry propagated and offered, as young plants in the autumn.

I can’t recall seeing this variety on offer of late – does anyone still grow it?

Another red item, which also seems to have disappeared, is the red telephone box.

If my memory serves me correctly, those in Oxford were painted a stone colour. I can’t remember seeing boxes of this colour elsewhere so, presumably, this was an Oxford exclusive.

DERRICK HOLT Fortnam Close Headington Oxford

Mysterious vicar has curious historic significance

THREE years ago, in a ‘Changing Face of Kingham’ feature, you published a 1970 photograph that included the Rev AST Fisher, who was then Vicar of Westwell.

Arthur Stanley Theodore Fisher, to give him his full name, is a figure of minor historical interest.

At university in 1925, he re-introduced fellow student WH Auden to Christopher Isherwood. Fisher wrote a number of published poems and religious works under his own name, but also a gay public school romance under a pseudonym!

Fisher spent some years as a public school chaplain, first at Bryanston and then at Magdalen College School, before becoming an Oxfordshire vicar.

As a vicar, he wrote three histories of neighbouring West Oxfordshire parishes, of which Westwell was the third volume.

That suggests to me that he may have held the benefice of all those sparsely-populated parishes at the same time.

If so, the reason that your 1970 picture caption may list him only as vicar of Westwell may be that was the only one of his parishes to have produced a confirmation candidate that year.

I have found no dates for Fisher’s life – when he was ordained, where he ‘served his title’ as assistant curate after ordination, the dates when he joined and left Bryanston, Magdalen College School or his parish in West Oxfordshire, when he retired, even his birth or death dates.

If he were alive now, Fisher would be at least 106. Can any of your readers supply details of his life?

HUGH JAEGER Park Close Oxford

Remembering the boy racer days of Austin Morris apprentices

I ENJOYED the article about the pedal cars made by Austin Morris apprentices at Cowley (Memory Lane, June 24).

I was a maintenance apprentice and became involved when a driver for the support van was needed. As I had a full licence, I became car mechanic and van driver.

In the apprentice school, Keith Monk was the instructor – he was very involved with building the cars.

They raced in a 24-hour event at Oxford Polytechnic at Headington (now Oxford Brookes University). We also raced at Coventry Radiators and at an Army barracks at Exeter.

We did all right and the cars were quite robust, but we were competing against younger teams from schools, who had not yet enjoyed the vices of beer, fags and girls, so we did not finish too high up the table.

It was a great time to be an apprentice. I stayed at Cowley until I retired in April 2011.

I have included four pictures from those times – that’s me in car No 30.

MICK BEESLEY Bayswater Road Headington Oxford