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We take a look at Britain's oldest garage
It was the year the safety pin, the gas mask and the breech loading cannon were patented, the year the first air raid took place (from a balloon) – and the year Britain’s oldest garage was founded.
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Humble beginnings
Garage? Admittedly, 169 years ago, the closest W Ganderton came to horsepower was the horses that pulled the carts and carriages the company made wheels for.
Even so, if you regard a garage as a place where vehicles – be they horseless carriages or carriages pulled by horses – are maintained, then W Ganderton and Son, founded in 1849 and owned and managed by the same family ever since, has a claim on the title of Britain’s oldest.
Fittingly, at least in the context of today, it’s in Buckingham, a stone’s throw from Silverstone. Not that Ganderton is any kind of racing mecca. Its only link to motorsport is a photo of Stirling Moss dropping by for fuel (and a promotional opportunity) in his Aston Martin in May 1959 and an exquisitely engineered soapbox racer with hydraulic brakes built by the two current generations of the Ganderton dynasty. It successfully competed at Brooklands five years ago.
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Wheeling the way
Back in 1849 though, fabricating the perfect wheel was uppermost in the mind of William Ganderton, the company’s founder, as, with a flourish, he co-signed a legal document with his brother Thomas that dissolved their former partnership (they were pattern makers for the railways). This then freed him to start his own business as a wheelwright and agricultural engineer. The iron ring William used to form his wooden wheels remains in the forecourt to this day.
There must have been a living in it because 30 years later, in 1880, William was still making wheels, although by this time in the company of his son, William Setmus.
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Expansion
Another 20 years or so passed before Buckingham’s high street began to shake to the roar of the first cars and motorcycles. By this time, William Setmus had been joined by his son William Alfred, and like similar businesses of the time the pair dipped their toe into this brave new world by opening a bicycle shop across the road from the main business.
They called it Swan Cycles and trade flourished. It was a short step from there to fixing and maintaining the area’s growing population of motorcars.
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A family affair
“The man from Dunlop used to come down from Birmingham to sell them tyres,” says John Snr (68), the great, great grandson of the founder. “His next customer was a chap called William Morris.”
William Alfred’s son, John ‘Jack’, joined the business aged 14 in 1929, his young head spinning with dreams of Blower Bentleys and Hispano-Suizas. Ten years later, when war broke out, he joined the Royal Army Service Corps where he learned to drive and maintain all types of vehicles. On being demobbed he returned to Ganderton where he promptly cleared a small pitch from which to sell used cars.
“He was successful but was held back by the lack of space here,” says his son, John Snr (68). “Servicing was and remains our bread and butter. We’re mechanics and fixers – always have been.”
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Furthering franchises
Still, inspired by his father’s experience, in the 1980s John Snr took on a new car franchise.
“Lancia promised me they had the rust problems of the 1970s licked, so we took on the franchise,” he says. “It suited us: we were a small site and they were a small company. Heron were the distributors then and it was like one big, happy family.
“We sold loads of Delta Turbos but strangely, never an Integrale. We used to service Rowan Atkinson’s, though. Later, Fiat took over Lancia. It wasn’t the same, and we got out soon after.”
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Continuing the bloodline
Ganderton’s brief history as a car dealer was over for good. However, like the iron ring in the forecourt, there’s a permanent connection with that period in what passes as the Ganderton showroom – in reality, a dry, centrally heated den for father and son’s small car and bike collection.
You have to squeeze past boxes and old display boards for a close look but in pride of place is John Snr’s immaculate 1972 Lancia Fulvia. Alongside it is his son, John Jnr’s Peugeot 309 GTi. Elsewhere, among more boxes, old car parts and dusty brochures, is an Innocenti De Tomaso and a Suzuki SC 100 GX ‘Whizzkid’. Parked in a corner is a beautifully restored 1967 BSA Bantam.
It’s tempting to say that today, apart from an old workshop – now a storeroom – and the iron ring in the forecourt, there’s nothing left of the orginal Ganderton business but of course, both John Snr and John Jnr – great, great, great grandson of William – are the flesh and blood continuation of William’s bold enterprise.
John Snr appears to be enjoying himself mightily; it’s his son, John Jnr (38), who bears the responsibility of continuing the Ganderton story.
“I feel it on my shoulders,” he says. “If we expanded, we’d have to keep this site going. I feel an attachment to the place and if I ever forget how it all started, there’s that metal ring in the yard to remind me.”
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Maintaining tradition
They have a Bosch franchise now and John Jnr pulls on rubber gloves and wields plastic spanners when working on the electric cars that come in for work. There’s one outside, its owner making calls on his mobile phone while it ‘refuels’ at the fast-charge point.
John Snr’s unimpressed. “I miss working on carburettors and points,” he says. “All these ECUs and electronics are beyond me.”
He’s getting into his stride: “Everything these days is ‘24/7’. We don’t want to go that way. People find it strange that we shut the workshop for lunch, and that we’re not open on Sundays.
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A future forged by the past
“We’re not worried. There’ll always be cars and they’ll always need servicing. Nuclear’s the future. You’ve got something the size of a biscuit tin in your car’s boot, which is your nuclear generator, which drives a hydraulic pump…”
Don’t titter – his great, great grandfather probably said something similar about that strange stuff called petroleum, acquired by a new refining process patented just a year after W Ganderton opened for business in 1849.
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