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Oz34
United Kingdom
2538 Posts |
 Posted - 04/07/2010 : 20:53:51
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Terry, the story I heard originated many years before they closed, but may well be just a delicious legend/rumour!
Dave |
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Colin Butchers
United Kingdom
1487 Posts |
Posted - 05/07/2010 : 10:06:17
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Originally, Richardsons were in Moor Lane, Staines halfway between Staines and Chertsey, and it was these premises which ended up under a new Metroplitan Water Board reservoir. In about 1968 or 1969 they were compulsorily purchased and took on new premises closer to Staines (or could have been Chertsey). At about the same time, they opened up a new place at Pease Pottage in Sussex. They removed the stuff that they wanted and left everything else to drown. I called at the abandoned yard on one Bank Hoiday week-end in my PA and collected a couple of P type gearbxes and lots of little bits and fittings including an exhaust system for my brother's TC. I drove home totally surrounded by rusty bits but left many F, L and K chassis' and tons of other stuff that either I didn't want or couldn't cram into a 2 seater PA. I couldn't get back on the Sunday but I returned on the Monday to find that practically everything had gone. The story I was told was that someone from Scotland had come down with a large lorry and cleared everything. I was just glad that much of what was there was saved from the dreaded aqua Happy days indeed.
Colin B. |
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bahnisch
Australia
674 Posts |
Posted - 05/07/2010 : 10:28:40
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| Thinking back, it must have been 1993 when I last went there. Did not realise that they had moved from near Staines but either way I was a long way from home. Not much useful prewar stuff there by then but I do remember a pile of chassis frames! |
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Oz34
United Kingdom
2538 Posts |
Posted - 05/07/2010 : 10:30:31
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Colin that is clearly the story I'd heard & obviouly misremembered. Probably it was you who told me!
Cheers,
Dave |
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Bob Stringfield
United Kingdom
854 Posts |
Posted - 05/07/2010 : 14:07:56
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The other aspect of the 'sixties was the ease of finding cars and bits at the right price outside the MG dealer network.
PA 627 cost me £22-50 in 1960 and was kept going courtesy of two N-types, side by side in a Bilston scrapyard. I sold it for £25-00. An F-type was quickly bought and sold along with a J2, both in the same price area. A female friend ran a J.2 as transport until her boyfriend kept it unroadworthy, perhaps to prevent her independence.
L2023, with lumps of of an L.1 and bits of a J.2 in the same state with it was £50 in '66. The bits were sold off, no doubt for pence, to fund the removal of the L.2's Riley engine and 'box - it performed very well - from what seemed to be an original car with an MOT, otherwise in fair condition, and to find an MG replacement.
The 'new' engine came from what looked like an L.1 Continental, the body having been cheerfully sledge-hammered off for access by the Shropshire breaker, one Clive Jones. The mostly rebuilt L.2 fetched £750 when I was a student in c. '72, a rise in price appreciated at the time, since I was somewhat underfunded, but unforseen as the start of a real rise in prices which continues.
What we should all have done, of course, was to store, rather than sell, some of these cheap, derelict MGs, thus avoiding the expense of buying in today's market. |
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ajc
United Kingdom
49 Posts |
Posted - 06/07/2010 : 07:52:56
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 My father always cheerily tells me that he purchased his car in 1960 odd, an L Type with a KN engine for £5 as his daily driver....
Not even sure if any part on it recently cost less than a fiver.... |
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