Daimler found under garden rockery
A Daimler has been discovered beneath a Guernsey rockery during landscaping work over the Easter bank holiday.
Garden owner, Tracy Ward, had asked her father to dig up an old rockery; he subsequently discovered increasing amounts of metal parts during the work.
With some of the parts – most obviously an engine block – recognisably as belonging to a car, Ward contacted the Guernsey Old Car Club (GOCC), which identified the car as a Daimler via the radiator and a gearbox ID plate.
Club spokesperson, Heather Fattorini, says: ‘It’s hard to say if it is a pre- or postwar car, as Daimler’s cars immediately before and after World War Two were fairly similar. Once we find the engine number and do some research we’ll hopefully be able to put a date on it. If it is a pre-war car, it’ll be quite likely that the car was buried as a means of hiding it from German forces during the island’s occupation.’
The car’s numberplate, though not fully intact, has been found and appears to read GUK 880 – meaning that the car was not originally registered in Guernsey, as local registration numbers do not contain letters.
Looking into the history of Ward’s property, the GOCC has found the area in which the Daimler was buried was on a boundary during the 1940s, so tracing ownership of the car is difficult. While the Daimler and Lanchester Owners’ Club believes it to be a Consort model from what has been dug up so far, Fattorini is less certain.
Heather says: ‘I don’t think the bumper is quite right to be a Consort and I haven’t seen any remnants of a roof panel, so my best guess is a two-seater convertible for now’.
Unwilling to simply dispose of the parts, Ward is keen to find someone who will take the find away, with all enquiries up to this point proving to be dead ends.