The Way We Were
THE BROADWAY, STONELEIGH
1965, The Broadway, Stoneleigh, Surrey
This Surrey shopping thoroughfare was as busy in 1965 as it is today – but where is Britain’s favourite new car?
The first impression of this photo is the dearth of BMC ADO16s – then the UK’s best-selling car. The second is that there are very few people in sight despite the number of cars. Our theory is that many of the owners were watching the Dave Clark Five in Catch Us If You Can at the ABC Rembrandt cinema.
Thirdly, there is often one vehicle that can truly date a photograph and, in this image, it is the J2-series Austin 152 Omnivan in the bottom left of the frame. 1965 was, of course, the year of the Ford Transit, by which point the J2 was nine years old and looked as much a throwback to the 1950s as a gang of 30-year-old Teds complaining about The Kinks.
To the rear of the J2 is a Standard Ten Companion that looks as though it was left in a great hurry, an Audax-series Hillman Minx and a Volkswagen Beetle with its nearside front wheel on the kerb. The Mini Van was once as commonly sighted in a high street as advertisement hoardings for Woodbines, while the dark-coloured saloon is a Ford Prefect 100E.
Across the road, the canted tailfins of the Ford Zodiac MkIII were already on the verge of going out of fashion while that venerablelooking Lea-Francis 14 HP Four Light saloon was still more than capable of cruising along the A3 at 60mph.
The Ford Consul MkII is a De Luxe, with its standard duo-tone paint and leather upholstery and as for the E-series Wyvern, some readers will recall how 1955-vintage Vauxhalls boasted engine-driven wipers – a system that didn’t prove wholly reliable in operation...
It is very tempting to remain on this side of the Broadway, but who could resist the magnificence that is the Vanden Plas Princess 3-Litre on the far right? BMC’s ‘Big Farina’ range was among the most handsome cars of the 1960s, and the VdP certainly dwarfs the Austin A35 Van behind it. The Sunbeam Rapier looks like a Series II (note the side grilles) and the Zephyr MkII is an early ‘High Line’. It is hard to imagine that such a car was manufactured at the same time as the Popular 103E but the latter only ceased production in 1959.
Moving down the line, we encounter that automotive epitome of Home Counties respectability, a Wolseley 1500, a Consul MkI, a Morris Minor Series II Tourer, an Austin-Healey ‘Frogeye’ Sprite, a Mini, a Minor Traveller and a now incredibly rare Victor F-Type Estate. Parked next to the row of shops are further examples of the Prefect 100E and the Wolseley 1500, a firstgeneration Austin A40 Farina, a second Mini Van, a two-door Morris Minor and a pair of Anglia 105E De Luxes offering Hollywood-style glamour on a B-film budget.
Today, those 1930s buildings are very much in place, and you can still find a Co- Op and Bradbury’s Electrical in Stoneleigh. Other businesses have long ceased trading because this photograph was taken at the end of the era when people would visit individual shops rather than a supermarket. It was also a time when the Volkswagen would have been one of the few imported cars on the roads and when one of those Thames 307E vans in the background might have delivered your weekly grocery order.
But perhaps the most telling detail of all in this evocative picture is the sheer number of parked cars. Ten years earlier, you might have taken a No. 93 RT bus to the Broadway, but now you travelled by hire-purchased Morris Mini or Ford Anglia…