I really lived at Markham Moor
I was interested to see the photo of Markham Moor Service Station in February’s PC. It is an unusual design with the peaked roof (the roof was Grade 2 listed in 2012), so it immediately caught my eye as my father worked for A H Turner Ltd, the garage that built it in the early Sixties. The main showroom and garage was at the rear of the Service Station, fronting the A638 and we lived in a cottage owned by and adjacent to the garage. As the A1 Great North Road ran a short distance behind the original garage, AH Turner operated a filling station and lined second hand cars up on the A1 site to catch more trade. These two garages were linked by a private road between them on which some of the cars for sale were driven from the old garage to the frontage at the filling station each morning, then driven back to store overnight. I was often given the chance to be a passenger in many of the cars by the salesmen as they were driven back to the main garage each evening. The stock was all British marques as you would expect for the era. I would have been about eight years-old when we lived at Markham Moor and it was this early experience with cars that lit my enthusiasm, which
has continued to burn to this day. We moved away in the early Sixties, about the same time as A H Turner decided to build the eye catching roof (cost £4500 apparently!), but it remains a significant landmark in the area.
DH: It’s one of Britain’s great road landmarks … hopefully it will be back in business soon.