Local knowledge

Photographed c1920 in my adopted home town of Chatteris, Cambs, outside his then family home, Grove House, is local land owner and farmer Leonard ‘Len’ Childs, posing on his Duggie. Wearing First World War period Isle of Ely registration mark, the Douglas is a 2¾hp 348cc foreand-aft flat-twin model with likely as not a clutchless two-speed countershaft gearbox.

Len Childs was well known locally, and a bridge to the north west of the town across the

Forty Foot drain is named after him. The Forty Foot is one of the Fen’s smaller drains, which runs from Wells Bridge near Ramsey, to Welches Dam Sluice.