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From Carriages to Cars - Harry Munden, Master Coach Painter In February 2006 Ron Munden sent two pictures to Barry Harvey of the Vauxhall Owner’s Club (1903-1957). One was a group of people photographed in front of a hotel on what looked like a works outing and the other an unusual “overhead” shot of a flamboyant twenties sports car with a small group of workers who had evidently been working on it. Ron stated that both photos showed his grandfather, Harry Munden, who had worked at Vauxhall as a skilled coach painter. He thought they were taken around 1919 and he asked if the VOC could identify the car and add any other information about either of the pictures. Barry forwarded copies to Ian Coomber who identified the car as a 1924 Wensum bodied OE 30-98. But this was no standard Wensum as the body had what appeared to be a fully planked “deck” with the bonnet, scuttle and rear deck all receiving the treatment, with a single dickey seat in the rear made to look like a hatch cover. It was hard to envisage that the bonnet would have been literally planked, so perhaps Harry’s coach painting skills had been employed to create a painted finish to match the genuine article on the rear deck. Vauxhall only produced two in-house bodies for the 30-98, the Velox tourer and the sporting “boat bodied” Wensum, named after Works Manager A. J. Hancock’s river launch, the Wensum being the river that flows through Norwich. If this was a Wensum then it must have been a special order for an important customer and Harry Munden and colleagues were obviously and justifiably proud of their work. This information was sent back to grandson Ron who replied with further information on Harry, which gives a fascinating insight into the social upheaval caused by the advent of the motor car as a viable alternative to the horse drawn carriage. Harry Munden was born in 1872 in Bridport, Dorset and followed his father into the carriage trade as a coach painter. He was working in the Bridport & Bournemouth area at the turn of last century. By 1905, with the coming of the motor car, the trade of carriage building had declined and in 1906 he was made redundant by W. S. Smith, carriage builders of Hill Side, Wimborne Road, Winton near Bournemouth. Harry had no option but to move to one of the centres of car manufacture, so in 1907 he moved to London and settled in Walthamstow, East London. He took a glowing testimonial from W. S. Smith on their magnificent headed paper and found a job at Vauxhall using his skills as a liner-out painting coats-of-arms and emblems on "specials". Ron still has his grandfather’s lining-out brushes. Ian Coomber tried to identify the Glenroyde Hotel, the setting for the group photo. An internet search produced a reference to a Glenroyde Hotel in Hastings as the venue of a jazz club in the fifties. If it was active in the fifties it might have been in existence in the twenties and Hastings seemed a possible destination for a works outing, albeit a bit of a long haul from Luton. However, another nagging doubt was growing. Although Luton had excellent main-line rail connections to London, would someone really commute from Walthamstow to Luton in 1919? The pictures were then sent to Douglas Sharp, 30-98 owner and a Vauxhall dealer in Portsmouth for many years. He too felt it was a Wensum and added that Wensum bodies were not built “on the line” but in the service department. A 1927 owner’s handbook (for a 25-70) gives an address of a Vauxhall owned service department in North Road off Caledonian Road, London, N7. Could Harry have worked there or perhaps at General Motors, Hendon, both an easier commute than Luton? Douglas enlisted the aid of Nic Portway, author of the definitive book, the Vauxhall 30-98. Nic turned things upside down by identifying the car as a special 30-98 bodied by the Grosvenor Carriage Company for their stand at the 1925 London Motor Show at Olympia. He pointed to a more conventional picture of the car in Sedgwick’s book, “Vauxhall”. This shows the car posed with the official Grosvenor plaque used for company photographs and reveals it to be almost a literal boat body with a slope from the (high) radiator to the “stern”, the deck planking and even the suggestion of a keel at the rear. Both handbrake and gear lever were outside the cockpit. Nic turned up the Autocar report (October 16th) of the 1925 Show which described the car as having mahogany planking (and apparently that did include the bonnet), broken-white “hull”, sea green undertray/chassis and antique brown leather upholstery. Therefore it would have looked exactly like a river launch on wheels, with off-white hull and green “water line” with a fully planked deck and to complete the nautical theme, “all fitments were copper oxydised throughout”. The chassis number was OE253 and the car was registered MK8708. Therefore it seems certain that Harry and his workmates were employed at Grosvenor, not Vauxhall. Geographically this made sense as the Grosvenor Carriage Company were based at the Welbeck Works, Kimberley Road, London, NW6. But why did his family strongly recall him working at Vauxhall? This is easily explained in that Grosvenor was virtually the “official” outside coachbuilder for Vauxhall. In the period Harry worked there they worked exclusively on bodies for Vauxhall chassis. This occurred because Grosvenor was part of the Shaw & Kilburn group of companies owned by entrepreneur and sportsman Drysdale Kilburn. With premises in Soho and then in “motor row”, Great Portland Street, Shaw & Kilburn were the London agents for Vauxhall and as such highly influential in Luton. In later years “S&K” spread their interests to the Home Counties and eventually became one of the largest Vauxhall dealer groups in the country. It was quite probable that for special jobs personnel were transferred from Grosvenor to Vauxhall and vice versa, so the “confusion” was understandable. But Nic could provide more than supposition. He identified the group photograph as being the staff of Shaw & Kilburn and Grosvenor.  When asked how he could be so sure he cited a most extraordinary coincidence. He had bought a photo album many years ago which turned out to be from S&K and was a photo record of their premises and staff. In the album was an envelope of pictures including four of the exact same group as the picture of Harry and his workmates. They were obviously further proofs of the same photo as the people were in the same places but their heads etc were at different angles in each one. By virtue of this evidence we can now be sure that the group were indeed S&K and Grosvenor staff and that it was taken in1922.   The car seems to have had a chequered life, next surfacing in a full page advert in Motorsport in 1931. Nic Portway has a picture of the car taken from this advert in his book and it shows that the car had been “updated” by the addition of well based rims and balloon tyres in place of the original high pressure items and a “speedbird” mascot, making the car look like a 20-60, or dare one say, a Hurlingham. It’s probably best not to go into why the seller felt he had a better chance of selling a Hurlingham look-alike in 1931 than a pukka coach built 30-98! Nic Portway has spent some time trying to understand this car because at the time of this sale it was chassis number OE222, registration number ER3917. These numbers were originally assigned to a Velox bodied car and it appears that the dealer had both cars in stock, but that the “special” had an engine problem. He transferred the unit, realised the numbers now didn’t match so swapped the chassis plates and then, realising he still had a problem, switched registration numbers as well! This is an interesting reflection on the ethics of the motor trade and demonstrates why documents from the past are not always gospel. Ironically, the “special” does not seem to have survived the War, whereas the donor Velox is alive and well on the South Coast, now reunited with its OE222 chassis plate which Nic Portway noticed on a colleague’s mantelpiece. This information is now in the hands of Ron Munden who is compiling a synopsis of his grandfather’s life. Harry was made redundant by Grosvenors in 1932, probably as a consequence of Vauxhall moving towards in-house bodies on the higher volume Cadet and A-Type models. Coach built bodies would still be a part of the Vauxhall product offer up to the outbreak of the Second World War, but the halcyon days of bespoke bodywork was over. Harry continued in the carriage business and finally retired in 1939 when he was 69. But now he can be given his place in Vauxhall history as the man who painted the 1925 Grosvenor boat-bodied special 30-98, or did he? By way of a tailpiece, an enhanced version of the original picture of the car (it was only 63x88mm) was obtained by Ron Munden at Nic Portway’s request. Ron noted to his embarrassment that the man standing next to the car had neither the build nor the age to be his grandfather! We now assume it was Harry was took the picture but how much work he did on the car we will never know. The picture also appears to show that the rear deck planking comprised raised timber strakes whereas the bonnet and scuttle look flat and shiny. Was Harry and his colleague’s work so good it fooled the Autocar all those years ago? © Ian Coomber 2006