The sun is shining - we're going driving

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Readers who enjoy rock music might share my view - or not - that one of the single greatest albums ever recorded is the Kinks' Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) from 1969. The album is a biography of the fictional Arthur, a working-class man, from his birth in the latter days of Queen Victoria's reign to his pipe-and-slippers days in the 1960s, and all the joys and struggles experienced along the way. It's a warm, witty, nuanced and affectionate portrait of the thousands of Arthurs who muddled their way through the 20th century but, to get to the point, it contains one song to interest us all. Drivin' is an ode to the motor-car and the simple joy of the open road as a means of escape from a gritty urban life to an Arcadian world of quiet pastures and picnics on the village green.

We mention it because these pictures are exactly what Ray Davies had in mind when he penned it. Admittedly, the song was obviously set in the 1930s, when Austin Rubys, Ford Model Ys and Hillman Minxes made motoring much more accessible than it had ever been before, but that is only a detail. In these pictures, the sense of freedom and escapism is precisely the same as that extolled in the song.

The central figures appear to be the family in the early 1920s Calthorpe 10.4hp tourer, who are seen in the main picture on 'a favourite run' to Keston Ponds. Their friends are obviously motorists, too, as they've gathered for a picnic at Leaves Green with some other interesting vehicles - a BSA motorcycle and sidecar and a large Edwardian tourer, the identity of which is not certain. The last picture was snapped while driving through Keston, and a very late nickel-radiator Model T Ford has a starring rôle.

Keston and Leaves Green, by the way, are villages in Kent, not far from London, which narrowly escaped being swallowed up by what Clough Williams Ellis termed 'the octopus' of urban growth. It's very likely that our motoring friends were residents of some of the new houses being built in Bromley, the nearest major town and itself a victim of the octopus's tentacles. We hope they enjoyed their sandwiches and salads and lemonade, and remembered to take all their rubbish home with them...

Words: Zack Stiling; photographs: Stiling Collection
 

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