Trapped in a conservatory: the remarkable rescue of an émigré Austin

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We concluded a recent article showing a nice photograph of an Austin Seven with the following words: “We thought we’d try to see if the registration ‘AX-14-02’ could still be legitimate today and were pleasantly surprised to find that the Seven is still pottering along on Dutch roads today, or at least allowed to do so.”

Well, the car’s current owner Frank Berkelmans was lightning fast to get in touch with us. He wrote: “For your information, the Austin Seven AX-14-07 is now in my possession. The car has been completely and extensively restored in recent years. I also had the pleasure of meeting former owner Lady Isa Melvill van Carnbee in her last year of life. She passed away on December 15th, 2020, in the city of the Hague. It was a very nice meeting with lots of stories and photos shared and I kept in touch with her until her death.”

Frank was kind enough to send over a recent copy of the magazine of the Dutch Pre-War Austin Seven Owners' Club, which featured an extensive article with quotes from a few people involved with the Seven. When Frank bought it as a project in 2019, he soon learned that the car, with its fabric body, had come to the Netherlands 60 years earlier in 1959, when the Melvill van Carnbees migrated to the Low Countries. There it was lovingly kept by Lady Isa, who named it Tiggy (and who is believed to be the lady in the old photograph). She reputedly stopped driving it when a boy walked up to her after she’d parked it and asked: “Madame, have you made this little car all by yourself?” It was left to languish in their conservatory after that, together with the Seven of her sister Mary!

Rob Wagenmaker was the man who rescued both cars from there in the 1980s. He said: “They could not be moved out of the conservatory as the passage was way too narrow. I have no idea how they got there and I don’t think it ever was the idea to get them out again as they had become a kind of furniture.”

Eventually, they made their way out disassembled, and Mary’s car found its way back to Britain after that, but it took until 2008 for the restoration of Frank’s car to start. That was a daring task, too, as we understand. Former owner Herman van der Heiden reported: “I was advised to buy this heap of wood and iron to use parts of it for the restoration of my own Chummy project, but I soon found out that just about everything on this fabric saloon was completely worn, too.” Van der Heiden nevertheless started, only to have the job finished off by Frank.

He certainly seems to have carried out the job very well, as far as we can see. Thank you for contacting us, Frank!

Words: Jeroen Booij; pictures: Frank Berkelmans
 

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