So long Stondon

Think of car museums in Britain and what comes to mind will probably be the large national collections such as Beaulieu, Gaydon and Coventry, but the country is also home to a variety of fascinating and lesser-known privately-owned museums. Sadly, this number is about to be reduced as tomorrow (Easter Monday) is the final day of opening for the Stondon Motor Museum before it closes for good and the collection goes to auction. It was a remarkable place, one man's personal passion taken to the extreme, and claimed to be the largest private museum in the country with over 400 exhibits. Many car enthusiasts have probably never heard of it though, and therein no doubt lies one of the main reasons for its demise. Read on for my own tribute to this extraordinary museum.

This rusty old Lada seems to sum up the unique charm of Stondon.

A former garden centre in the middle of a Bedfordshire village may not sound like the most promising venue for a car museum, but Lower Stondon, just outside Henlow, was the location for this unlikely attraction. The man behind the museum was entrepreneur John Saunders, who had made his fortune from greenhouses and spent it on collecting cars. Having reached around forty vehicles he felt it was a shame his collection couldn't be seen by the public, and so in 1994 part of his Stondon garden centre opened as a motor museum. For some years the two businesses ran side by side but as the collection grew it ultimately took over the entire site. John Saunders passed away in 2013 and his family have tried to keep the museum going, but have sadly decided to call it a day as the site needs a major investment and they just don't have the money, having been turned down for various grants.

What was it like?

'Eccentric' is probably the most suitable word to describe the museum and its contents, and it was
a far cry from the professionalism of Gaydon, but had its own unique homespun charm. While the major museums are governed by collection policies and every potential addition is thoroughly assessed for suitability, John Saunders seemed to buy whatever took his fancy and accept any donations that were made, creating an extremely diverse and eclectic collection in which you never knew what you would see next. It is also said that if a visitor turned up in an interesting car he wasn't averse to making an offer to buy it for the museum!

I can see why some visitors left negative reviews online as it was not what you would expect from a traditional car museum - if you wanted to see rows of shiny immaculately-restored exotica this was not the place for you, being more of a shed full of old cars. The first group of exhibits nearest the entrance seemed to be fairly standard museum fodder, pre- and early post-war cars such as Austins and Morrises, but the bulk of the collection consisted of family cars from the sixties to the nineties, the newest being a 2002 Rover 25. There were no supercars or vintage luxury cars and nothing that could be thought of as worth a fortune, a Ford Fairlane Skyliner probably being the most valuable. From looking at photos taken in earlier years it would seem that those members of the collection with the highest resale values had already been sold to raise much-needed funds for the museum's upkeep, some in a couple of large auctions.

Probably the most valuable car in the collection. It hasn't been on the road for 25 years though.

The buildings themselves were a little ramshackle and nowhere near the standard of the purpose-built facilities elsewhere, and several had canvas roofs that betrayed their previous life as a garden centre. Many of them leaked badly and had obviously done so for a while as there were large puddles forming on some of the exhibits and the printed information cards had been rendered unreadable by water damage. Visiting on a wet and windy day didn't help matters with the rain pouring in and the wind howling, and at one point a large set of doors actually blew wide open!

A very wet Lagonda. Not good for a car with notoriously unreliable electronics.

By the time of my visit on the penultimate weekend, the site looked very untidy and neglected with random junk spread around the place, both general detritus and remnants from the garden centre such as cold frames and uPVC building panels. The museum's one-time centrepiece, a full-size replica of Captain Cook's HM Bark Endeavour, was long gone, dismantled a couple of years ago after being deemed unsafe and then destroyed by fire, leaving a desolate looking concrete plinth surrounded by dirty water and empty apart from a few bits of burnt wood. The gift shop, long known for the odd collection of items it sold, had obviously had its stocks run down in preparation for the closure and many of its shelves were empty and covered in dust, and the whole place gave the impression of being in terminal decline and just marking time until the inevitable end. A very sad sight as in its heyday it would have been great but a truly vast investment would be needed to return to those days.

John Saunders's Rolls-Royce surrounded by stuff from the garden centre. An incongruous combination.

 

What was in the collection?

John Saunders's method of building up a large collection seems to have taken no account of condition or desirability, buying cheap and unloved family cars that weren't (and in many cases still aren't) considered mainstream classics, although they greatly interest me and I would much rather see Ladas and Yugos than a row of shiny Ferraris. Many appeared to have spent considerable time off the road even before joining the museum, so they were probably bought cheaply from garage clearances and the like and otherwise might have gone for scrap. There was a lot of rare and very obscure, although not particularly valuable, stuff such as a Peugeot 104, a Volkswagen Derby and an FSO 125P, and the casual visitor may have had difficulty identifying several of the exhibits as very few had information cards and those that did were often either water damaged or placed so far behind the guide ropes they were unreadable.

In what other museum would you find a Ford Probe?

...or a Fiat Cinquecento?

Although they were occasionally moved around when displays were rearranged, many of the cars had not been on the road for a very long time and some had spent far longer parked up than they did in use, for instance the Talbot Alpine that was last taxed at just ten years old and spent the next twenty out of use. Their condition is generally rather poor and realistically some are worth little more than scrap value as parts donors and are unlikely ever to return to the road. The museum appeared to have only a small workshop where basic maintenance could be carried out on a couple of vehicles at a time, but nowhere to undertake major restorations, and the emphasis was very much on preserving the vehicles in as-acquired condition as static exhibits - only one of over a hundred photographed had valid tax and MoT. 

How did a fire engine from New Jersey end up in rural Bedfordshire?

It wasn't just cars though - the largest hall contained commercials including various military vehicles, a couple of buses and some fire appliances, and there were many motorcycles and pedal cycles scattered around the museum. Interspersed with the vehicles were some rather bizarre exhibits, such as a prop from Doctor Who, a gypsy caravan and various pieces of garage equipment, all adding to the place's uniqueness. It seems that attempts had been made to group exhibits by theme but due to the sheer number this idea was soon abandoned and they were simply squeezed in wherever a space could be found. Although a little cramped in places and not the best for photography, the Stondon approach at least ensured everything was on public display, whereas most other museums have a reserve collection in private storage, and certainly Gaydon has some interesting assets that I have never seen, which seems a shame.

The famous Cold War Soviet missile carrier that John Saunders decided to buy when it was decommissioned.

Why is it closing and what happens now?

News of the closure brought many comments from enthusiasts that they had never heard of the place and wished they knew about it before, which highlights the problem. The reason for closing is given as insufficient visitor numbers, but so many potential visitors were simply unaware of its existence and the museum never made much effort to promote itself. Although I have known of it for several years, I can't remember where I found out about it and I have never seen any advertising in the classic car press. Even when in the village it was easy to miss, being set back from the road and accessed through a narrow gap in the hedge with only a small sign at the entrance. Ironically, since the closure was announced, the place has been busier than ever as people have been alerted to its existence and take their last chance to visit, but it's too late now to make a difference.

From my own impressions of the museum, the vast majority of the funds seem to have been spent on buying exhibits, with very little kept for publicity or maintenance, and as a commercial venture it didn't make much business sense, somewhat odd given John Saunders's previous success as an entrepreneur. Even in its dying days with the buildings falling apart and many assets sold off, the collection continued to change and new exhibits arrived, some of which have only been there a matter of months - an odd use of precious resources under the circumstances but it seems to fit with the place's eccentric nature.

My dad contemplates the strangeness of it all. An old ambulance, a random pot plant and some conservatory panels.

Following the final closure, the vast majority of the collection will be auctioned in a no-reserve sale by Brightwells Auctioneers, the motorcycles on 29th April followed by the cars and commercials on 10th June. Surprisingly, given the size of the collection and the fact that many have not left the museum for decades, the auctions are not being held on site but at Brightwells' premises in Leominster - transporting that lot will be an interesting exercise in itself! The outcome of the sale will be interesting as there are a handful of gems that may be fought over, such as the unique Rover Scout concept, but much of the collection, although rare, is not worth a great deal and is in poor condition - several exhibits showed much visible rot and filler, along with flat tyres and the usual problems of recommissioning cars that have been unused for long periods.


I predict a few former exhibits being offered on eBay in the near future and the rougher examples meeting their maker, but hopefully at least some will find good homes. As for the site, it seems inevitable that it will end up bulldozed and turned into yet another housing estate, such is the way of progress these days. It is a real shame the museum is closing and John Saunders's collection is being split up, but realistically it had got to a state where it just wasn't viable to continue. The place will be missed, but at least I was able to pay a visit before it disappeared forever.

If you want to see more of the collection, my full album of over a hundred photos from Stondon can be found on my Flickr site.

The Rover Scout prototype was to many the star of the collection. Read more about it on AROnline.