John Hobbs went to Combe Martin on the North Devon coast to see the restoration of a Morris Commercial LC3 delivery lorry that has a quite remarkable history.

It’s easy to over-use the word ‘remarkable’, but in the case of this delightful light commercial vehicle it is totally appropriate, as I soon discovered when I met Paul Wyborn. The vehicle has been owned within the Wyborn family throughout its life. NTT 197 was bought new in 1951 for use in the family market garden business by Paul’s grandfather Harry, who was one of twelve brothers and sisters. The vehicle was delivered to Combe Martin as a chassis/cab and the family chose to have a wooden drop-sided butt built so that it could also be used on the land to load their produce, which then included such specialities as strawberries and raspberries, for delivery to their stalls in the Barnstaple Pannier Market and to other North Devon retailers. In the early days, the lorry’s principal driver was Harry’s brother-in-law George Harding.

In this 1978 photograph, the Wyborn Bros’ LC3 is seen outside the Pannier Market in Barnstaple, with Walter Wyborn passing its rear. Photo: Norman Tarling.

Harry Wyborn’s son Walter, Paul’s father, bought the Harding’s farm which was where the LC3 was garaged and with the sale went the lorry. Walter continued to use it to transport his own produce to the market in Barnstaple and pick up produce from wholesalers. In 1985 Paul and his older brother Bruce joined their father in the business and Paul recalls that he had about six months of use out of the lorry before the head gasket blew. The time had come to replace it, and it was put away in its shed and the doors remained closed on it until the year 2000. Its replacement was a brand new transit van.
In 2000 Paul and his wife obtained planning permission to build a house, but one of the conditions was that the shed occupied by the lorry had to be knocked down to improve the access to their home and to that of the market garden generally. The lorry, with brakes seized, was towed out of the shed on a bar by a 4WD tractor and then hauled across the valley astride which Combe Martin sits, to alternative accommodation. Paul’s ambition had always been to restore it because its history had been so much a part of his family for 50 years, and with his house almost completed, the opportunity to do so, generated by the lorry’s enforced relocation, had arrived, or so he thought!

Made it! The wedding carriage awaits. Photo: Paul Wyborn.

Working in a garage which did little more than house the lorry, Paul set about dismantling it to assess what might be involved. In simple terms it had to be taken to pieces – almost totally. It was then that he realised that the work on the lorry would have to be abandoned for the time being, because the house and the business were claiming all of his time. So the LC3, left as it was, deteriorated still further, because the water that had entered the old garage through the roof and soaked the body began to dry out, whilst rust was forming on the metalwork at an alarming rate.

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