The county of Hampshire takes responsibility for its museums seriously. Its museum service owns and manages 18 museums and sites of historic interest including the unique ‘open air museum under cover’ - the Milestones Museum at Basingstoke.
And the latest restoration gem to be completed by staff and volunteers is of local importance - a Thornycroft A1 tanker built at the firm’s former Basingstoke works.
Eric Clarke is a display technician at the museum services’ headquarters at Chilcomb House, Winchester. It was his friend - John Paul - who donated the tank to the museum, which had previously been used by a farmer to store tractor fuel. To discover a largely intact tank was very unusual as they were often destroyed following their removal from a vehicle, to prevent an explosion occurring from the build-up of fumes.

Thornycroft A1 Petrol Tanker

The museum already had a stock of engine parts and a gearbox of the correct type in their store at Chilcomb House, all of which had been collected from different sources over the years. With a tanker body and engine parts there would seem to be a real possibility of eventually returning a complete A1 tanker to the road, a particularly exciting project for the museum.
Research into the early Thornycroft ledgers revealed that the Shell Petrol Co. had bought six of the A1 type vehicles during 1925 and 1926 and these would probably have been delivered without a cab or body. This would allow the customer the freedom to have their own cabs built to whatever design they felt appropriate.

A search for a suitable chassis began and in 1997 a farmer in Maidenhead, Berkshire, advertised for sale a farm trailer made from a lorry chassis. On inspection this proved to be an early A1 chassis of the correct type and it still had its original axles and the original spare wheel. The museum duly added this valuable find to their ever-growing collection of ‘bits and pieces.’
In 2000, work began on the chassis,
which was completely stripped down and grit-blasted back to bare metal. Some parts of the front axle were badly worn and the rear brakes were not the correct size, being too wide for this type of vehicle.
Once again the museum was lucky enough to find some parts in Bath which were of the correct pattern and these were cleaned, restored and fitted in place. But one vital component was still missing. The steering box. Although it would have been possible for the museum to fabricate a new one, this would have been a very complicated and expensive piece of engineering and it would have been difficult to justify the expense.
Fortunately Mike Doherty came to the rescue with an amazing discovery on the Isle of Man. Mike works in the film industry on set construction and while on location on the island the museum asked him to investigate reports of a sighting of an old bus chassis. Mike found the chassis, which did prove to be from a Thornycroft, languishing in the back garden of a lady whose husband had died without completing a planned restoration. She was only too pleased to see it removed from her flower beds! The museum arranged to transport it back to Hampshire where several parts, including that vital steering box, proved to be in excellent condition.

Archive photographs such as this provided much useful information.

Read the NEXT article >>