Peter Page has driven his 1960 Austin 101 from his Ramsbury home to St Petersburg and to Istanbul. Later this month he is taking it to London’s Guildhall Yard for the very ancient and traditional guild ceremony known as ‘marking’.
The ‘marking’ is a tradition carried out by the Worshipful Company of Carmen. Originally all vehicles in the City of London had to have a branded number from the Guild of Carmen as a kind of registration.
Peter Page told Marlborough News Online: “Nowadays it’s a bit of pageantry and is a collection of thirty or forty old and new vehicles which are branded with a number and the City of London coat of arms onto an oak plaque, all in the presence of the Lord Mayor in Guildhall Yard.”
Peter Page is a member of a guild – not of Worshipful Company of Carmen, but of the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths and their coat of arms is emblazoned on the side of the van he has owned for ten years. He is also a Freeman of the City of London.
He works in Ramsbury as a ‘Designer/Goldsmith’ which means he designs and makes gold jewellery on commission.
The Austin 101 van was first made in 1947. Peter Page’s treasured van came off the BMC production line in 1960.
It was one of the last made by BMC and is a fine relic of Britain’s great if sadly declined industrial history: BMC was the British Motor Corporation formed in 1952 by the agreed merger of Morris and Austin. It later morphed into British Leyland and disappeared finally in 1986.
The Austin 101 has a 1622 cc overhead valve, four cylinder engine. For many years the Post Office used the Morris J version of the design and Peter Page’s van started life as a work-horse for the East Midlands Electricity Board.
In 2007 Peter and his wife Louise drove the van across Scandinavia to St Petersburg. This trip and the one that followed raised funds for the Prospect Hospice.
In 2010 – to celebrate the van’s 50th birthday – they drove it across Europe to Istanbul. The birthday celebration came in Venice where the van was put onto a barge and taken in appropriately grand style down the Grand Canal.
On hand was Marlborough’s then mayor, Councillor Nick Fogg who made a presentation to the Mayor of Venice at the Rialto.
This year’s ‘marking’ ceremony is at Guildhall Yard on Wednesday, July 16 at 10.45 am – see below for the official notice. Three days later Peter Page’s Austin 101 will be on show again – this time in its home village of Ramsbury at the Crown and Anchor’s classic car festival.
The Crown and Anchor’s classic car festival, BBQ and beer festival is on Saturday, July 19, 08.00am to 23.00pm.
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