Brooklands sewage

Sir

Your obituary of Kaye Don and vintage car articles in Motor Sportof October have reminded me of some of my experiences of Brooklands about that time.

It was in 1926 when as a newly qualified engineer I went as Assistant Surveyor to the Weybridge Urban District Council. The council’s sewage farm was in and on the fringe of the Brooklands track and it was not surprising that much supervision became necessary, particularly on race days.

During my first visit to the works the Farm Foreman showed me some telescoped corrugated iron boundary fencing which, he iold me, had been hit by Count Zborowski in Chitty Bang Bang in a fatal crash on the· railway straight.

Kaye Don, Mrs. Wisdom, John Cobb and others were often to be seen in practice and one skid mark left by the lady when she was pushed up the banking finished three inches from the top. One racing motorcyclist was less lucky and went straight on over the top, taking part of a fir tree_ with him and finishing in one of the sewage tanks. We met him walking back, little the worse for his jump apart from an even higher smell. [Shades of “Those Magnificent Men …. ” -Ed.]

Another incident I recall with sadness was a talk with Parry Thomas a few days before he was killed on Pendine Sands. He came to the Council Office with a request for some work to be done and spent some time discussing his coming record attempt.

In conclusion, it was during an evening cycle ride that I overtook and passed Malcolm Campbell’s Bluebird being towed into the Vickers entrance to Brooklands -I may therefore claim to one of the few to have passed Bluebird on a bicycle.

Ottery St. Mary, Devon. A.H. KENNARD