Drive down memory lane. The cars that shaped our lives.

We tour the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu to uncover why cars carry such emotional weight and how volunteering turns that passion into purpose. From early EVs to modern hybrids, we look at how the collection stays relevant while volunteers keep heritage alive.

• origins of Beaulieu from five cars to national trust
• cars as freedom, memory and status across a lifetime
• evolving relevance from 1950s classics to 1990s icons
• EV and hybrid milestones added to the collection
• volunteers enabling tours, cataloguing and restoration
• finding friends, structure and joy after retirement
• research into Racing Pride and women in motor sport
• reference library digitising brochures for open access
• plans for redevelopment and heritage skills training

Please don't forget to like, follow, or subscribe. That way you'll never miss an episode

You can also find more details of the Motor Museum on the link below

https://nationalmotormuseum.org.uk/

Transcript

Welcome And Today’s Focus: Cars

Derm Tanner 0:00

Hello, welcome to another episode of Grey Matters More, the Antidote to the Retirement Blues. Suddenly got rather more time on your hands than you're used to. Not sure how you're going to feel those days effectively. Perhaps you're missing some social interaction. Well, maybe this podcast can help. We spent months talking to charities, companies, and sports clubs who are all after volunteers. I'm Derm Tanner,

Roy Player 0:23

and I'm Roy Player.

Derm Tanner 0:25

And in this episode, it's cars.

Roy Player 0:29

Yeah, this is my one. Yeah, this is Derm. I mean, you know, I mean, I literally, well, you see my car. I mean, one of them's parked outside the studio here, and it's it's a dog mobile, really. That's what it's for and you know, I get it and get the keys, get in the car and drive around. I'm sorry. I, I hold my hands up and go, I know nothing about cars. So I'm looking forward to listening to this episode with you, taking me round this museum because I want to become interested. And the whole point of this is to learn about new things.

Arriving At Beaulieu’s National Motor Museum

Derm Tanner 1:00

So we are at the National Motor Museum in Beaulieu, down in Hampshire, 600 mile round trip, by the way, but hey, that's not a problem. It began as a private collection of Lord Montague in 1952. There are only five cars then. Go forward 70 years, and now the National Motor Museum has 250 cars, nearly two million items of motoring memorabilia, which is mind-boggling, and they do all sorts of exhibitions like the James Bond cars, I wish I'd seen that, the top gear cars and all of that sort of stuff. I love cars. So it was obvious that I was going to nab this one. I spoke to a number of volunteers who, who love cars, some of whom actually don't know a lot about cars, which I thought was really interesting. But first up, we'll hear from the head honcho.

John Merden 1:43

So I'm John Merden, I'm Chief Executive of the National Motor Museum Trust.

Derm Tanner 1:47

And what does that entail, John?

John Merden 1:49

I guess I'm leading the day-to-day operations of the trust, particularly in sort of you know our strategic direction fundraising and how we develop the museum, how we take it forward, keep it relevant to modern audiences and the changing interests that there are in motoring, and looking after the the staff and the volunteers on a sort of overall basis.

Museum Origins And Mission With The CEO

Derm Tanner 2:14

Because it started, if I'm right in saying in 1952, it wasn't the museum then, it was a private collection with five cars, and the museum then started 20 years after that in 72, is that right?

John Merden 2:26

Yeah, that's, that's absolutely, absolutely right. So, as you say, the the museum itself started with the Montague Motor Museum here, which began in the entrance hall at Bewley Palace House in 1952, at a time when Edward Lord Montague was opening up his property to the public for the first time, one of the first generation of the the landed aristocracy to open up their house to the public, and that was also linked to increased mobility for people. People had cars, they had more leisure time in that part of the 1950s. So the day out in your new car was an important factor of the changing society and the changing use of leisure time, and so Edward established a motor museum, caught that wave, and then, as you say, in in 1970, decided that the collection, which by that time was about 250 cars, was so important that he wanted to secure its legacy for the future by giving it to the nation and created the National Motor Museum Trust as a charity to run and maintain the collection.

Derm Tanner 3:34

Bless him for that.

John Merden 3:36

Well it's an amazingly generous thing to do when you when you think about it, yeah, and and we carry on that spirit today.

Derm Tanner 3:43

But it's much more than just cars and motorbikes, you've got th more millions of artifacts, haven't you?

John Merden 3:49

Yeah, so we've got 285 vehicles, motorbikes and cars, and they're the most they're the objects that most people know about, and they're the ones that when people come and visit the museum, they're the ones that people see and connect with. We have a research collection and a supporting collection that's 1.9 million objects in in total, and that's all facets of m the history of motoring on Britain's roads, and internationally, with some spattering of motorsport thrown in as well, and that includes automobilia and petroleana, it's film and video, it's costume and textiles, and a really internationally significant photography collection, plus what is the largest motoring library in Europe.

Derm Tanner 4:35

Now I bet you're proud of that.

John Merden 4:36

I'm very proud of that. I think you know the the the value of that for a research resource is is phenomenal, and it puts us in that top rank globally of car museums and automotive museums, and I'm incredibly proud of that. As well as the the vehicles in the collection, which are all looked after by our team of staff and volunteers.

Derm Tanner 4:57

Do you have to be a lover of cars to have your job?

John Merden 5:03

I think it really helps. I, I, I was an academic in my earlier life, an economic historian. So I think fundamentally for any chief executive, knowing how numbers work is is the thing more than anything else. I think the question I get asked more than anything else is I'd like to buy or do this, can we afford it? Can we pay for it? So that's the fundamental challenge. The fact I love cars as well, I think, is a is a happy coincidence. It was in terms of my own career, when I first started working in museums, it was in Liverpool about 20 years ago. I had a job chat at the end of my first week, and they asked me if I could work at any museum in the world, where would I like to work? and I, I said the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu then. So it was 20 years to work towards achieving that ambition.

Derm Tanner 5:56

I hope you reminded them that in the interview when you came for the job.

John Merden 6:00

I, I did, I did say that this is something I'd want, you know. Why do you want this job? Let me tell you a story. But yeah, so I, do I do love cars, and I think that that adds what I can bring to the team in terms of content and engagement with people who are vehicle enthusiasts themselves. I think they probably quite rightly expect the chief executive of the National Motor Museum to be an enthusiast like they are.

Why Cars Matter: Emotion, Status, Freedom

Derm Tanner 6:30

I know not everybody loves cars, but for a huge number of us, the cars are an emotional tie. Why is that? Why do we love cars?

John Merden 6:42

I think they're so in the 20th century they've become absolutely mobility and the mobility that cars provide and the freedom that they provide, or the sense of freedom that they provide, has become really central to our lives, you know, from from bringing your children home from hospital when they were born, the days out to actually your final journey in a hearse, the car touches on our lives every day and every all sorts of ways, and it's changed so much about our society in the over the last 150 years, how we work, how we live, how we spend our leisure time, how we you know see our families, and that gives it a really large emotional weight in our lives, I think, and that's why we connect with it, it's why we have a nostalgia for it, why we think fondly about the cars our parents had, because it makes us think of them and the people. So it's, it is about cars and bikes, but it's about people and the connections that the motor car and the motorbike has brought about with with our friends and family and the people we love and the people we know.

Derm Tanner 7:52

Yeah, I, I think it's a really interesting what you say there, because also they are status symbols, aren't they? So we, we aspire to a car. Yes, we need a car, and I also think that the probably for me the greatest skill I have is I can drive a car.

John Merden 8:06

Yeah, I'd probably say the same actually. It's the most complicated thing I ever learned, and there's there is satisfaction, isn't there, of doing it well. I think there's a there's a personal sense of satisfaction, and they do say a lot about you as an individual, I think. The car, as you say, it's a status symbol, and and and and that changes, I think, as you you age and as your life you go through your life, doesn't it? When you are 17, anything with wheels is that status, it can be the most clapped out old banger, but if it's yours and you can say it's yours, that's it's got a stripe down the side of the loob being okay. Exactly, and it might have only cost you 200 quid, but it's yours, and it represents you becoming an adult, perhaps, or you having your own freedom. And then, as you say, as life goes on, the the status it represents. There's a very there was a very interesting programme, I mean it must be 30, 40 years old, and you might remember it, that was on the BBC about what the status of company cars meant to these different people, and they interviewed these people about what it meant to them. It was really sort of interesting psychoanalysis of of how they saw themselves in the world and how they saw think think other people saw them.

Derm Tanner 9:24

Yeah, for a very short time before I was in the BBC. I, I worked for a corporation and my company car, because I was a sales rep, was a Talbot Horizon. Yeah, it was an old Talbot Horizon. It wasn't it wasn't the greatest car in the world, but, but nevertheless, it was mine for a while, and I didn't have to pay for it, and, and I felt that I'd kind of arrived, you know. It was it was it was interesting, and now we're very different. But just looking, you know, I'm gonna come on to our volunteers in a moment. Surely you've already sent that a little bit there about you have to keep up with, with what's going on, and you've always got things happening here, you've always got simply exhibitions, you've had top gear, you know, something things that people go, Well, I have James Bond, you know, all of that. So you must always be looking for the next thing to get them in.

Staying Relevant: Nostalgia To New Tech

John Merden 10:13

Yeah, we are always looking for something different, something new. But being relevant is is the thing that you know I, I started loving I fell in love with motor cars when I was when I was 11, so it would be 19, the late 1980s, and of course then I fell in love with classics that were 30 years old. So that was cars from the 50s, and I still love cars from the 50s now, they're still my favourite era. But for young people now, the cars to them that are 30 years old are the cars like the Talbot Horizon that we remember XR2s. It is, it's XR2s, it's Escort Mexico's. Those are the things, and so our collection has to evolve to reflect that changing people's passions and their nostalgia and the things that connect with them. That's not to say that people aren't still interested in the veteran and the vintage cars that we have in our collection. But for us, we see it that it's important to start people off with something that they know they love, they know they're interested in, and then take them on a journey back to all sorts of things that they possibly don't know about yet, but will love and be interested in once we've taken them on that that journey. So it's that initial capture into the museum that's, that's important. That what, what do people connect with? and I unlike a lot of museums, I think that changes more rapidly in automotive museums than say an art museum or a science museum, because every year there's a new raft of motor cars and motorcycles that are launched onto the market and it changes so so constantly.

EVs, Hybrids, And Collecting The Future

Derm Tanner 11:53

And indeed, while we're on this subject, I mean technology, because now we're in the era of the EV.

John Merden 11:59

Yeah, technology is the is absolutely right, and that people's interest in that is changing. And one of the vehicles that we've got in our collection is it's the Columbia Electric from I think it's 1904. So one of our jobs there is to say, well, actually, you might be apprehensive about an EV, but there is nothing new about this as an idea, and therefore the technology is evolving, and we have to reflect that in the collection, and that's why we've got you know increasing began to collect things like EVs in some forms of Teslas. We've recently collected a Honda Insight, which was the first generation hybrid onto market a couple of weeks ahead of the Toyota Prius. People don't remember the insight because everybody went and bought the the Prius, but the first one that was sold was the Insight. So we we were offered one of those, and actually, that's probably an important thing to collect because it marks a moment in the evolution of motoring.

Derm Tanner 12:56

So coming on to volunteers, how important are they to the museum?

John Merden 13:02

We couldn't be open without volunteers, quite frankly, in terms of looking after the collection, engaging with the public, the work we do in our workshop. Volunteers play a vital role in all sorts of different jobs from cataloguing through to being attend you know, attendants, talking to people, supporting the delivery of activities for school groups and working in the workshop on the tools ,repairing and and restoring historic vehicles.

Volunteers: The Engine Of The Museum

Derm Tanner 13:31

Well, you'll be delighted to know that the the volunteers, I've spoken to five of them today, not only do they love coming here, but they feel supported and they feel, you know, not treasured, but you know, they feel as though they have a worth.

John Merden 13:47

Yeah, and they absolutely do, and I think being in this place helps with that too. I like to think a lot of what you've just said is because we do a good job as professionals and museum professionals, but but Bewley feels quite special as well as a place, and I think that all works together to create a really healthy environment for volunteers to come into and where they can flourish.

Derm Tanner 14:09

I know you've got a waiting list. If I didn't live 250 miles away, I'd be knocking your door down to try and help here because I, I mean I, I love cars and always have done. And like you, I started you know, we all had the toy cars, and my mother, bless her, loved cars as well. So you know, we had Alpha Mayer (Maier) and Lancia's and all sorts of things,

John Merden 14:30

proper cars,

Derm Tanner 14:31

which she drove you know recklessly, rather, and m y most of the time I was in the passenger seat with my eyes shut, but I now appreciate what a good driver she was at the time. They say, Wow, this is exciting. But so yeah, cars are important to us. Looking, looking ahead, where, where will the car be in in you know 20 years' time, 30 years' time, and where will the museum be in that?

John Merden 14:56

Well, where the car will be, I can't see anything replacing our desire for personal mobility. I think if I boil it down to that, now what form that personal mobility is delivered through, I think remains probably in the imagination of the designers and the technologists. It could it certainly won't be an internal combustion engine car, I do know that and I'm as a lover of cars, I'm not an EV sceptic. I'm sort of, you know, enjoyed everyone I have driven, but I think it'll still play an important role in our, our life and our society. Where the museum will be is still trying to reflect people's interests, but we're at the start of a major redevelopment process, and you mentioned there about we've got a waiting list. So part of that project is to open up the stores and create additional opportunities for volunteering here at the National Motor Museum in a wider range of roles than we have at present, and that's important to us. Another outcome from that project is that we hope well we will be working with the Heritage Skills Academy to create a training centre here for young people to learn heritage skills for the conservation and preservation of not only motor vehicles but marine heritage and possibly even working with some of our friends at the Watercress Line Railway Heritage. So we've got some ideas there, and volunteers will play a part in helping us deliver that, given that most volunteers who've had a successful career have got a whole raft of transferable skills that young people can can benefit from.

Derm Tanner 16:44

I would imagine that is like that's fantastic news for people who may be listening now thinking I knew there was a waiting list there or I'm here, but that if things are opening up, then maybe I can I, I can you know help out. What happens when someone puts their hands up and wants to come and get involved here?

John Merden 17:04

So the first point of contact will be will be that John is the volunteer coordinator, and so you you'll John will have a chat with you, find out what your interests are, and then there are certain areas where we we've got like immediate openings, so particularly on the visitor services side, because just we have 300,000 visitors a year, so you can never have enough people who are interacting with the public, telling people about vehicles. So depend if that's your what you're interested in doing, then pretty much you know, do not pass go, go straight to, to getting on the, on the museum shop floor. If it's more of a curatorial interest or a conservation and restoration, then that's where the waiting lists come. So and it tends to be that none of our volunteers are pigeonholed into oh well they just do this or they just do that. People are free to find what inspires them most and, and, and develop their volunteering careers sort of organically while they're here.

Derm Tanner 18:08

So finally, John, is this the dream job for you?

John Merden 18:11

Yes, that is all. Yes, it is. Yeah, I, I, I do I I love, I love working here and working with the people here and the collection here is is yeah, it's an amazing opportunity, a great experience every single day.

Kevin On People, Stories, And Belonging

Kevin 18:29

My name is Kevin, I'm a volunteer at the National Motor Museum here at Beaulieu, and I currently work in the museum as a kind of front of house volunteer where I engage with visitors, do tours occasionally, just chat with visitors as they enjoy their day here at Beaulieu.

Derm Tanner 18:47

You say currently, so you've probably done all sorts of other things as well. How long have you been here, Kevin?

Kevin 18:52

Well I've actually worked here for about around six years. I did three years as a front of house paid employee when I when I retired from my proper job, if you like. But I liked it so much I didn't want to carry on working because I was by then over retirement age, but I did want to work it Beaulieu, really, and the National Motor Museum fitted the bill exactly. I decided then to volunteer, so I, I just do one day a week now, which fits in with my retirement life. I enjoy spending time with my wife obviously and going out to places, but I also love it here because I love people, I love cars, and I love automobilia, and that sort of really fits the bill, the whole thing, you know.

Derm Tanner 19:34

The key thing that I have learned from talking to a number of volunteers throughout the summer has been you have to like what you're doing.

Kevin 19:43

That's a very good point. I, I couldn't just volunteer any old wear. I'd have to enjoy it. And I live ten minutes away from here, which is a great bonus. it's the people I like. I love hear we we love hearing their stories. We we love telling stories. Occasionally we engage with visitors and we talk inform them about vehicles or about artefacts. But it's their stories that I really enjoy as much as anything, because they want to tell you. People love talking about their experiences and that that really enriches my experience here at Beaulieu because you sort of hear you know the the often phrases, oh it has one of those cars, you know, and then they talk about it and they tell you about their mum and dad and when they were six or whatever, and that's brilliant. I love that and and also of course the other thing about volunteering, the monorails way past, the famous monorails on its way past. You'd have to have a ride on that later. The other thing about volunteering is that I've made so many friends working here, whether it be working or volunteering. I've got we've got a great band of people and that's the thing you miss when you retire its the thing you miss is the banter and the engagement with other people oblivously I've got friends at home and a wife. But you miss the sort of bantering thing. So that's very much what ticks the box in that respect as well.

Derm Tanner 20:59

That's a really, really good point, Kevin, about friendship, because for some people that's why they volunteer to meet people because maybe they've lost their partner. That's very true. And so they they they need to start again.

Kevin 21:10

That is a very good point. Because I have a friend who does exactly that because he did lose his partner and in fact there's a couple of guys who work here for that very reason. They don't want to sit at home watching TV, they don't want to sit at home and vegetate. They come here because they enjoy the experience and they meet people and just enjoy what they do. So cars, you love cars.

Derm Tanner 21:31

I do. Why is it that so many of us love cars? What is it about them that creates that emotional feeling?

Kevin 21:40

Well, I think through the years, cars remind you of a certain era. You know, in my case I I learned to drive from 1972, so my first car was a Ford Anglia, which, you know, are now considered classics, like a lot of the cars we've had are. but I've had numerous cars, and I was lucky enough to have company cars. When I worked, so I've always indulged myself with a classic car, generally a sports car, alongside that, so that I could still sort of experience older cars. But what do you drive at the what classic do you drive at the moment? Well, at the moment I've got a classic mini, a 1959, sorry, 1960 mini, very early. But most of my cars have been things like lotuses, TVRs, sports cars, MGs, Triumphs. But I've only last year I bought a classic mini because I've never had a mini in my life.

Rob Finds Purpose After Retirement

Rob 22:29

Hi, I'm Rob. I'm a volunteer at the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu.

Derm Tanner 22:33

And how long have you been volunteering, Rob?

Rob 22:36

I've only been actually been here four months now, so very new to it. Probably about a year ago I volunteered for this but only started four months ago. I did try another voluntary role with another organisation, but to be honest that didn't suit me. Then this came up and I thought this this is me. I mean I've been here probably since visiting. So the first time I think I was here I was eight years old. So a long time ago. Yeah. Yeah, and I always used to come for the different Simply Car shows each year. So I knew pretty much a lot about it. I mean, the other thing for me was like I'd been retired two years before I started here, and I thought there's gotta be more to life than just sitting watching morning TV and then trying to find something to do.

Derm Tanner 23:34

How difficult was that to find something that that fitted for you?

Rob 23:37

Very actuallSgty. To find something that actually interests you as opposed to finding something that's just filling time. Because to me, if you're gonna volunteer, you've got to have an interest in it. You can't do it if you don't have an interest.

Susan’s Research: Pride And Women In Racing

Derm Tanner 24:03

So outside in the National Motor Museum here at Beaulieu in Hampshire, and the day is it's dry, let's face it, but it's quite warm, and I, I'm amongst the volunteers, and with me is Susan. so how long have you been a volunteer, Susan?

Susan 24:18

So just over a year now, actually, just over a year. So that's quite an you're quite a bit. Quite a newbie yes, compared to some of the guys. Quite a newbie.

Derm Tanner 24:26

So what made you?

Susan 24:28

Before I retired, I knew Sarah Wyatt, and she once gave me a tour of the archives, national the archives, and I thought, gosh, when I retire I'd really like to be here and work and help and she said, absolutely. So yeah, when I did retire, I gave Sarah a call and yeah, ended up volunteering. Yes, absolutely. I think with retirement you do have to. I went part-time initially with my job and then made I joined a choir and I had things lined up, not a lot, but key things during the week. Otherwise it can be a little bit overwhelming because suddenly you've got a lot to have time on your hands.

Derm Tanner 25:09

Exactly and you strike me as a busy person, but were you a busy person when you were working and life was busy?

Susan 25:14

Yes, busy busy person. Yeah, I had to I've got two grown-up daughters now. Yeah, and I worked in Guildford University Library, we always worked in libraries, so it was nice to come here and have a change. I think I could have gone into the library here, but actually I wanted a bit of a change, and working in the collections is really, really good.

Derm Tanner 25:32

Okay, so that's my next question. The collections, tell me more about that.

Susan 25:36

Actually so one of the things I've recently been working on was Racing Pride, which was all about the gay side of things, and I wrote I did research rather for that. So that was very interesting to do and I'm now doing one on women in motor racing, which has come out of the racing pride. So doing research into that, and that's incredibly interesting actually, because women have actually done quite a lot in racing, which is amazing and I had no idea. No idea.

Derm Tanner 26:07

Yeah, I mean there are some pioneers we know of the pioneers, but there are more than are there.

Susan 26:12

Yes, yes, things that like some women who sort of led the way with interior design and made seats comfortable and came up with windscreen wipers and yeah, things like that that are very, you know, key to motoring in cars, but not something you would initially think, well, a woman did that.

Derm Tanner 26:32

Yeah, but could leave it to a bloke, could it be a piece of wood?

Susan 26:34

Absolutely, absolutely. And that was part of the problem, I think. They weren't really very women friendly, and when women decided they'd have a go at racing, you know, they wanted a little bit of comfort, please.

Derm Tanner 26:44

And did does your research show a certain amount of opposition, passive opposition to women in motorcy, sort of moving in what was perhaps perhaps wrongly seen as a male environment?

Speaker 26:55

A very male-dominated area, yes, but I think women slowly you know, the what the work spoke for themselves basically when they sort of came up with like windscreen wipers, then that became absolutely key. So then they would come to the fore but I was given a list actually by Sarah, and I haven't actually been able to find you know all the women that she's given me. So there are some women out there who've done things for racing that don't even exist on the internet.

Derm Tanner 27:25

So back to the most important woman, yourself.

Susan 27:27

Thank you.

Derm Tanner 27:28

How often do you volunteer? How many days a week do you have to do it?

Susan 27:30

I do one day a week actually. I normally do a Wednesday, 10 till four. yeah, yeah, and I think I think I'm right in saying most volunteers do your day.

Derm Tanner 27:40

So thank you for coming on a Thursday.

Susan 27:41

Well, yes, I've come in especially for you.

Speaker 5 27:43

It's very kind of you, it's much appreciated.

Susan 27:45

No, no problem at all. So, what do you get out of it? I just love being here. It is the most wonderful place. At lunchtime, you can just walk through the gardens, go walk through the museums. We're very lucky. it's a beautiful place to work, and although it sounds a bit cliche, we are quite a family really. We sort of look out for each other, particularly the volunteers, I think. So, yeah, just a lovely place to work.

Chris On Brochures, Advertising, And Style

Chris 28:14

I'm Chris, I work in the reference library here at Beaulieu cataloguing sales brochures. Yeah, it sounds quite dry, but actually it's fascinating because the early brochures, the artwork is wonderful, very extravagant in many cases, stuff of the 40s and 50s, and it's really great fun doing it.

Derm Tanner 28:34

And are there certain companies that were more extravagant than others? I mean, I immediately think of the Italians, but yes, very much so.

Chris 28:40

Also the Americans, particularly things like the Cadillac brochures and stuff like that, the extravagant lifestyle they're portraying, again with beautiful artwork, you know, beautiful ladies wearing furs and things like that.

Derm Tanner 28:54

Because cars are status symbols.

Chris 28:56

Absolutely, yeah. as I say, it's a really great job. Spend too much time probably looking at the brochures and cataloguing them. But no, it's good I work with a good bunch of people we have a lot of laughs as well. The earliest brochures I've personally seen are from 1910 and they're very Edwardian type of things, and of course, of course, cars are very expensive, it's not the everyday man. But I'm personally cataloguing from 1946 onwards

Derm Tanner 29:28

post-war

Chris 29:28

post-war.

Derm Tanner 29:29

So the post war baby boom and all of that.

Chris 29:31

Yeah, yeah, very much so, when the cars really took off for people, and also the the whole sort of I don't know, the the you see the differences in style in advertising, whereas the British stuff of the 50s is quite staid, Trilby hats and things like this, and the Americans are much more flamboyant as their cars were in the 1950s. Yanks as usual, big thing, big things and things like that. Oh, yeah, yeah. The British ones seem quite staid, but interesting in their own way, you know.

Derm Tanner 30:02

So, what do you get out of, of being a volunteer then growth?

Chris 30:06

I've been in the motor industry, transport industry all my work in life, and so this for me is like a nirvana. I mean, you know, being around classic cars. I have a classic car of my own as well. what's that? Triumph Stag. Oh, what colour? Blue. Okay, yeah. Not for the purple then. No, no, no. So for me and the, the people I work with, we have a good time. Yeah, we we have a lot of last and that, and it's relaxed, but we do get on with it.

Steve Digitises Heritage For All

Steve 30:35

Hi, I'm Steve. I'm a volunteer, been here 16 years. I work in the reference library and I'm putting all the data of the various documents, we've got hundreds of thousands of documents, we're putting it all onto a database which people will eventually be able to access electronically through the internet and get information about research they may be doing on vehicles.

Derm Tanner 30:58

So basically you're saving the heritage, aren't you?

Steve 31:00

Correct, correct. We've got say several hundred thousand sales brochures, catalogues, brochures, books. It's a mammoth exercise going back to the start of motoring in the late 1800s right up to present day and it's a massive task. There's a ten volunteers working just in the reference library doing that each day. The subject is fascinating to me. I've always been interested in motoring in all aspects: motor racing, cars, transport, motorcycles, commercial, all sorts of things. So I find the subject itself is interesting. I've been lucky enough to work initially on the pre-war car sales brochures, which you can imagine going back to the start of motoring, that some of the brochures you used to get were absolutely fantastic artwork, and it's a privilege I feel to look at these things and be able to touch them. Well not physically touch them because we don't do that if we can avoid it. But logging quite gloves job, is it? Mostly, yes, indeed. And I will also because I'm a motorcyclist, I've also been given the was given the task of logging on all the sales brochures for motorcycling, which is also equally fascinating. I just find the whole thing absolutely absorbing. How did you drop onto this? When I retired in 2009, I thought, what could I do for a job to fill my time? And my wife said, Well why don't you have a go up Beaulieu? Because I used to come here, I used to I used to come to when I was a tiny tot and my father used to say, pay ten shillings to go i Beaulieu, you must be mad to see a lot of old cars. Anyway, in 2009 I ended up volunteering here, and I came in and I met the collection people here and they said, What do you want to do? And I said, I don't know, what's that open to offers? And the reference library was the first thing that I was shown, and I thought that appeals to me. I'm quite computer literate, which you need to be anyway. So that was happy to do that, and I've been doing it ever since. I love it. I've met some really good friends here that I wouldn't have met otherwise, other than coming here. And we don't talk about motoring, we talk about our families and what we do and our holidays and things like that. And it's great. I could come here five days a week, to be honest, but I don't think my wife would like that.

Reflections, Family Memories, And Sign-Off

Roy Player 33:04

You've converted me. I've got to say it. I mean, I think though, the one thing again about that, I mean, as we've talked about actually quite a few times over this series, is it's not just about the objects and the events, it's the human story behind these things. And what John was saying there really struck a chord with me is that suddenly I pictured the first car that our family ever had, which was a beautiful mini. It was one of the ones that you get in what's that marvellous film, the Michael Cain film,

Derm Tanner 33:35

The Italian Job

Roy Player 33:36

Oh yeah, that's the one and you know, we had one of those, and I remember sitting in that beautiful car. we were in the front mum driving, me in the passenger seat, and then behind, and think how small these cars are. My dear, God bless her, dear grandmother, and next to her was our old English cheapdog.

Derm Tanner 34:00

Good gracious!

Roy Player 34:01

And then the luggage in the back of them were going on holiday and things, and it was absolutely hilarious as we drove along. People would go by laughing because you know, old English cheapdogs, absolutely beautiful, my dear grandmother there. So I think that's that's actually an element which I hadn't really even thought about, Derm, was that it it brings back extraordinary memories to yourself about what it's like having those cars.

Derm Tanner 34:22

It is a part of your life, and I hadn't really thought about it until John was talking about it. And like you, I immediately think about all the millions of cars my mum had, and boy, did she love cars. Hey, that's where I got it from. You've been listening to Grey Matters More, produced and presented by Roy Player and Derm Tanner. Please don't forget to like, follow, or subscribe. That way you'll never miss an episode.