Rolls-Royce 20/25

An unusual car to say the least, as it is fitted with a Land Rover engine! This was installed by the last owner many years ago, and has proved to be a practical and successful conversion, the car having been used in this form for many weddings, covering about 20,000 miles! The car is in sound condition, with nicely fitting doors and is otherwise clean and tidy, with black leather to the front and tan leather to the rear, including the occasional seats, and ready to be used again as is, perhaps once again for weddings. The price includes the original engine, albeit dismantled, or can be discounted if this is not required.


Chassis No. GYH59 Reg. No. 212 XUN £22,500

Snippets: A Pair of Ladies
The two ladies in question were the 1st & 2nd owners of GYH59 namely Miss Clara Christine Tailby (1875/1967) & Mrs Ada Anne Davis (1863/1939) both from Birmingham. The Tailby family business interest included land, import & export, timber products, wharfs, road haulage and the production of early Ambulance Trailers prior to WWI – which we have found some early photographs of. Miss Clara also owned a PIII which she had shipped to New York in 1937 and which is still there, upon Clara’s death in 1967 her estate was worth in excess of £275,000 (the 2016 equivalent of £4.5m) – she left a substantial amount of her fortune to the RNIB & the CoE Children’s Society. It would appear that Clara soon tired of owning GYH35 and the car was sold to Mrs Ada Anne Davis – seeing as they lived within 11 miles of perhaps they knew each other socially? Mrs Ada Anne Davis was the widow of William Albert Upton who died in 1908 in a shooting accident at their home of Berry Hall. After two years of widowhood Ada remarried to Maurice Davis, an art dealer and silversmith of the area. Ada & Maurice continued to live at Berry Hall which had previously been owned by the Gillott family famous for their pen nibs, Gillott Snr died in 1904 and the estate was sold at auction only to be reacquired by his son who died in 1907 when William Upton purchased the estate only to die in 1908. 1944 After the death of Ada Davis the estate & its entire contents was once more auctioned with the next owners being Harold & Alice Tippetts who planned to install electric lighting at the property!