Rolls-Royce 20/25 (1936)

SALE AGREED

Used over the last 20 years or so by the last owner until recently as a wedding hire car, proving to be reliable and popular. The car is respectable in appearance, with a relatively recent interior, blue leather to the front and cream leather to the rear. Ideally, the car will need some TLC and attention to bring it up to a higher standard, but it is priced accordingly and offers an opportunity for the relevant improvement. It could do with cosmetic tidying in the engine bay, but runs very well, with good compressions, and no apparent cylinder head or cooling problems. Inexpensive and representing very good value all round.



Chassis No. GTK39 Reg. No. CXY 400

Snippets: The Fortescue Family.
GTK39 was initially ordered by Mrs Eugenia Bonsor, the widow of Robert Cecil Bonsor MC (1880/1932) but she cancelled her request & the car was then reassigned to The Earl of Fortescue MC of Castle Hill in Barnstaple. The Fortescue family have lived at Castle Hill since 1454 when Martin Fortescue wed the heiress Elizabeth Denzell, since that time Castle Hill has been remodelled & landscaped by subsequent generations, in 1934 the property was burnt down with two members of staff dying in the fire and the 5th Earl (owner of GTK39) & his wife Countess Margaret (a scion of the Londonderry family) rebuilt Castle Hill in its original Palladian style of the 1500s. The chassis cards show that the Fortescues also had a London address in Lowndes Street; the area had been designed by George Basevi & was named after the 17th Century politician William Lowndes (1652–1724), residents of Lowndes street have included Lord Alan Spencer-Churchill (great uncle of Winston Churchill), Claude Bowes-Lyon (grandfather of Elizabeth II) and Oswald Mosley (politician. After WWII, during which their son Peter was killed at the Battle of Alamein, GTK39 was sold to D. L. Martin of Grove Hall Court in London about whom we know nothing. D. L. Martin kept GTK39 until 1953 when the chassis cards show it to be with the Funeral Directors - Kyle Bros of Kelso, est 1945 by Robert Kyle who had previously worked with Rolls-Royce in Glasgow.

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