Antique home and road show
Page 24
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Bevan Funnell's interest in antiquity is not limited to the manufacture of English reproduction furniture. Appropriately it extends also to commercial vehicles, and eight veterans are garaged at the company's Newhaven base.
One is a 1919 RAF-type Leyland which returned to the colours as a troop carrier in the 1939-45 war. Some 20 years of neglect followed until Bevan Funnell bought and restored it. Originally a sided lorry, it now carries an early Southern Railway container salvaged from a Bromley scrap yard.
Other veterans at Newhaven include a 1924 Leyland threeway tipper and an Albion platform lorry of similar age.
The RAF-type Leyland was one of a number of museum pieces to see service in the 193945 war. Naval 3in guns, notorious for shattered ear drums, were mounted on Peerless 1916 chassis and driven round and round London to bamboozle the population with its formidable anti-aircraft defences. The training regiment that I joined also had a Daimler bus of about the same age and excellently preserved.