'Conspicuously Marked': a uniquely detailed insight into early car and motor cycle ownership in Gloucestershire, likely to appeal as much to local and family historians as to transport enthusiasts.
Cover image (photo courtesy of Bryan Dixon) shows AD-582, a 6hp de Dion. It was registered on 12 Oct. 1905 to a Churchdown GP, Dr John Joseph Foster. The body style is a ‘single phaeton’, and the paintwork was recorded as red, with yellow wheels.
About this book
Registration of cars and motor cycles became compulsory from 1 January 1904. This volume calendars the numbers issued to cars and motor cycles in Gloucestershire and Gloucester City (numbers in the AD and FH series) from the start of registration up to December 1913, along with details of their owners and the vehicles themselves.
The records presented in this edition (due to be launched in Gloucester in September 2019) make it possible to see in detail how widely car and motor cycle ownership spread in that first decade. As a glance through the entries will show, men and women in all walks of life took advantage of motorised mobility. By the eve of the First World War, over 4,200 registrations had been recorded; practically every hamlet in the county, and many streets in all its towns, boasted at least one car or motor cycle owner.
The volume has been designed to be of value to a range of users, including those interested in the demographics of vehicle ownership; local historians; family historians, and of course those with a more technical interest in the vehicles. The editors, Peter Barlow and Martin Boothman, have carefully correlated the original registers with amplifying sources such as street directories and census records, producing mini-biographies for both the vehicles and their owners.
While the formal end-point of the records calendared here is 1913, in many cases the registry clerks kept a continuing record of later changes of ownership, including the absence (and sometimes death) of owners on war service.
As is customary in this series, the edition is fully indexed. It includes over 30 photos of early vehicles, many reproduced here for the first time.