The Ss Motor Company "Jaguar"

A Memory of Hatch End.

While my father was having his house built in Thornton Grove he rented rooms from Mrs Parry who lived at "Marden", a vast rambling Victorian pile at the end of Westfield Park, not far from the church. She had a gardner called Mr Hedges; how appropriate!

Next door there was a family with a son a similar age to myself. One day I was invited to join the family on an outing. I recall nothing of the ocassion save that the father had a very smart car. Cars tended to be pre-war in those days; production had restarted after the war (sorry, the war of 1939-45) but new cars were not available in large numbers; driving a prewar car was not considered odd.

The SS Motor Company found fame with its "Jaguar" model and our neighbour had one of those. It even had a wireless. Apart from police cars I had never seen a car with a wireless before. The one problem was that the canvass roof leaked. It rained; we sought shelter under a railway bridge; it would have been nice to have listened to the wireless while we waited for the rain to clear; sadly, it could not get decent reception under the bridge. So much for new technology.