You never know what is going to turn up on your doorstep. We have a local auction house – Maxwell’s in Hazel Grove, and each month I trawl through their auction catalogue just to see if there is anything that fits into the remit of the archive. This month there was a plethora of interesting items that grabbed my attention. Come the day of the auction (and with the beauty of internet bidding) I was able to sit in the archive spending the day cataloguing while following the auction and stepping in to bid at appropriate times.

I had a reasonably successful day and came away with a mixed bag of items. As a tempter before writing some of them up in next month’s newsletter I acquired an 1886 William Whiteley & Sons catalogue for textile machine tools (see the write-up by Peter Moss in this month’s newsletter); a selection of Guinness condiment sets; two plaster figures of breweriana (Johnnie Walker and Dewar’s); 3 tyre signs for Goodyear and Goodrich Tyres and to top it all a 1970s gentleman’s Viking bicycle which doubles our bicycle collection.

Over the last weekend, Peter and I had an incredible three days away. To start off we visited our good friend Dean Butler to drop off a collection of “Motor” magazines for his library. We came away with a very generous donation from Dean to the archive of thirty years’ worth of Indianapolis 500 Raceway programs.

On the Saturday morning, we attended the Rolls-Royce Enthusiasts’ Club Annual Rally being held at Burghley House, Stamford and had a good look around the cars and stands before spending the afternoon in Stamford visiting two fabulous bookshops. With our quest for the archive in our minds and chatting with the bookshop owners, we tracked down a whole bag of goodies to bring back with us.

On the Sunday, we were again back at the RREC Rally, this time to meet up with our publisher to do a book signing session in the Real Car Company marquee. I even managed to come away with a poster advertising the signing event which will now join the copy of our book in the archive.

You will notice that a new blog is starting to appear. Caitlyn our intern from Manchester Metropolitan University is busy working away at the archive gathering data for her Frank Patterson project. As part of her project, Caitlyn will publish regular blogs charting her progress. Look out for her fascinating tales over the coming months.

Take care, keep safe and see you all soon

Richard Roberts