I’m not sure where these two photographs came from, although I know that they’re both attributed to Brunell. I’ve also seen a third one, of a BMW 319, taken in the same location, but the current owner of the car had inherited the photo album which included the photo when he bought the car and had no idea where it was taken. So … does anyone know where this is?
Update 2 September 2019 14:00:
Well … very many thanks to Alastair Queen for setting me on the path to sorting-out this one. The event is the 1936 Brighton-Beer, and the section is Hone Horror at Hone Farm, just off the A396 to the north of Dulverton in Somerset (OS GR SS325927). For those who want a more accurate location, the cars are at https://w3w.co/tonic.fonts.corrosive. Hone Horror was listed as a ‘Brake and Acceleration Test’ and was never used again, as far as I am aware.
For those interested in the ‘research process’ read on … After Alastair saw the original post above, his research took him to https://bit.ly/2lViR41 and thence to https://bit.ly/2lUcsWO where all is revealed. I then realised that it was hardly surprising that I recognised the photograph of the Frazer-Nash BMW 319 when I saw it at Prescott in 2016, because it was the same photo (the top one above) that had been sitting in my own archive for years. Steve Fathers, who posted the photo on PreWarCar.Com, is the ‘current owner’ that I refer to above and he’d obviously made his online post several weeks after I met him.
Then, when I got to the MMM Register website, I was embarrassed to realise that this photo …
… was already sitting in my archives, clearly marked as the 1936 Brighton-Beer. No wonder the location looked very familiar although, until today, I had no idea where it was.
So … the one question remaining is … why did Brunell decide to photograph the 1936 Brighton-Beer, which was a ‘premier league’ trial in its day, at such an obscure location? Or maybe he just knew that it would produce distinctive photographs?
