Amersham's Garages

During the 20th century, the car had a major impact on society. Local garages sprang up in every town and village to provide petrol, repairs and to sell new and second hand cars. As the motor industry grew and cars became more reliable, garages have changed. Now they are very often part of large chains or at the very least a franchise or main dealer.

Over the years garages have come and gone in Amersham. The first petrol pump in Amersham was located at The Griffin, now the Ask Restaurant

Yesterday's Garages -
Although there may still be garages on the same sites today, here are a list of Amersham's old garages -
Autofarm - a specialist garage dealing with Porsche cars - took over the Station Garage site (see below)
Brandons - Dave Woodridge now from Perth, Australia remembers "I think it was called Brandons and it was situated opposite the Old Millstream Hotel on London Road. I left school to work there in 1945, my first job, and although on the outside it may have just looked like an ordinary garage it was a different story inside. It was set up as a machine shop with lathes, drilling machines etc. This was all driven by a large electric motor situated on a side wall with over head pulleys drives. My first job was to work on a lathe and chamfer and part of lengths of about 3/16 inch diameter mild steel. They had, presumably, still contracts to complete for the - Ministry of Defense? - and just to compare working weeks we worked 6 days a week from 8.00 am till, I'm not sure now but I think it was 6.00 pm. I remember being bored out of my cotton picking mind and left there and went to work at Marshals garage in New Amersham, but that's a different story. I'm retired now having lived in Tasmania from 1970 to 1997 and now live in >Perth, Western Australia.
Curfew Garage - no other details!
Flacks - White Lion Road - Peugeot / Chrysler and before (according to an advertisement from the 1960s) were Singer main dealers and also quotes Simca, Hillman & Commer retail dealers, Rootes Motor parts stockists
G K Ford - later Chiltern Ford, now closed
W Foster Ltd.. - Chesham Road - Morris, Wolseley and MG dealers This garage was located where there is now a Fiat & Alfa Romeo garage, opposite Dr. Challoners, next to the telephone exchange. The original building has been replaced by the new garage with flats above. The late Tony Rose was the sales manager at Fosters from 1963 - 1969 and told me "W.Foster Limited (then telephone Amersham 132 and 1298) was also known as "Fosters of Amersham". Run by William, Malcombe and Walter Edgar. Malcombe had Fosters in Chesham, now the site of Sainsbury and was sold in about 1962 for £8500. Fosters was the ONLY garage in Amersham to sell Morris, Wolsley, Riley MG and Van Denplas. The showrooms and petrol (Shell and Jet) were on Chesham Road. The workshops at the back backed onto Hill Avenue."
Hazell's Garage - Chesham Road - I think this is the site of the now demolished garage by the Boot & Slipper. It used to sell petrol - Burmah I think. The site has currently been totally cleared for redevelopment as a fitness club (there used to be the Triangle Club snooker club in the old garage workshop / show room building. This later became a health club, now demolished).
Mamos Amersham - London Road. Dealers for Leyland Cars - Jaguar, Daimler, Rover, Triumph, Austin and Morris.
Market Garage - I believe this to be the garage that Adrian Partington now from Portsmouth remembers. He writes "I'm pretty certain there was a National Garage in Amersham Old Town up until the mid 1980s. This was a petrol filling station just opposite the bus garage (now closed - opposite where Tesco Petrol station is now) with a blue and yellow logo of a stylised Viking's helmet! It had truly ancient pumps with dials on them rather than the digital readouts of today, and a tiny kiosk where you paid and could buy things like chocolate bars off the sullen staff member there. Also see below about Townsend Garage.
Marshalls Garage - Woodside Road (where Shell petrol station is now and also opposite Dorothy Shaw's florist) - Shell Petrol and car repairs. The garage used to have a small stall selling cakes, this became, on the opposite side of the road, the M&M Cafe. (Thanks to John Tooley, now from Delaware, U.S.A, for the memory of the cake stall.) Ford and Austin dealers
Merritts Chrysler Jeep- Hill Avenue, Amersham, closed January 2003
Munn & Chapman- Little Chalfont. Were dealing in Austin, Vanden Plas and Wolseley .
Station Garage - a blue and white building opposite the station, where the brick office block is now. It had petrol pumps on Hill Avenue which were under a drive in roofed area. They dealt in Triumph, Leyland, Rover, Land Rover and Bedford as well as being a Vauxhall main dealer. They actually had 3 branches - Hill Avenue, London Road and Little Chalfont. Munn & Chapman - Little Chalfont Barry Vincent, now from Rickmansworth remembers "Station Garages actually had 5 garages, they had another in Taplow which I think was a Bentley dealer I can't remember and another in Hazlemere, then of course Mamos brought Station Garages out an about 1975. I worked at Hill Avenue from 1965 until 1970 then I transferred to London Road, we had a great time at Hill Avenue along with a great working team. The workshop consisted of Don Miller (Workshop Manager) Elsie Shaw (Workshop Secretary) Ernie Holland (Foreman) Frank Davis (Lubrication Bay) Work Shop floor, Ron Gome, Mick Pearce, Peter Harding, Nick , Roy Fox, Graham Bennet, myself and not least Ashley Holt who left in 1968 to seek fame and fortune in a band called "The Reasons" but it did not happen for him at this time, but if you like music you will find Ashley eventually made it famous with The Rick Wakeman Band. The last person on the floor was my dad carrying out undersealing on new cars. The stores was run by Jack Harris (manager), along with Brian Cooley, Glen, Jack Goodyear (back counter) and Rita. Harry Miles worked the petrol pumps along with car cleaning, we had Tommy Hood, George Stanton (director) in car sales, Sheila and Pam in admin along with Ken company secretary. Norman Bishop was General Manager, and they also had a car hire facility and ran a taxi firm from the rear of the building, If I have missed anybody sorry." Barry is / was known to most people in Amersham as Benny, even now when I he meets somebody who he used to work with they still call him Benny.
The above picture shows the end of Hill Avenue taken in 1979 - you can just about make out the old Station Garages building at the end Picture Courtesy of Frank Philipson Another view of Station Garages from 1971
Shaws Garage - White Lion Road. Barry Vincent, now from Rickmansworth adds "before it was Shaws it wasWhite Lion Service Station back in the 60's, then it went to Shaws and of course now a BP site along with TJ motors which is run by Bill Turner who I also worked with at Blizzard Motors in Chorleywood in the early 70's god how time flies!"
Townsend of Amersham Ltd.. - Hill Avenue (opposite station). Morris Dealers offering new cars for immediate delivery and second hand cars such as Hillman Imp 1967 for £575 or 1956 SJ Bentley automatic for £1,295! There was also a branch in London - Rootes sales and service Pete Wood, now from Southern California, remembers that his mother worked at Townsend as a book keeper after the war and until it closed. She told Pete about the ancient machine shop there which was driven by a large single cylinder gas engine with line shafting and leather flat belts to drive the individual machines. Part of the workshop even had an earth floor! Pete Wood remembers "the garage was in the Old Town directly opposite the London Transport bus garage and adjacent to the water company's pumping station. The 2 petrol pumps were also very antiquated, dating back to the thirties. To operate them one turned a hand crank to fill a 5 gallon glass tank above the pump with the required quantity and the delivery pipe was then swung out over the pavement. A rubber hose with a nozzle hung from this arm and the petrol was gravity fed from the glass tank into the motorists vehicle. Les Townsend then handed you the hand written bill! Needless to say, the whole process took much longer than it does today with electric, digital pumps that also show the price. Back then, life moved at a much less frenetic pace." It was not clear from the information we had received exactly where Townsend was, information provided by Sue Brigden indicates it was in Hill Avenue with a branch in the Old Town. However, Pete Wood does not remember it on Hill Avenue, only the Old Town - opposite the bus garage - but was that not Market Garage. Following an appeal in the Amersham Village Voice Column in the Bucks Examiner in February 2003, I correspondent reported Townsend Garage stood in London Road opposite B&M Motors, it then moved up to Hill Avenue into a site previously occupied by Foster's Garage. Is that the same Fosters as listed above in Chesham Road - the plot thickens! There is a picture in the Bucks CC Photo archive which shows Townsend Garage as occupying the 1960s built garage opposite the station, on the corner of Hill Avenue, later occupied by Merritts and now closed. To conclude (or maybe not!) Carol Marshall from Little Chalfont can confirm that Townsend and Market were in fact the same garage, Market garage existed on the Townsend garage site. Carol's husband worked there from leaving school in 1980 till its closure, which we think was around 1981/2.

Thanks to Sue Brigden from Hyde Head for all the information in green, which she found from local newspaper advertisements from the 1960s

If anyone has any further details about garages, current or past, particularly what the old garages actually did (e.g. new cars, repairs etc.) please email me

You may also like to see the page about Amersham's old shops here

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