Cotswold Chatterblog

New Exhibition on the Road Rescue Industry runs until 1st December 2007

A new exhibition has just opened at the Cotswold Motoring museum at Bourton on the Water celebrating the work of the Road Rescue Industry. We all need them at some time or another yet the national breakdown service that we have come to rely on today is reletively recent.

The exhibition has been put together by the Cotswold Motoring museum and the Recovery Industry Support Charity(RISC).

Breaking down on a journey can be stressful, unpleasant and even dangerous. If you were unlucky enough to have a breakdown before the 1960s there was no automatic “get you home service”. Generally you had to pay up front before anyone would recover your vehicle.

Many of the first garages emerged from the blacksmith’s trade who naturally took to recovering their customers broken-down vehicles, often towed to the garage by horses! As the 20th century got underway two motoring clubs became large enough to have nationwide membership. The Royal Automobile Club (RAC) formed in 1897 and The Automobile Association (AA) formed in 1905.

Today’s recovery industry can be traced back to the late sixties. It was not garages that operated recovery vehicles but coachworks and bodyshops as they needed to find work. They monitored the police radio network, listening for accident reports, and then raced to be first at the scene.

The AA were the first to respond with their Relay Service in 1974 then in 1975 the RAC introduced their service, aptly named Recovery.

Having the correct equipment is essential to carrying out a successful recovery operation and initially a number of army surplus vehicles found their way on to garage forecourts but a number of operators built or converted the equipment themselves.

The centrepiece of the exhibition is a pair of Model T Fords which were converted in the 1930s, one as a service vehicle and the other as a recovery vehicle.

The award winning Cotswold Motoring Museum is owned by the Civil Service Motoring Association (CSMA) and is open everyday from 10.00 am to 18.00pm

Cotswold Motoring Museum
Bourton on the Water
Gloucestershire
GL54 2BY
Telephone 01451 821255
www.cotswold-motor-museum.co.uk

www.riscuk.net
www.csma.uk.com

Saturday 29th September 19.00 Ebrington Village Hall

Harvest Suppers are held throughout the countryside to celebrate the safe

Saturday 8th September – Saturday 29th September

Fosse Gallery Fine Art Stow-on-the-Wold

Sixteen members of the Royal Academy (RA) revisit the Fosse Gallery in September.

The members are:-

Anthony Eyton, Mary Fedden, Leonard McComb, Ken Howard, Mick Rooney, Flavia Irwin, Eileen Cooper, Gus Cummins, William Bowyer, Fred Cuming, David Remfry, Sonia Lawson, Maurice Cockrill, Frederick Gore, Jean Cooke and Philip Sutton.

This is a rare exhibition of over 40 paintings exclusively by members of the RA, as their work is usually never seen as a dedicated exhibition outside London.

The Fosse Gallery is often described as one of the most important galleries outside London. It is committed to showing the best of British figurative and narrative art in mixed and solo exhibitions.

For almost thirty years, the Gallery has shown works by famous RA members including Eurich, Frink, Knight, Weight, Spear, Lowry and Augustus John to mention a few. Now, with the present illustrious list, this wonderful collaboration can be renewed.

The current exhibition presents a broad grouping of painters, covering several strands of representational and abstract painting.

The present owner Sharon Wheaton joined the gallery in 1998 and took it over a year ago.

“From the moment I took over the Fosse Gallery, I set out to stage a substantial exhibition of paintings by current Royal Academicians.

It is important to have an established provincial art gallery supporting RA members’ work.

What joins us together is their unshakeable faith in the painted image and my abiding desire to represent them. This exhibition is a celebration of the collaboration between the Fosse Gallery and the artists who are honoured to be Royal Academicians.”

The Gallery is open Tuesday- Saturday 10.30 – 17.00 or by appointment.

Fosse Gallery Fine Art
The Manor House
The Square
Stow-on-Wold
Gloucestershire GL54 1AF
Telephone 01451 831319

www.fossegallery.com

Potential new Academicians are nominated by the existing Royal Academicians. Nominees must be artists under the age of 75 and professionally active in the UK. They have to fall into one of the Royal Academy’s categories of art – painting, printmaking, sculpture and architecture.

www.royalacademy.org.uk

Image: William Bowyer RA, Beach at Walberswick.
Used with kind permission of The Fosse Gallery