Motor ace donates prints to museum

At a ceremony in the Egerton Road museum’s ground floor gallery last Wednesday evening, two prints commemorating Mr Surtees’ unique achievement in gaining both the world motorcycling championship and the Grand Prix Formula One world championship were unveiled.

Mr Surtees offered to donate the prints when he met John Betts, chairman of the Society of Bexhill Museums Limited, after opening Rother District Council’s new Elva business enterprise park - named after Bexhill’s former Elva sports car company - in the old Sidley goods yard.

Bexhill’s museum’s gleaming aluminium-clad 1957 Elva Mark III sports racer graces the motor heritage gallery. It was on display at the business park’s opening ceremony.

The gallery commemorates Bexhill’s links with three different modes of propulsion - the petrol-powered Elva, the replica of the steam-powered Serpollet which won the 1902 Bexhill Motor Trials and the electric car designed by St Richard’s Catholic College students which gained a class world land speed record.

The champion of both two and four wheel racing made his offer of adding to the motor gallery’s artefacts when the museum chairman explained its part in last year’s £2m museum extension scheme.

Rother District Council’s director of resources Malcolm Johnson, its leisure services manager Sue Adamson and Bexhill 100 Motoring Club chairman Dave Dickens-Smith were among guests at a reception to mark the gift.

The chairman said the museum were grateful to Denise and Mark Hart of Dynamic Alternatives for their help in framing the prints.

Museum chief executive officer Peter Fairhurst said after reviewing a life-time involvement with motoring: “We need museums. We need to look after them. I am just delighted to have become involved with so many enthusiastic people at the museum.”

Dave Dickens-Smith said Bexhill 100 Motoring Club had been proud to display part of the town’s motor heritage at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham.