Raymond Mays

A PICTORIAL SCRAPBOOK

In 1929, Raymond acquired a Villiers Supercharged Special and he is pictured at the wheel of his new car in the yard at Eastgate House. His interest in this model  was the result of his friendship at Oundle School and then Cambridge University with Amhurst Villiers, a specialist in supercharging who lived at Eastgate House from 1922-25, working in the family fellmongering business and on Raymond's various motor cars, two of which can be seen in the background, a Lagonda in the garage and an Alpine Riley in front of the maltings and orchard greenhouse which were eventually to become the workshops for the ERA.

Raymond Mays pictured with his Riley Alpine saloon outside Eastgate House in 1933. In the spring of that year, he drove to Coventry in the car to call on Victor Riley to discuss developing the 1.5 litre Riley and decided that it was feasible.

Lending a hand to prepare the White Invicta for a meeting at Skegness in 1931,
despite concerns about the beaches being used for motoring competitions..

The ERA works team pictured at the Bourne workshops in June 1935 in readiness for the British Empire Trophy meeting at Brooklands. They are (left to right) Raymond Mays, who lead for nine laps before retiring with transmission problems, the German Prince Zu Leiningen, who came 12th, Humphrey Cook, who was unplaced, and Pat Fairfield who came sixth.

Raymond Mays photographed after a winning the "mountain" championship race at the Brooklands circuit on 17th October 1936. For this 12 mile dash from scratch, he drove a new Zoller blown 2 litre ERA.

Raymond Mays kept his fleet of cars even during the Second World War of 1939-45. Here are his Bentley (on the left) and three Rovers, lined up in the yard of Eastgate House during that time with his mother and their pet Alsatian. All of the cars were adapted for wartime driving conditions with blackout grilles on the front headlights which were required by law to prevent their beams from being spotted by enemy aircraft on the roads at night.

This photograph was taken on 13th May 1950 in Raymond Mays' study on the first floor of Eastgate House and shows his presentation of the BRM V16 racing car to the committee of the BRM Trust. Mays is on the right, showing off the model, with Peter Berthon on his right. Other members in the group are the company secretary Jim Sandercombe (seated front left), Sir Alfred Owen (standing extreme left) and chairman David Brown (seated fourth from right). The other three are members of the committee of the trust which actually had 40 members. The model is of plasticine and was made for aerodynamic testing by the Standard Motor Car Company and eventually adorned the drawing office at BRM in Bourne where it became peppered with airgun pellets. Chief draughtsman Alec Stokes, remembers: "We had a lot of mice in the office and we tried to get rid of them with airguns but in the meantime, we also used the model car for target practice. I have no idea what happened to it but it would no doubt be worth a small fortune today."

Members of the international club known as the Anciens Pilots de Grand Prix pictured in the garden at Eastgate House on 17th July 1967. Raymond Mays was proud to be a member and often wore their badge on his blazer. Those pictured here are (standing, left to right) Duncan Hamilton, Raymond Mays, Philipe Etancelin, Maurice Baumgartner and Juan Manuel Fangio, (front row, left to right) Leslie Brooke, Louis Chiron, Stirling Moss and Emmanuel de Graffenried.

This photograph was taken at Rouen showing the two famous makes of motor racing car made at Bourne. On the left is the ERA of English Racing Automobiles, 17 of which were built between 1934-39 and right, the post war BRM of British Racing Motors, the type that won the world championship in 1962 with Graham Hill at the wheel.

Raymond pictured outside his home in Eastgate with a BRM V16, the car he hoped would break the continental domination of post-war Grand Prix racing. It was the first Grand Prix car built in Britain since the early 1920s and had a 1½ litre super charged engine, developing more horsepower per litre than any orthodox engine then built. The car raced at home and abroad from 1950 to 1955 but was eventually retired to a garage at his Bourne home.

NOTE: I am indebted to Alec Stokes, former chief draughtsman with BRM, and to Dr Michael McGregor and his book Historic Pictures of Bourne, for identification details used in some of the above photographs.

See also     Early days on the road     Thomas Mays

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