A succession of famous people came to Bourne during the lifetime of Raymond Mays (1899-1980), the international motor racing driver and founder of the BRM, who was renowned for the parties and lavish entertaining at Eastgate House. Stars of stage and screen were among them but there were also many personalities from his chosen sport such as Stirling Moss, Prince Bira of Thailand and Graham Hill.

There was also a visit from the Argentinian driver Juan Manuel Fangio, one that had a particular significance for Raymond Binns, better known by his nickname “Scrim”, who worked for the Raymond Mays garage in Spalding Road for sixteen years. During that time, he was often called on to take his employer’s mother, Mrs Annie Mays, out on shopping trips. She also lived at Eastgate House, following the death of her husband, Thomas, in 1934, and acted as his hostess until she died there in 1973 at the age of 97.

Fangio, who dominated the first decade of Formula One racing, made regular visits to Bourne in 1952-53 when driving for the BRM team and remained in contact during his later years. On one occasion, Scrim was asked to pick him up from the George Hotel in Stamford and bring him back to Eastgate House. He remembered later: “I was given strict instructions to ask Fangio if he wanted to drive back himself and he did and we got back to Bourne in about nine minutes. It was a bit hairy, actually. I knew the road well but it was the first time he had seen it. But he was the perfect gentleman and a super ambassador for the sport.”

Tributes to Fangio poured in from around the world when he died in 1995 after a long illness, aged 84. He had won five Formula One World Driver's Championships, a record which stood for 46 years until eventually beaten by Michael Schumacher, a feat that has not been repeated since. He was also the only Argentinian driver to have won the Argentine Grand Prix, having won it four times in his career and many still consider him to be the greatest driver of all time.

During his many visits to Bourne, he also tested the BRM V16 on the old airfield at Folkingham, nine miles north of Bourne, and the late Alec Stokes, the company’s former chief draughtsman, remembered him as “a great fellow who mixed well and was liked by the mechanics”.

Scrim died in 1999, aged 64, but his wife, Mrs Pamela Binns, aged 76, of Kingsway, Bourne, has a treasured book of cuttings about his life and among them is a newspaper report of that famous nine-minute drive from Stamford to Bourne with racing star Fangio at the wheel.

See also

A hair-raising drive with Fangio     Memories of a railway childhood

REVISED APRIL 2014