Water getting into a garage has long been a problem. My grandfather was the first person to have a car in West Sussex, and when he later built his garage, it had a "pit" , useful for summer maintenance.
Mother once reminisced, that in the winter, the chauffeur needed chest waders.
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P.S.
This reminds me, I was told by someone called Sir John Samuel, who lived nearby, that when Brooklands was built, owners / drivers were permitted to build shelters in the paddock, initially called stalls, but when one or two added a pit so that the cars could be worked on, and others asked if they might 'use their pits' or dug their own, the stalls became "The Pits" that we know today.
Sir John had a large enough garden to lay out a miniature steam railway, and somehow, a chap called Walt Disney found his way there on a visit to England. He must have enjoyed riding on it, because back in the USA, he set about planning a miniature railway in his own garden.
The apocryphal story is, that to make way for the track, when the garden gnomes were moved, someone called them "The Seven Dwarfs", with that chance remark, imagination ran riot and Disneyland was born.
Sir John's son, also Sir John, raced and may have owned Diva Cars. If you google "Greywood Miniature Railway" , he is the blond haired boy in the Pathe' film, my school friend Sammy.
Edited by DeadSquare, 26 October 2023 - 04:13 PM.
