By Patricia Stone
Carawagon Ltd was situated opposite Thames Street car park on Thames Street, where Oxford Row now stands. It serviced motor cara-vans.
I worked there in the 1970’s for Mr Searle, who was the owner and Mr Robin Wil-son-Webb (son of Wilson-Webb who had an electrical shop in Thames Street. As an aside Mr Wilson-Webb partly home educated his son, who won a scholarship to Eton).
My office looked over the small stream and if I wasn’t too busy I enjoyed watch-ing the kingfishers and other beautiful small birds and wildlife.
Amongst other things, the firm serviced the Duke of Edinburgh’s carriages, which he used all over the continent. If anyone needed a spare part or other tools, I was thrilled to take them to the royal stables in Windsor. The stables were fabulous, fully tiled with each stall anointed with a brass plate with the occupants name on it. I was very interested because I was riding every week in Windsor Great Park so it was exciting to see these beautiful horses close up. A couple of times I saw the Queen riding with her bowler hatted male escort. It is difficult to curtsey when rid-ing a horse, so I just bowed my head!
One day Jimmy Savile came into the Carawagon workshop to arrange some repairs on his caravan. I noticed he had a very young man in his motor and he seemed keen to hide his companion in the back. I remarked to Robin: “What a strange man”!
Things got a bit quiet and I was commis-sioned to travel and sell the Caranex. This was a small tent that you could attach to hatchback vehicles. Everyone in the vil-lage laughed when they saw me carrying one of these tents under my arm. It looked like a large yellow sausage! But I was quite successful in getting appointments with various motor dealers all over the countryside. I even got an appointment with British Leyland. Hearing about that one, Mr Searle quickly stepped in and said “You can’t expect to get the same commission rate”. I replied “We’ll see about that”. As it happened the appoint-ment was cancelled so in the end Mr Searle and I remained friends!