By Nick Pollard
Those of you who have moved to the area more recently may have been puzzled by references to the roundabout at the Shepperton end of Walton Bridge Road as ‘Marshall’s Roundabout’, since there is no sign or clue as to where this name comes from. In fact the name is not an official one, but refers to the original name of the petrol station and garage which stands next to it, as seen in the photo above which dates to the mid-1960s.
Roundabouts were still a fairly uncommon thing when this one (the first in Shepperton) was built in the early 1960s to replace the dangerous crossroads (with no traffic lights) which preceded it. Although the first roundabout in the UK had in fact been built at Letchworth in 1909, they were not widespread until work at the Transport and Road Research Laboratory formulated the rules on clockwise flow and priority for circulating traffic that we are familiar with today. Having said that, when working at the petrol station in the 1970s, every so often I witnessed a vehicle entering the roundabout anticlockwise, which certainly caused some confusion! This may not have been helped by the unusual shape of the roundabout – it’s actu-ally square with rounded corners.
The garage was founded at the junction of Walton Bridge Road and Russell Road in 1931 by Dick Mar-shall, who must have initially had a partner, as the business appears as ‘Marshall and Elder’ in a 1937 trade directory. Dick later leased the premises to his brother Johnny. The firm were agents for Vauxhall cars and Bedford vans, and sold Esso petrol from the pumps on the forecourt, which would of course have been served by attendants in those pre self-service days. A sign in the photo advertises a car wash at 2 shillings (10p), and petrol would have been about 5 shillings (25p) a gallon!
Johnny Marshall had a related hobby as he also raced cars, actually competing in the Le Mans 24 hour race in 1950 with a Jaguar XK120, finishing 15th, and the following year in a Frazer-Nash, when he im-proved his position to 14th. He took the company van with him as support vehicle – a far cry from the pro-fessionally supported teams of today.
‘The Life and Work of Sir Henry Cole’ (the mastermind of the Great Exhibition of 1851 amongst many other achievements) by Nick Pollard is the subject of the next meeting of the Sunbury and Shepperton Local History Society. The talk takes place at Halliford School on Tues 19th April at 8pm. All welcome, admission £2 for non-members.