Model
Chassis No.
Engine No.
Year
Registration No.
Coach Builder
Body Name
Main Colour
Body Colour
1925 Silver Ghost (62EU) Cassini & Tonolo Tourer owned by Bryan & Carole-Anne Stringer
Model SG
Year of Manufacture 1925
Engine No U155
Coachbuilder Cassini & Tonolo
Registration No SV-4966
Chassis No 62EU
Body name/type Tourer
Body colours RAF Blue
Main colour Blue
62EU was ‘On Test’ at Derby on 22nd November 1924 and ‘Off Test’ at Derby on 2nd January 1925. The long wheel basis chassis was delivered, with ‘D’ rake steering (suitable for an owner driven car) and nickel fittings, on 5th January 1925 by LM&S goods train to Thrupp & Maberly Ltd of 108 Cricklewood Lane, London NW for the construction of an Open Touring body. Rolls-Royce Limited gave a final test to the completed car at Thrupp & Maberly on 20th March 1925. It was specified that the lamps should be of Lucas nickel and that the side lamps should be at the sides of the scuttle. The coachbuilders and motor dealers, John Croall of Castle Terrace Edinburgh, were credited with 5% over-riding sales commission suggesting that they were engaged in the sale of the new car.
62EU’s first owner was Captain George Clark of Priory Acres, St Andrews, Fife. By 5th August 1925 he had been promoted to the rank of Major as recorded by Rolls-Royce Limited.
The car was recorded next in the ownership of Captain Ritchie (1890-1962) of 17, Stratton Street, Piccadilly, London (at that time a block of flats) and, soon afterwards on 10th July 1926, as resident in Nairobi, Kenya. 62EU was registered in Nairobi as B-5894.
Ritchie was born of wealthy parents, in Dublin. After attending Harrow School (where he was head boy) he read zoology at Oxford where he obtained a BA. He joined the French Foreign Legion in 1914 and fought in France until, in 1915, he was commissioned in the Grenadier Guards of the British Army. He was wounded at Loos and on the Somme and again at Ypres. He was mentioned in despatches and awarded the Military Cross and, also, made a Chevalier of the Legion d’ Honneur. In 1917 he married Queenie Mary Falconer Macdonald (1895-1968), who came from a wealthy Australian family of Melbourne, Victoria. Captain Archibald Thomas Ayres (‘Archie’) Ritchie, OBE, MC arrived for his first appointment as game warden in Kenya in January 1924. He was a popular figure in Kenya rising to the office of Chief Game Warden with spells in Nairobi and Nyeri.
On 22nd May 1925 Rolls-Royce Limited recorded that the chassis had been returned to the UK perhaps as a result of an accident in Kenya. Regardless of the cause of the return to the UK, 62EU came back to Kenya. It is recorded that, apart from the Governor’s, Ritchie’s car, a large yellow Rolls-Royce with a rhino horn mounted on the bonnet, was the largest in Nairobi. It swept along with the princely figure, white-crested and mahogany-complexioned, of the Chief Game Warden, Archie Ritchie, at the wheel.
Professional hunting had already become very popular and, in 1927, efforts were made to form the EA Professional Hunter’s Association. This organisation did not in fact take off until 1934 and among its first patrons were Chief Kenya Game Warden, Archie Ritchie, and Sir Joseph Byrne who was Governor of Kenya at the time. Archie was a well-known and a well-liked personality around Nairobi and when his famous vintage yellow Rolls-Royce was seen in town word got about and people rushed to the Long Bar at the New Stanley Hotel to see it and enjoy a chat.
In 1928 during a visit to the Muthaiga Club in Kenya by HRH The Prince of Wales, the heir to the throne was offered cocaine by a club member, Frank Greswolde-Williams. Immediately, being a big strong man, Ritchie picked up the offender and, tucking him under his arm, walked out of the room with him. Until his retirement in 1945, Captain Richie used 62EU as his every day car – in Nairobi and in the game parks. After his career in Kenya, he and his wife retired to Malindi, on the coast, where he died in 1962 and was buried at sea.
A detailed description of Captain Ritchie’s life is contained in the following link on a website about ‘Europeans in East Africa’:
https://www.europeansineastafrica.co.uk/_site/custom/database/?a=viewIndividual&pid=2&person=3948
On 3rd March 1945, Rolls-Royce Limited recorded the next owner of 62EU as H Beer Esq of PO Box 182, Nairobi, Kenya. His address is recorded by Rolls-Royce Limited on 10th July 1946 as The British East Africa Corporation (1931) Ltd, Exchange Buildings, Nairobi. Nothing much is known further about him at the present time.
Then, on 18th March 1947, Rolls-Royce Limited recorded 62EU in the ownership of Captain H Harries of Larmudiac, Njoro, Kenya. However, it is possible that he acquired the car earlier than this as, around 1946, 62EU had been converted into a lorry, with the existing cab and an open back which had been taken from a Ford V8. Harries’ life style, described below, as a farmer fitted the need for a vehicle that was more in the nature of a utility.
Captain Herbert Michael, aka ‘Jock’ and ‘Black’ Harries (1883-1954) was born in Dhursala, Bengal, India. He served in the First World War in the Royal Artillery and, in 1924, he married Gwendoline Alice Grace Prettejohn née Howell (1876-1953). Under Great Britain’s ‘Soldier Settlement Scheme After WWI’, they acquired a farm in Njoro where they bred, among other animals, Arabian stallions and brood mares. He was known as Black Harries because of his big black beard. Their lifestyle was eccentric. It was written that ‘they lived like the pigs they grew, only they didn’t house themselves as well as the pigs. Inside an awful house – if you were bold enough to go to lunch there – you found an enormous, genuine refectory table, about 16 really good Chippendale chairs, with Black Harries carving a colossal hunk of meat at one end of the table and Ma Harries dismembering innumerable fowls at the other. When Harries found an African beating a valuable pig, he flogged the man so badly that he was in hospital for three months. Harries was charged with giving him over 100 strokes and pleaded guilty to inflicting ‘simple hurt’ under extreme provocation. The jury accepted his plea and recommended mercy, but the judge demurred, and Harries served three months in prison’. Black Harries was also a firm believer in heat treatment for arthritis. His remedy was getting into bed with five labradors on top – accompanied by a bottle of port. Harries died in Naivasha, not far from his farm, in 1954.
A detailed description of Captain Harries’ life is contained in the following link on a website about ‘Europeans in East Africa’:
62EU remained in the Harries family until 1968 before being sold to Kenyan rally driver John FM Jeeves, who was a regular participant in the East African Safari Rally. He is recorded in the RREC’s Bulletin No 51 of November 1968 as the owner of 62EU when he became a new member of the club. He undertook a major restoration of the car, which included having the engine overhauled by a Rolls-Royce specialist. The Ford truck body was removed and replaced in 1969 by the Nairobi-based coachbuilder Cassini & Tonolo with a dual cowl design in the style of Barker Open Tourer. This was reputedly one of five Rolls-Royce Silver Ghosts which the company rejuvenated using aluminium panelling over a metal frame in deference to the Kenyan climate.
John Jeeves moved to Rhodesia in 1971 and then the car was taken to South Africa some eight years later, where 62EU was subsequently placed into care with a local car museum. In 1980, 62EU was photographed on page 29 of the RREC Bulletin No 120 of May 1980 having its engine renovated by Colin Black. Then, with the registration number UNX-749T, it was commissioned especially for the 1993 Motorola Alpine 93 (the 80th anniversary commemorative rally of the 1913 Austrian Alpenfahrt). By now, it was finished in white over black, complemented by a black interior, bearing the registration number UNX-749T. This may be a misprint as John & Susie Jeeves joined the 20-Ghost Club in 1993 (Record, Volume 34 Issue 62) where the registration number is recorded as HNX-749T.
Completing the 1993 Rally, using hardly any oil, not even the contents of the spare oil tank, nor hardly any water, and only one puncture during the entire trip, the car performed beautifully. Jeeves drove the car back to his wife’s family home in Holland and then onto the UK and into storage for a year. Registration SV-6966 was allocated as an age related number by the DVLA.
In 1994, 62EU was sold onto Bill Hughes of Hemel Hempstead, who he did not drive the car very much but researched its extensive history. He also attempted to restore its registration number B-5894 which had been allocated in Kenya and which is evident from cotemporary photographs. But this did not prove possible.
In 2003, the RREC Bulletin No 259, dated July/August 2003, included a photo of 62EU on page 11 with its original Thrupp & Maberly Tourer body on Mount Kenya.
Then, in 2004, the RREC Bulletin No 264, dated May/June 2004, contained an article about Cassini & Tonolo with a photograph on page 36 of 62EU with its new Tourer body.
In 2012, was sold to Bryan & Carol-Anne Stringer, Sherborne. They are active members of the 20-Ghost Club. Having completed many rallies including one 1,800 mile trip through Europe to Greece in 2017, again the car used virtually no oil and ran beautifully. Its last outing was the New Forest tour in 2021. 62EU is presently undergoing some updating: rebuilding the front braking system, replacing the radiator core, other mechanical fettering, nickel plating and sporting a new colour (RAF blue), 62EU is now set for the 2023 Alpine Rally. A wonderful tourer.
| First Name | Last Name | |
|---|---|---|
| Bryan | Stringer | [email protected] |
