The Jubilee Garage


The garage in 1939

The Jubilee Garage was founded in 1935 and was so named because it opened soon after King George V and Queen Mary had celebrated their Silver Jubilee.

It was opened by William Ronald Pearce, always known as Ron, son of Edward Pearce, who had served an apprenticeship as a motor engineer with the Vauxhall company at Luton. He had already set up in business there with a partner who disappeared with the takings and so he returned to Bourne to begin again, working first as an agricultural contractor.

He married Doll Baldock, daughter of Frederick and Annie Baldock who ran Baldock’s Mill in South Street, and they moved into one of the new semi-detached houses built in the back garden of No 32 North Street where his father’s business was situated but with a frontage in Meadowgate. It was here in the yard of the house at No 64 Meadowgate that he and Saville Turner founded their motor and electrical engineering business with a single hand-operated pump offering BP petrol at 1s.1d. a gallon in the front garden.

Ron also opened a radio business at No 32 North Street for his father but soon the garage project was flourishing and they decided to build new premises in Abbey Road, at the corner of the vicarage gardens next to the Abbey Lawn, as part of Edward Pearce and Company Ltd, and it opened in 1937 as agents for Standard Cars, a company selling one of the popular models of the day.

After the Second World War of 1939-45, they ended their association with Edward Pearce and formed Jubilee Garage (Bourne) Ltd, amalgamating with another motor engineering business run by George Shelton and Charles Hall, that was based in the yard behind the shop premises at No 42 North Street owned by fishmonger Walter Elkins.

The new company acquired the premises at No 30 North Street which became the main showroom and workshops while the Abbey Road building became a service station. As the business expanded, it was granted a dealership for the Rootes Group, selling Humber, Hillman, Sunbeam Talbot and later Singer cars, and regional distribution rights for Reliant cars and vans. In those days, garages repaired rather than replaced and so the main premises were fully equipped as an engineering workshop, re-boring and reconditioning engines and distributing parts and tyres over a wide area.

After the death of Edward Pearce in 1946, the premises at No 30 North Street were sold and the proceeds helped fund extensions to the Jubilee Garage in Abbey Road, built on to the side of the existing building, so taking up the remaining frontage of the vicarage gardens.

Ron’s son, Robin (Bob), who had joined the garage in 1952 after working for the Rootes Group in Coventry, stayed until 1969 when he left to start a new career in business and four years later formed his own consultancy company. Steve Ayliff, who had joined Edward Pearce and Company as an errand boy, eventually rose to be managing director of the Jubilee Garage (Bourne) Ltd, until it finally closed in 1978. The premises were sold and after a short spell as a showroom for specialised used cars the building was taken over by the present owners, Fenland Shops Limited. Ron and his wife retired to Colsterworth and when he died in 1974, aged 73, Mrs Pearce moved to Chester to be near their son, Robin, who died in 2010, aged 79.

Abbey Road in 1970 - the Jubilee Garage can be seen further
down on the right.

See also Thomas Pearce