A much-loved Rolls Royce from 1926 which was used as an ambulance before spending decades in a Stirling garage has a new home.
Ian Orkney, of Kings Park, who has owned the 1926 Rolls Royce 20-24 for 68 years, recently donated the prized possession to the transport collection at Glasgow’s Riverside Museum.
He bought the vehicle - registration G645 - in the 1950s and used it as a camper van.
It had previously been converted into an ambulance with the addition of mahogany and oak body.
The 93-year-old said last week: “I’ve owned the Rolls Royce since 1954 when I was in the UKAEA at Risley, Lancashire, as an engineer on the Dounreay Fast Reactor Design Team.
“I’m now just glad to have the old girl being well looked after by people who are obviously as interested in the vehicle as I was – and in the area in which she spent most of her working life, Glasgow.
“Good reliable engineering and good fun as well, even if she only did 18.6 mpg.”
Dr Orkney bought the vehicle in 1954 from a lecturer at Glasgow’s Royal College of Science and Technology (later Strathclyde University) with his first pay cheque from UKAEA, where he worked after leaving university in the early 1950s.
The RCSA lecturer had bought the Rolls Royce from the ambulance service a couple of years before.
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The vehicle started off as a private car owned by a Glasgow businessman M A Reynard. He gifted it to Glasgow Corporation and it was handed over to Glasgow Corporation Ambulance Service, who put the oak and mahogany panels onto it. In 1950 it was still on reserve and kept in the basement of the ambulance service building east of Royal College. Dr Orkney used the Rolls Royce, with fittings which included a bed and cooker, as accommodation on trips in Scotland and further afield.
He said: “It was well used as a camper van for touring, climbing, skiing, both from Risley and, since 1957, from my address in Stirling, until I had to take her off the road in about 1963 because of a broken front spring leaf.”
Transport and technology curator at Glasgow Life Museums Neil Johnson-Symington said this week: “The Rolls Royce was originally a 20hp Tourer before its conversion, and it has a truly remarkable history that will allow us to tell the story of a different era in Glasgow.
“The vehicle is getting some specialist conservation to prepare it for future display at the Riverside Museum.
“Dr Orkney’s generous gift brings tangible links to Glasgow’s economic and social history when it was used for Poor Law Sick Relief in Govan before being adapted for use by the Glasgow Corporation Ambulance Service.
“We understand the ambulance was used in the 1930s and 1940s to move patients to Glasgow Corporation Children’s Convalescent Home in Dumfriesshire and the Fever Hospital in Ruchill.
“We would love to hear from anyone who may have been carried in the ambulance or who knew a family member who did.”
