Jaguar's link with Bury's mayoralty revealed

When Roger Wood sought the early history of his 1961 Jaguar Mark IX he asked Bury Free Press readers for help.

He now not only knows who its first owner was, but has a picture from St Edmundsbury Council of him as mayor of Bury St Edmunds Borough.

Roger, from Stainborough near Barnsley, has a Jaguar Daimler Trust certificate recording the car was built on March 14, 1961, and delivered to RGE Olle two weeks later by the Bury St Edmunds Engineering Company.

But the history of RGV1 was a mystery from then until it was acquired by the Sharpe family collection, in which it stayed until the collection was sold by Christies in July 2005. It was in two more collections before Roger bought it in 2014.

Three days after the story was in the BFP, Roger said: "I had an very interesting call from a gentleman called Charles Crack who actually collected the Jag from The Priory [now a hotel] a couple of years after Mr Olle's demise.

"He got the car running after been stood for quite a while, prior to being sold by the executors."

Mr Crack knew Mr Olle was an ex-mayor and freeman of the borough.

Robert Olle was Mayor of Bury for the year from May 21, 1953, so wasmayor for the Queen's coronation. He had also organised the borough celebrations for her father's coronation.

He died, aged 85, in 1975 leaving the council a bequest for the Olle Centrepiece, a 25 inch plate with the borough's heraldic arms surrounded by the 25 shields of barons who met in Bury in 1214 to draw up the Magna Carta.