This week we are featuring a photograph of the Page & Hunt Sports Club football team who were winners of the Second Division Farnham District League 1925-26. 

Page & Hunt was a coach building company based in Wrecclesham that, two years after this picture was taken, in 1928, would become ED Abbott Ltd – more commonly known as Abbott’s of Farnham, a well-known sub-contractor in the motor industry.

Abbott’s was renowned for building bespoke Rolls-Royce, Bentley, and Lanchester motor cars and among its famous customers were David Lloyd-George and Rudyard Kipling. However, the company also built commercial vehicles such as the ‘Farnham Blue’ buses that travelled routes around the area and would have been very familiar to local people. 

The company specialised in fitting car bodies for the likes of Daimler, Talbot, Lagonda and Aston Martin in the 1930s and then Healy, Bentley and Lanchester among others in the post-war period.

 In the 1950s and ’60s they designed and produced the Consul and Zephyr estate cars for Ford, but the success of these models prompted Ford to take production back ‘in house’, a move that led to the closure of Abbott’s in 1972.

The photograph of the football team was shared with Peeps by Jill Edwards at the suggestion of Len Huff, who is writing a history of Abbott’s. 

Mrs Edwards’s father, Stanley Percival Goode (born 1908), was a well-known local footballer and cricketer, who captained the Page & Hunt football team and can be seen holding the trophy in the centre of the front row of the picture. 

He was employed as a coach trimmer by Page & Hunt and was proud to have worked on the upholstery of a car presented to Baden Powell.

Later, Mr Goode went on to train as an electrician, working for the Farnham Gas and Electricity Company and became captain of their football team.

Also in the photograph are two members of the Page family – Arthur Page as president and Mr AM Page as vice president, and Mr Huff has also recognised the names of some of the other players who went on to work for Abbott’s. 

“Holdaway and Hack are certainly later  employees with Abbotts, and I wonder if H. Goatcher was a member of the Sturt & Goatcher firm of coachbuilders and auto engineers, in Farnham,” he said. 

It would be interesting to know if any of the keen footballers pictured still have relatives living in the area. 

Do you recognise a grandfather or uncle among the team members? 

Or perhaps you have memories of working for Abbott’s or photographs from that time you would like to share? If so, Peeps would love to hear from you. Contact [email protected]