Mr & Mrs Panks of Sparrow Hall

Hi there

I'm not sure exactly where to start with this so I'll start at the beginning and try to keep it simple - although there is a lot more information I can add later

In the 60s a Mr John T Panks & his wife Betty Panks lived at Sparrow Hall in Swalcliffe.

Mr Panks was high up in the motor industry (Rootes group for example) and had links with the USA (New York) despite being born in UK as far as I know.

Anyway. As a present to his wife he had the guys in the Rootes Competition Dept. convert a normal Hillman Imp into a little pick-up.

I bought the vehicle in the late 80s and have been trying to trace its history ever since.

I have one picture of the car taken a long long time ago (in the lanes around Warwick) but would love to find more. Even one would be like gold to me.

So in recent years, via the internet, I have managed to find out lots of little snippets about previous owners etc and even made contact with them . Well almost... one died a week before I phoned him. Another left for Thailand the week I traced him and isn't coming back.

Mr & Mrs Panks dies some time ago (1987 & 2006) and I thought they had no family so the chances of anyone keeping the family albums would be almost zero.

This week however i found out they did have children and again via the magic of the internet i have traced their 2 daughters.

This lead to some more interesting snapshots of times gone by.

One daughter married a prominent American in New York and the other a French chap also involved in the motor industry.

So my next step is to try to make contact with the daughters.

Meantime I thought it might be worth a try sharing the information newly gleaned with people who live in th area - hence this post.

I'll finish off for now with some pictures