Anthony Standerwick Heal, the son of Ambrose and Edith Heal, was born in Pinner on 23 February 1907 but the family moved to Beaconsfield in 1917 and then to Knotty Green in 1920.

As a schoolboy he was fascinated by mechanical things but particularly by motor racing and was a regular spectator at Brooklands. As soon as he could afford a second hand sports car – a Frazer Nash – he started competing in trials, winning a silver medal on his first attempt in the 1931 MCC Lands End Trial. By 1935 he was driving a 30/98 Vauxhall and won a Premier Award in the London-Exeter Trial and this was followed by a silver medal in the London-Edinburgh Trial in 1936.

Around this time the Vintage Sports Car Club was formed by young enthusiasts who felt that cars mass-produced in the nineteen-thirties were not so much fun as the hand built, but by then cheap, sports cars of the twenties. Anthony was a leading member of the club for forty years, organizing and competing actively in their events. As well as taking part in trials he entered the Vauxhall in hill climbs and circuit races. He then rescued  and restored, with the help of Len Gibbs, a Fiat racing car built in 1910 with a 10-litre, 4 cylinder engine and chain drive, with which he became a frequent competitor. In 1937 he bought the 1919 5-litre Ballot Indianapolis racing car that had belonged to Humphrey Cook in 1922. Although he raced it a couple of times, by the time the engine had been rebuilt satisfactorily, war had broken out.

In 1939 he was part of the support team that accompanied Peter Clark’s HRG (co-driver Marcus Chambers) at the Le Mans 24 Hour Race. Whilst at Le Mans Anthony was approached to take part in the race by Shrubsall who had just purchased a new 4 litre Talbot Lago but was unhappy with the co-driver he had been allocated by the works. Shrubsall was informed at the last minute, after ‘un diner bien arrosé’, that he had to do night practice. His driving was too spectacular for the stewards and Lord Howe as President of the BRDC had the task of informing Shrubsall he would not be allowed  to race. Although Anthony did not get to drive the Talbot he came home with a firm invitation to be one of the drivers in Peter Clark’s HRG team the following year.

War intervened so the race never happened but when the first post-war race was held in 1949 Anthony Heal partnered Dudley Folland in the latter’s Aston Martin in a team managed by John Wyer. It was exceptionally hot and the car overheated and retired. The same team also took part in the Spa-Fancorchamps 24 Hour Race but this time the car had a steering failure and once again retired.

During the war Anthony rescued a number of historic racing cars to protect them from being scrapped. Most of these were later passed on to others for restoration but he kept the 1924  supercharged Grand Prix Sunbeam (that had been driven by Henry Segrave and Kenelm L Guinness when new) which he ran in hillclimbs, sprints and circuit races between 1946 and 1952. As a road car he bought a 1926 3-Litre Sunbeam super sports which he also raced (beating the 3-Litre Bentley team at Silverstone in 1949) and taking part in the Anglo-American Vintage Car Rally.

Anthony’s final race in a major competition was as co-driver with Len Gibbs in the latter’s lightweight HRG in the 1952 Goodwood Nine Hour Race. David Blakely also competed with the sister HRG. Gibbs and Heal finished in 13^th place after a delay to repair a headlamp damaged at the chicane while Gibbs was driving.

After this, due to increased work responsibilities at the family run furnishing business, and pressure from his colleagues to give up racing, Anthony turned to a 1919 steam road locomotive as a hobby.

Anthony Heal died on 25 March 1995. He is buried in the Heal family grave marked by a stone bench set into the wall to the right of the entrance to the graveyard extension.

© Oliver Heal, September 2021

David Moffat Drummond Blakely’s motor racing career was brief. It only lasted from 1951 to 1955 as it was cut short by his death, so we will never know if he could have gone on to greater things. His step-father, Humphrey Cook, encouraged David to try the hotel trade but David’s real interest was motor racing.

He started racing in club events in 1951 with a lightweight, ex-Le Mans, H.R.G. with which he had some success. The H.R.G. was one of a pair that Len Gibbs of Slades Garage, Penn, had purchased in 1950. Gibbs kept one of them (HXR 530) which he and his wife Bluebelle raced regularly, but sold the second one (HLO 168) to Michael Keen who soon passed it on to David Blakely.  Herbert Druce remembers Michael Keen moved away from Tylers Green after he was involved in an accident at Goodwood, and David Blakely calling at the garage most days, living at The Orchard, only a few yards up Beacon Hil from Slades Garage.

During 1952 Blakely raced it several times at Goodwood and took part in the 8 Clubs Meeting at Silverstone (where Bluebelle Gibbs was also competing) before returning to Goodwood for the 9 Hour Race where he shared the driving with Anthony Findlater finishing 11th.

Also taking part in the 9 Hour race was Len Gibbs with Anthony Heal as co-driver in the other lightweight HRG. A year later Blakeley and Findlater were back at Goodwood for the 1953 9 Hour Race by which time the car had been fitted with an experimental twin-overhead camshaft engine developed by the HRG Works and on loan from them. The car retired with engine problems.

During the year David also started to drive for Lionel Leonard who had built a special bodied sports car with an MG engine in a Trojeiro chassis. The following year he raced this car at Snetterton, Oulton Park and in the sports car race at Silverstone on the day of the 1954 British Grand Prix.

In 1954, he set himself up as a sports car manufacturer with a legacy from his father. He employed Findlater to build a special tubular chassis with Volkswagen front suspension and a De Dion rear axle. The experimental engine from the HRG was fitted into this chassis which was named “The Emperor”. It was intended to offer cars like this for sale but finance was tight, and his step-father Humphrey Cook helped to settle some bills. In the Emperor’s first and last race at Brands Hatch on Boxing Day 1954, Blakely was able to finish in 2^nd place.

He was booked to race at the Goodwood Easter meeting 12th April 1955, two days after his tragic death. He had also been hired by Bristol Motor to drive one of the two factory Bristol 450 sportscars, (based on the ERA G-type Formula Two car of 1952), entered in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, scheduled to be contested in June of that same year, 1955.

How things would have evolved we do not know, as the story came to an abrupt and tragic end when David Blakely was murdered by his girlfriend Ruth Ellis on Easter Sunday, 10 April 1955. He is buried in Penn New Churchyard plot number 48.  His mother Anne lies in the adjacent plot number 30, with her husband Humphrey Cook, and they are remembered on the plaque in the new churchyard marking Humphrey Cook’s donation towards the comletion of the new churchyard..

Ruth Ellis was hanged at Holloway prison 13th July 1955, and buried there. During redvelopment work her body was exhumed and her family wanted her to be reburied at Holy Trinity Penn.  Out of respect for Anne Blakely/Cook, and David’s family the vicar, Oscar Muspratt refused, and she was reburied in the old churchyard at Amersham, under her maiden name Ruth Hornby.  Her son later had a breakdown and smashed her headstone, and the grave is now unmarked.

Sources: Ian Dussek, H.R.G. : The Sportsman’s Ideal, Dussek 2010.

www.racingsportscars.com

© Oliver Heal, September 2021

See also Notable Burials: David Blakely

Paddy Hopkirk MBE (1933 – 2022)

Patrick Barron Hopkirk, known to all as Paddy, is famous as the man who won the Monte Carlo Rally with a Mini, but this was just one highlight of a long and very varied motor racing career.

Born in Northern Ireland he dropped out of an Engineering degree at Trinity College Dublin to take a job as a VW car salesman which enabled him to spend as much time as possible taking part in rallies, driving tests, and hillclimbs. Having started driving a VW Beetle in 1952/53, he won his first circuit race at Phoenix Park in 1955 at the wheel of a Triumph TR2.

With the same car he also won the Irish 900 Mile Rally and this brought him to the attention of competition managers who started to offer him drives in the work’s teams. This started with Standard Triumph until, after several years, he was invited to join the Rootes Group competition department in 1960 for whom he took part in major international rallies with Sunbeam Rapiers and shared a Sunbeam Alpine with Peter Jopp in the 1961 Le Mans 24 Hour Race and Sebring 12 Hours.

1964 was the year of his famous Monte Carl Rally win. Starting from Minsk in the Soviet Union with co-driver Henry Lyddon, they battled through ice, snow, fog and freezing conditions to emerge triumphant and bring the first win of many for the Mini in a major international rally.

Over the next few years Paddy’s victories at the wheel of Mini-Cooper S’s included the 1966 Austrian Alpine, the 1967 Circuit of Ireland, the 1967 Acropolis and the 1967 Alpine Rallies. He continued to race Minis in the British Saloon Car championship and took a class win in the 1964 Spa 24-Hour Race.

He also became known as a successful transcontinental rally driver taking part in the 1968 London to Sydney Marathon with Alec and Tony Nash. In an underpowered BMC/Austin/Morris 1800 ‘Land Crab’, after driving across Europe, through Turkey, Afghanistan, India and from one side of Australia to the other they took second place overall.

In 1970 he finished fourth in the London to Mexico World Cup event with a Triumph 2.5i and in 1977 he came third in the second London-to-Sydney Marathon with a Citroen CX2400.

Although it was his rally successes which made Paddy a household name, he also competed in major sports car races such as the Targa Florio, Sebring 12 Hours and the Le Mans 24 Hour Race with different MGs.

After his retirement from active competition Paddy established an association with BMW as an Ambassador for the second generation MINI brand, and oversaw the introduction of a special edition Paddy Hopkirk Cooper S. He also gave his time freely to several charities including Wheelpower, SKIDZ (of High Wycombe) and the Integrated Education Fund for Northern Ireland. He was appointed MBE in 2016. Continuing the work started by Earl Howe and Humphrey Cook, from 2017 to 2019 he was President of the British Racing Driver’s Club.

Paddy Hopkirk lived for many years at Parsonage Farm, Penn.

He died 21st August 2022, and is buried at the end of the left-hand path in the graveyard, plot number 57A.

Oliver Heal, August 2022.  Source: BRDC Obituary.