Your carriage awaits: 140 years of chauffeured cars
For more than 140 years, four generations of the Wallman family from Cambridge have been ferrying people around the town in their chauffeur-driven carriages and cars. And what a journey it's been.
Always pristine in cap and uniform, they have crisscrossed the streets of Cambridge in everything from horse-drawn carriage to Model T Ford; from gleaming Austin Sheerline to shiny Humber Hawk.
To celebrate his family's extraordinary motoring history, Eric Wallman, 59, has now created a website charting his family firm's roadgoing progress from horse to Jaguar XJS.
"We found all these wonderful family photos and I just wanted to share them with our customers - in part so they'd know we were reliable," he says.
"After all, if we could show we'd been around for nearly a century and a half, they'd know we weren't some flyby-night firm."
For Eric, the business was always in the blood. "When I was a boy, cars dominated our family. We all loved them. We had to earn our pocket money.
"A Saturday morning washing cars for me and my three brothers would earn us a Saturday afternoon at the pictures. It was a good exchange."
Over the past century and a half, the job has changed immeasurably. Instead of worrying about blacksmiths bills, and the fear of a horse going lame, as his great grandfather used to, Eric's worries are about speed cameras and his satnav system. But the biggest difference is our evershrinking world.
"Last night I received an e-mail from someone in Cyprus asking me to pick them up at Heathrow Airport," he says.
"For my father, that would have sounded like science fiction. God only knows what my great-grandfather would have made of it."
But now, thanks to Eric, everyone can enjoy this remarkable trip through their family history.
