Finding Women's Stories in the BMIHT Archive

As part of her work in the BMIHT Archive, our Project Officer, Grace Jordan, has been researching women's histories to craft digital expansions to the British Motor Museum. 

In September 2025, research began for a project to produce new digital accompaniments to the British Motor Museum’s exhibitions. The project, working with developer Panivox and funded by an Innovate UK Launchpad grant, aims to support the improvement of Panivox’s RichCast software, a storytelling platform which can be used to create new and exciting digital experiences for cultural heritage institutions.

The project is shaped around the creation of two distinct digital experiences: a pocket guide to accompany the Making British Cars exhibit, and a kiosk which is based around the exploration of a few key themes.

To engage with digital storytelling, the first step is to find the stories. Thus began a period of research into the body of collections held by the British Motor Industry Heritage Trust Archive. These collections cover a large number of British motor manufacturers, motoring periodicals, and significant individuals connected to the motor industry; they come in a wide range of forms, including documents, drawings, objects, photographs, and film.

As part of this research, a concerted effort was made to give due attention to the women’s stories which exist in the Archive, which have heretofore been generally hidden and overlooked. Women exist across the history of British motor manufacture, but are less well documented, and detailed records of them can often be difficult to find.

The research for this project was able to identify a few key stories, which show the presence of women across the motor industry over the last 130 years or so. One story which garnered much interest upon its discovery was the self-titled ‘How Far for Five Pounds’ trial, found recorded across two printed booklets, a handwritten reminiscence, and a typed letter. This story, told across these pieces of documentary evidence, gives an account of how, in 1928, Rover conducted a trial of its new car, the Rover Ten, which involved finding out how far the car could go on £5 of petrol with four occupants. The drivers chosen for this trial were sisters and experienced motorcyclists Betty and Nancy Debenham (of the Debenham department store name). They, with an RAC observer and Rover Company representative in tow, drove over two thousand miles, with money left over at the end (to compare, in 2026, £5 of petrol might get you somewhere closer to between 30 and 50 miles, depending on the car).

   This story, for something which exists across so little documentary evidence, is remarkably well fleshed-out, the booklets being authored by Betty and Nancy themselves and containing images of the trial. The documents which revealed this event were discovered within the papers of H.B. Light, formerly the Rover Company historian. Online information on the £5 trial is extremely limited; the Science Museum Group holds the scrapbooks of Dudley Henry Noble, who seems to have been the mastermind behind the trial, but there is nothing available online which possesses the depth and detail found in H.B. Light’s collection. Without his work to preserve Rover’s heritage, we might have very little knowledge of the trial. 

 Further research reveals a little more context on the figures of Betty and Nancy Debenham. Betty won gold in a 1926 motorcycle trial, and Nancy came first in a 200-mile reliability trial in the same year. The two published a book, Motorcycling for Women, in 1928, and were both attached to the BSA (Birmingham Small Arms) works team. It was likely their experience completing long drives, alongside their publicity value, that recommended them to Rover for the £5 trial. The two were seasoned travellers and pioneers in motorcycling, always testing the limits of what could be accomplished on both two and four wheels. 

   Another favourite from the research was the story of two convalescent homes in Weston-super-mare, Inwood House and Eastern House, owned by parts supplier Lucas Industries. These houses hosted two-week all-expenses-paid holidays for company employees, and included full catering, day trips, and recreational activities. Inwood, the ladies’ home, was established in the 1920s, and was visited by over 7,000 women in just the first 21 years of its existence.

The Lucas company journal, Reflections, tells of various visits to Inwood by women over the years. Ella Morgan stayed at Inwood for three weeks in 1930 to recuperate after an illness. During her stay, she and the other women partook in a fancy dress ball, for which they made their own costumes. Inwood had ‘a general spirit of helpfulness’, Ella wrote, with ‘a genuine desire to aid the return of health’. 

Nearly forty years later, in October 1969, Lindsay Freeman wrote an article for Reflections about her trip to Inwood. In it, she describes the various women who accompanied her to Weston-super-mare, such as Betty Lucas, who had undergone an operation earlier in the year, and Ada Rivers, who was a retired employee of Shaftmoor Lane. The women on this visit went on a day trip to Cheddar Gorge and attended a dance, amongst other leisure activities. Betty Lucas walked one of Inwood’s dogs, Bryn, every evening, whilst the other women knitted, wrote postcards, and played cards. 

Inwood’s story is a compelling one, filled with multiple generations of women who benefited from its care. It provided respite, healing, socialisation and a holiday to a large number of working women who often shouldered a great deal of domestic labour on top of their employment with Lucas. 

Information on Inwood and Eastern house is mostly contained within a small collection of photographs, a few brochures, some legal correspondence, and articles in Reflections. Some information remains elusive, and the full stories of these properties remain incomplete; for example, there does not seem to be any record in the Archive as to when Inwood house ceased to be used by Lucas. Perhaps this part of the story is still waiting to be found amongst the Lucas collection, or perhaps the knowledge exists only in the memories of those who worked for the company. Research often identifies as many gaps as it fills. No doubt there are thousands of undocumented stories of women who visited Inwood over its lifetime as a convalescent home. The house still stands today in Weston-super-mare, but there is little to identify it as a place which hosted a great deal of Lucas’ female workforce.

These stories just scratch the surface of the relatively untapped potential of the Archive’s collections for research into women’s history. The £5 trial and the story of Inwood appear on the new museum kiosk, alongside other stories that relate to employee welfare, test driving, motor clubs and societies, and motorsports suppliers. Meanwhile, the new pocket guide gives further information on the individuals who were involved in the motor industry over the years. Both digital experiences are due to be rolled out on a trial basis in Spring 2026.