Pounds Yard question

[Jack]

Just following on from a thread in the Tracked Vehicles regarding BARV's.

 

So with regards to Pounds Yard - were they the official Government 'scrap' man or were they a military surplus dealer in general?

[Adrian Barrell]

They were one of the scrap dealers, though to be fair, they were in it in a big way with warship dealing included. There were many firms dealing in WD surplus vehicles, few survived as long as Pounds though!

[David Herbert]

Pounds were primarily ship breakers and dealers. Because they were big enough and used to working with heavy scrap they were able to get involved with scrapping tanks and could bid for large contracts. What made them unusual was that they took quite a lot back to their very large site in Portsmouth and did very little to them. Most of the big scrap dealers processed their historic artifacts into scrap very quickly, usually cutting it up where it was purchaced from.

 

Some of the millitary spares dealers bought parts from Pounds to sell into the international arms market but mostly the tanks suffered from being at the seaside too long. When I first went there, virtually complete Churchill VIIs were £3000 and Centaur Dozers and engineless M10s were £1800. I tried to by an M10 but the price magicaly went up to £2500 which was obviously crazy so I walked away. There seems to have been some inflation since then!

 

Pete Gray was one of the first collectors to buy from Pounds and accidentaly got his M10 (which still had its engines) to tow start in the yard when it turned out to be in gear as they moved it with what is now the Cadmans BARV.

 

David

[Rick W]

Lets not forget Mr Marchant and his role in this as well. Probably responsible for the whole MV movement. A very modest man but a wealth of knowledge and vehicles. He still has several very large outbuildings full of MV's still in original wartime paint, all he does is maintain them so that they run. I have seen a few Universal Carriers, CMP's a couple of dozers running. There is still a lot in his sheds that never sees the light of day. He recently brought one of his CMP's to our show and on chatting to him he revealed that he was also responsible for clearing out all the POW camps from the Beds/Bucks area. He still has all the POW records.When I was restoring the C8 he told me that he had just taken a load of C8 parts to the scrap man as part of a clear out!