Space, Birchfield Garage, Much Wenlock, Shropshire, 1990

The three pumps—1920s Bowser, and 1950s/60s Gilbarco and Beckmeter—are, remarkably, still in place along with the garage building and "Birchfield Garage" signwriting, which has led to this being a very popular photoshoot location for classic cars and bikes (as well as abandoned infrastructure photos). There are many photos on Flickr and elsewhere. Streetview link:
maps.app.goo.gl/7Wn4Joe6chaGZesa7. Sarah Brazier, granddaughter of the garage owner Mick Hands, mentioned in a recent Facebook comment that the Space globe had been stolen many years ago. Recent photos on Facebook show that the pumps have started to be repainted and a repro "Esso Extra Motor Oil" sign has been attached to the Bowser pump.

However, this Reliant publicity photo, used in the 1990 brochure for the short-lived Scimitar SST (with another slightly different variant, taken at "golden hour", used in other publicity material), shows what the modern photos don't: the Space globe on the Beckmeter pump. (A photo in the Birmingham Evening Mail, 1 June 1985, shows that the Space globe was at that time on the middle Gilbarco pump.)

Space was a brand used by Wenbridge Storage Ltd, sometime VIP distributors (I believe), based at Farley Oil Terminal just outside Much Wenlock, in what had been Bradley Quarry (Streetview: maps.app.goo.gl/hqQC8Lv4NrT4Ukqe8) adjacent to Farley Halt railway station, closed in 1962. It's not clear when Wenbridge Storage started using the Space name, but they probably never supplied more than a handful of garages in the local area. The 1981 Institute of Petroleum Retail Marketing Survey lists Space as having just two outlets at that point. The globe in the photo appears to be glass, which suggests that it is from before the mid-1970s when most pump globes had gone over to plastic, but that's just a guess.

Either way: Wenbridge Storage and Wenbridge Oil were sister companies of the Tui Oil Company, founded in 1964 as a Gulf Oil distributor and based at the former Presthope railway station on Wenlock Edge, just south of Much Wenlock, now a residential park, Presthope Grange. Presthope station had closed in 1951.

The Tui Oil story

Tui was named after the "boisterous" Tūī bird of New Zealand by the company's founder, Leslie John Eagle, who had been a pilot during the war and then emigrated to New Zealand, to farm land near Horohoro, just south-west of Rotorua. Returning to the UK in the early 1960s, and moving to Burn Brae, Hope Bowdler (just a few miles west of Wenlock Edge), he learned from his brother-in-law, a farmer in Herefordshire, of opportunities supplying oil to farmers' cooperatives, saw the derelict station at Presthope, and saw Gulf Oil's rapid expansion with a new ocean terminal at Ellesmere Port (opened in 1963) and a new bulk distribution terminal at West Bromwich. Gulf were looking for distributors for 'Gulfarm' farm fuels and Gulfglow heating oil / paraffin. Gulf had moved into petrol retailing in the UK in 1962, first with a high-profile site in Birmingham. Tui Oil (first appearing in the phone book in 1963) thus became a Gulf distributor in Shropshire, Cheshire, and North Wales, and acquired three second-hand tankers, painted in Gulf's blue and orange livery with the Gulf 'solar heat' logo on the back. Tui had large fuel tanks placed on the former station platform at Presthope, and made use of the one of the former railway buildings as an office. Although Wenlock Borough Council were supportive of the new venture, seeing it as in keeping with the limestone quarry industry also operating along Wenlock Edge, Salop County Council (as it was called at the time) refused Tui planning permission and a process of appeals ensued, including Eagle going to the Ministry of Housing & Local Government (Birmingham Post, 29 April and 13 August 1964). In time the company would move again (see below).

The autobiography of the racing cyclist Frank Clements, A Bike Ride Through My Life (2011)—which provided many of the details I'm including here—gives a picture of the early days of Tui. At the time Clements became involved with Tui, he was a travelling lubricants and anti-freeze salesman for Liddiard Lubricants—makers of Celerine—of East Finchley (who later moved to Earl's Court), covering rural Shropshire. One day, intrigued by the activity at the disused Presthope station, he called in, and soon joined the new venture, becoming General Manager.

At this point, Tui were Gulf distributors only for Gulfarm farm fuels (low-duty red diesel (gas oil) for off-road use, and presumably normal full-duty road diesel (DERV) too but only for sale to farm users) and heating oil (paraffin), but Clements recounts a number of cases of "bending the rules"—a local haulier buying Gulf diesel from Tui in cash and then selling it to his own company, to get it at a cheaper price than he could do from Shell, with whom he had a contract; Esso Blue dealers buying Gulfglow Premium Kerosene paraffin (which was also blue) from Tui and selling it as Esso (the Token Blue Paraffin trademark case of a few years later has lots of fascinating details of this sort of practice); and Tui using their 4000 gallon tanker to collect fuel from Gulf's Ellesmere Port terminal which was in the Inner Zone (therefore cheaper) and sell it in the Midlands (in the more expensive General Zone), presumably at the same price as Gulf's own West Bromwich terminal, thus giving Tui an extra profit on each load.

But it was a more direct kind of rule-breaking that would presage Tui's later failure. Clements describes how fuel loaded at Gulf's Ellesmere Port terminal as gas oil regularly failed to have the legally required red dye added, and so when it arrived in Shropshire would be put into the normal DERV tanks, and then sold as such. While described as a failure of the red dye injection pump at the Gulf terminal, which (giving them the benefit of the doubt) might have been true initially, later evidence reported in the newspapers suggested a more systemic pattern of illegality.

Sister companies, Wenbridge Oils, Wenbridge Storage, and Wrekin Heating Installations (presumably selling the Gulfplan central heating package), were set up around 1967, and the business expanded. As the 1960s went on, Tui moved from Presthope to Stoke Heath near Market Drayton (in 1965–66). Wenbridge Storage had premises at Farley as discussed above. However, by 1967, Tui owed Gulf nearly £200,000, and Gulf resolved this (as sometimes seemed to happen with authorised distributors) by buying Tui's premises and equipment (at Stoke Heath, I think), and enabling Tui to continue as commission operators, not having to pay up front for any of the oil.

Tui's downfall: 'Monstrous fraud'

A 2-week court case at Stafford Assizes in 1970 revealed a complex scheme that Tui / Wenbridge had operated, together with Cannock Road Garages of Wolverhampton, one of the garages they supplied (I don't know what brand Cannock Road Garages sold fuel under at this time—could it have been a Gulf or even Space site?). Eagle "conceived and nurtured the plot" according to the prosecutor, orchestrating a "tangled web of deceit and fraud". About 7,000 documents from the companies involved were presented in evidence in court.

The scheme sounds quite clever, making use of the fact that while the Customs & Excise regime around the dyeing of gas oil vs undyed DERV, and records / inspections of the quantities bought and sold by companies, and the quantities of dye used, was meant to make the transactions easy for the authorities to keep track of (and check that the correct duty on DERV had been remitted), the basic truth is that fuel bought by the end customer is burned and thus disappears, and there is no tracking of when—or even whether—a customer actually does use the fuel. This 'loophole' was what Tui / Wenbridge exploited.

From the details available in contemporary newspaper accounts of the case (I am leaving out most of the defendants' and witnesses' names):

—Between July 1967 and June 1969, twice a week, when Tui / Wenbridge's tankers arrived at Gulf's Ellesmere Port depot, one or more of a small group of Gulf workers (paid up to £25 a time by Tui / Wenbridge) would turn off the red dye valve while the tankers loaded gas oil, later pouring the dye down the drain. This was estimated at 500,000 gallons per year.

—Wenbridge / Tui supplied Cannock Road Garages with (at least) 250,000 gallons of (undyed) gas oil which was then sold (presumably, retailed to the public) as DERV. Cannock Road Garages paid Wenbridge / Tui 4s 1d. per gallon for the fuel, as opposed to 4s. 9d. per gallon for DERV from their previous supplier. The 24-year old bookkeeper for Cannock Road Garages was one of the defendants in the case, together with her uncle. Both denied they had any knowledge of what Wenbridge / Tui was up to, and said they had no reason to be suspicious.

—The duty payable on DERV at the time ranged from 3s 6d. to 4s. 7d. over the period concerned—on 250,000 gallons, about £46,000 in duty was avoided (nearly £1 million in 2023 prices). Gas oil (red diesel) attracted duty of 2d. or 3d. a gallon at the time.

—An account for a fictional customer, G.B. Williams of 181 Birmingham New Road, Wolverhampton, was created at Wenbridge Storage, at the behest of Eagle. G.B. Williams would 'buy' large quantities of (dyed) gas oil from Wenbridge, who in turn would obtain it legitimately, but in fact it would be delivered to Tui's own tanks (at Stoke Heath, presumably), to make up for the (undyed) gas oil that had been supplied to Cannock Road Garages (and other customers?). It was suggested that the two Wenbridge companies had been set up specifically for the purpose of accounting for discrepancies in tank readings (presumably because of Customs & Excise audits?)

—The secretary of Tui was puzzled by the differences between the costs of Tui's purchases and the sales revenue, including "difficulties" with the G.B. Williams account, but decided not to raise it with Eagle due to his tendency to be "rather melodramatic" when questioned.

—Eagle, 55 at the time, was jailed for 4 years—in what the judge called a "monstrous fraud"—while four other employees / associates of Tui / Wenbridge were jailed for 9–18 months each. Tui was fined £2000; the two Wenbridge companies £100 each. But Cannock Road Garages, their bookkeeper, and her uncle, were all exonerated.

—After the trial, Gulf temporarily employed five Tui staff members at Stoke Heath (Birmingham Post, 26 Feb 1972). In 1972 Eagle was brought from prison to attend a tribunal brought by five ex-Tui staff who sought redundancy payments, and he was ordered to pay them. In time, the depot was taken over by Fuel Fast, in this area Gulf distributors. The story of Fuel Fast, later part of Hunting, is covered here www.flickr.com/photos/danlockton/53108776760.

Subsequent events

By 1975 Cannock Road Garages was selling ICI petrol. The site (122 Cannock Road, Wolverhampton) today, now known as Cannock Road Garage (singular) does, I think, have an older building behind the façade, but I don't know when petrol sales ended maps.app.goo.gl/BsjtxX2jJPQsfvsU9 — a short distance further along the road is an apparently closed Essar site.

What happened to Eagle after his release from prison? I don't know.

While Tui Oil was presumably wound up, Wenbridge remained in business, operating from the Farley Oil Terminal, and I think a VIP distributor — a 1971 phone book listing says they are "VIP Distributors of Farm & Heating Oil for Shopshire, Staffordshire and Worcestershire". In 1975 their own-brand antifreeze (I wonder whether it was branded 'Space'?) was commended by the West Midlands Consumer Protection Department as the best value for money, at only 35p a pint compared with 10–15p per pint more for major brands. If Wenbridge continued as VIP distributors, they would have moved over to Elf by the late 1970s. Although, I do know that the 1973 oil crisis led VIP to cease supply to a number of their smaller customers (most famously Sky Petroleum).

How many Space sites did Wenbridge supply? I don't know. By 1983 they had vanished from the Institute of Petroleum's annual retail marketing survey. However. Wenbridge Storage is still listed at Farley in the 1984 phone book for West Midland (North), which is as close to the present as the online phone book archive goes. How long did the company continue after that?

There's no particular conclusion here, other than a reminder for me of just how interesting it can be to go down the rabbit-hole of investigating the forgotten stories of petrol retailing in the UK—how (for me) noticing an unusual globe on a pump in a brochure in 1990 can lead to uncovering such fascinating details.

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Taken in: UK / England / Much Wenlock / Much Wenlock (show map)

Taken on: January 1, 1990

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