COMMUNITY

THE INVALID TRICYCLE ASSOCIATION AT ASHWELLTHORPE HALL - part of the Ashwellthorpe community for over 40 years

In the early 1950s, it was difficult to find suitable holiday accommodation for disabled people, with stairs always being a problem and few hotels or guest houses having lifts or bedrooms on the ground floor. By 1954, fund-raising by the Invalid Tricycle Association (later to become the Disabled Drivers' Association) had started for a holiday centre suitably adapted for its members.

The Invalid Tricycle Association was founded in 1948 after the great amount of interest shown in the country following the crossing of the Swiss Alps by OA "Denny" Denly, in his Argson motorised invalid carriage issued to him by the Department of Health in 1947. Such vehicles enabled disabled people to become more mobile and achieve greater independence and his travels were broadcast on the BBC Radio Home Service to large audiences. 

Ashwellthorpe Hall, the ancestral home and estate of the Berners Barony, had been sold out of the family in 1918 and purchased in 1921 for £3,450 by Major Leslie Fletcher, who later put it up for sale by Auction in 1954. In a sale advert in Country Life of May 1954, the Hall was described as having 6 principal and 4 secondary bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, lounge, hall and 3 reception rooms together with central heating. It was being sold with 2 cottages, extensive outbuildings and 26 Acres of gardens and grounds.

The original £2,000 target was reached in Spring 1955, but the amount needed for the purchase and all the works required had, by then, also risen. Eventually, the Holiday Centre idea came to fruition in 1957 when the Association was able to purchase (in principle) the Hall for £4,500 and work could start on its restoration, modification and furnishing. There were many branches of the ITA throughout the country and much fund-raising was organised – there was a silver paper and milk bottle tops collection started with the Surrey branch aiming to raise £300 for furnishing bedrooms to be called the Surrey Rooms. The London Evening News reported, in an article on 25 October 1957, the ITA had bought an Elizabethan mansion in Norfolk "to convert into a holiday home for their members. Ramps and lifts will be installed".

Dry rot and lack of main drainage were existing major problems and with the various modifications needed, work parties were set up by ITA groups all around the country, roping in friends to help. However, on 19 April 1958, the Middlesex County Times newspaper reported that the Chairman of the Holiday Centre Committee had told a meeting of the Middlesex Group of the ITA that the plans for Ashwellthorpe Hall were to open the ground floor only but "this required £5,000 and they had only half of that"; and the Bristol Evening News reported on 23 June 1958 that the Hall might have to be sold before it could even open as a holiday home as £20,000 still had to be raised.

This funding shortfall delayed the opening of the Holiday Centre although at 1959 Whitsun, an ITA group spent a working weekend there "bringing with them everything but the kitchen sink". The Holiday Home of the ITA at Ashwellthorpe Hall finally was due to open in 1960 but there was still fund-raising to be done. For example, on 29 April 1960, the Wood Green and Southgate Weekly Herald reported that the 4,000 members of the 70 ITA Groups from all over the country were trying to lay "an imaginary line of coins from London to Ashwellthorpe Hall, near Norwich – a distance of approximately 100 miles". The picture below shows that just over 10 x 1d coins make up 1 (Imperial) foot and there are 5,280 feet in 1 (Imperial) mile.

Over 5,280,000 1d coins, laid edge to edge, would be required. This fund-raising scheme quickly gained a nickname, with a correspondent to the Daily Mirror asking what is this Penny Grand Prix race which is to be held in the summer? The Diss Express newspaper reported that a house to house collection in several parishes in Hartismere district, Suffolk, collected 4,248 pennies - £17. 14s. 0d. (£17.70). The aim of the ITA was to collect £22,000 in total to pay off a mortgage and complete the work of adapting the Hall for use by about 40 guests.

The ITA membership had grown by this time to 4,000 from the original 8 founder members of 1948, and over 300 members from groups all over England, Scotland and Wales attended the official opening ceremony of Ashwellthorpe Hall Hotel on 11 May 1963. This was performed by Rupert Davies, well-known then as Maigret from the BBC TV series who was the Vice-President of the ITA and had helped the final impetus for fund-raising by making a Television appeal to help raise the money for the lift. 

By 1963, many more options of cars with various adaptations had become available for use rather than the motorised tricycle, so in 1963 the ITA merged with another charity – the Disabled Drivers' Association – to widen the membership. Thus began the chapter of the DDA's ownership of Ashwellthorpe Hall.