Saw Alan Chandler buy this at Spring Beaulieu - rare thing. This is in his own words..

Back at the Beaulieu Spring Autojumble this Spring, a fellow stall holder brought to me a coin operated attachment for a very early petrol pump. The unit was constructed with a cast iron body with a sophisticated mechanism requiring a one shilling coin to operate the mechanism.

No indication of which pump it would have been fitted to was shown, but the full manufacturers name and operating instructions were affixed with their address.

I contacted the company as they still existed, but although they were helpful, they had no information or drawings associated to the mechanism.

The unit was made about 100 years ago in the early days of the Slack & Parr Engineering Co.

So my research began to identify the correct pump this would have been manufactured to fit. Three factors limited the pump used. It required a continually wound pump to deliver the fuel, had to have a matching curvature on the door to match the mounting bracket of the coin attachment, and needed to be in common use in the mid 1910’s. Only one choice was available, the Gilbert and Barker T8 (“Fat Lady” pump.)

I soon purchased a donor T8 requiring restoration to begin consideration of how to link the mechanism of the G&B pump to the coin mechanism. The unit could only fit in one place on the door to remain parallel to the pump thus giving me the exact mounting position. It then required the extension of the drive shaft and fitting of a second original gearbox, which I had in my spares collection, to connect the drive to the coin mechanism. I then made the male section of the connection as shown in the attached photos to bring the two units together.

Now complete the unit now with both doors closed and locked can be used “out of hours” with a one Shilling coin, yet during opening manned hours, the rear door can be opened, thus disconnecting the coin mechanism, and used as a normal T8 pump.

I restored the pump to match the distressed paintwork of the coin unit and added Shell artwork to complete the restoration.

An interesting piece of history and probably a unique survivor.

Hope you find it of interest.

Regards,

Alan.