Gulliver’s Travels – the Le Mans connection

The Isle of Canna and Canna House are known for their precious archives of folklore, Gaelic song and Hebridean photographs from the early 20th century. Less well known is the unlikely connection between this tiny island and the world-famous Le Mans car race, held annually on the Circuit de la Sarthe in the town of Le Mans in the Pays de la Loire region of western France.

In 1936, 20-year-old Cambridge engineering undergraduate George Campbell, younger brother of folklorist John Lorne Campbell (who was, at this point, living with his wife Margaret on the island of Barra), bought a 1931-constructed Invicta S-type sports car from the mother of his best friend. His friend had bought it new but sadly died at a young age. As an undergraduate, George was not allowed to keep the car on campus but, as was the custom with students (and apparently still is!), kept it in a garage in a village not far from Cambridge. Thanks to John’s nephew (George’s son) Neill Campbell, I’ve been able to fill in many of the blanks in the story of how these images came to be in the Canna collections.

The Invicta car company was set up in the mid-1920s by car and boat designer Sir Noel Campbell Macklin, with the objective of producing British sports cars to rival companies such as Bentley and Rolls Royce. George’s S-type model, with its revolutionary low-slung chassis, was first launched in 1930 at the Olympia Motor Show. Only 77 of these cars were ever produced, due to the hefty cost; the last S-type was made in 1933. The cars themselves are still highly prized, with most of the originals apparently still on the road and many of them having nicknames! George’s name for his car was Gulliver (or Gully), and it remained in the Campbell family until 1988 when it was sold to a friend at a hugely below market value rate. Much to the family’s chagrin, it was later sold for £250,000!

George was obviously very proud of his rather splendid car, with its distinctive number plate of JJ634. He took it on holiday with him to Europe, where his mother Ethel lived at her Villa Italiena in the Basque village of Guéthary, near Biarritz on the French side of the Spanish border. It was here that the car was photographed in the images in our archives by George’s sister-in-law: photographer and folklorist Margaret Fay Shaw Campbell.