Vixen picture has got us foxed

All aboard for a Wolverhampton mystery tour.

nostalgia pic. Wolverhampton. A Guy Motors bus pictured in 1956 - location not stated, but it outside a Wolverhampton park (by comparison with other pictures which feature the same gates and describe them as a 'Wolverhampton park' - possibly West Park, although if so the gates do not look like that now). This is a print which was in the Express and Star picture archive at Queen Street, Wolverhampton. The published caption pasted to the back reads: 'Guy passenger vehicles are to be encountered in all sorts of odd places in various parts of the world in an almost infinite variety of fetch-and-carry jobs. Some are humdrum, some are out of the ordinary, and into the latter category falls the task of this Vixen, photographed in a pleasant English country setting. It is based at Luton Hoo, the Bedfordshire home of Sir Harold Wernher, and during the summer months it carries thousands of visitors to Sir Harold's fine Robert Adam house where the famous Wernher Collection is on view... Between April and October the Vixen maintains a service between Luton Hoo and Luton railway station, meeting principal trains to and from London and Bedford. It links also with Green Line coaches and local transport services. During the 1955 season the 'Luton Hoo Vixen' carried nearly 8,000 passengers. The coach, which originally went into service in 1948, has recently been to Guy Motors works at Wolverhampton for a general routine mechanical overhaul.' It has a datestamp of April 20, 1956, which is probably when it was published, probably in the Wolverhampton Chronicle as 'W/Chron' is written by the caption. It has a copyright stamp of 'Industrial Photographic, 33 Dudley Road, Wolverhampton.' Old bus. Old buses. Old coach. Old coaches. The registration is JTE 398. Library code: Wolverhampton nostalgia 2024..

Admittedly there is no tour as such, but there is a mystery we're hoping you can help us with.

As any self-respecting local transport historian will know, this bus is a Wolverhampton-built Vixen from the stable of Guy Motors.

It is pictured here in April 1956. The setting is distinctive, with those intricate ornamental gates, the attractive parkland, and what appears to be the park's stone lodge on the left.

But here's our mystery for our picture detectives. Where was it taken? Our archive photo has no location information, but the spot also was used for some photoshoots of Wolverhampton-built Sunbeam cars in the early 1930s, and was vaguely described as "a Wolverhampton park."

Logic suggests that a prime candidate would be West Park, but if so the entrance gates are nothing like that now, and the same applies to East Park. And if indeed it is West Park, whatever happened to those wonderful gates, and why were they removed and where did they go?

Over to you on all that, but we can at least supply some information about the coach itself, which had originally gone into service in 1948.

As you can see from the wording on the side it was run by the Wernher Collection and has "Luton Hoo" on the front.

It was far from home, its visit to Wolverhampton being for a general routine mechanical overhaul at Guy Motors.

It was based at Luton Hoo, the Bedfordshire home of Sir Harold Wernher, and during the summer months it would carry thousands of visitors to Sir Harold's fine Robert Adam house where the famous Wernher Collection was on view.

Between April and October the Vixen maintained a service between Luton Hoo and Luton railway station, meeting principal trains to and from London and Bedford. It linked also with Green Line coaches and local transport services. During the 1955 season the Luton Hoo Vixen carried nearly 8,000 passengers.