A campaign is underway in England to save the country’s oldest petrol station from being converted into a home for its new owners, who have already spent £60,000 on surveys for their project.
The station, which operated from 1919 until 2010, is in the small village of Turnastone, Herefordshire. The present owners, a software engineer and his wife, bought it in 2023 to use as a retirement home.
The campaigners, who include celebrities such as former Top Gear presenter Tiff Needell, want to preserve it as a museum. It’s already a Grade II-listed site. Needell believes he visited the station while filming the show in the 1990s. He told reporters that “It is the perfect slot, if I was making a film now I would get the car to go past the garage to re-enact how it was. Just don’t taint it when you can buy a house elsewhere.”
The owners, meanwhile, say their plans won’t really detract from the site at all. They’ve told press that “It is kind of strange really, we are not anti people coming and taking photos of the pumps with their cars, and we are going to keep the pumps. “There were some signs on the building that were taken off before we bought it, which we have in storage which will go back up.
“We have spent all our available time working on the property to clear the rubbish and repair the walls and windows, including sourcing antique ‘wobbly’ glass, a labor of love. We plan to keep the petrol pumps and reinstate the enamel signs – this is all covered in the planning documents.”
