The opening of the County Classics Museum came amid great fanfare. Taunton council agreed to close North Street to allow lots of local classic car lovers to park up in front of the museum, while a large cadre of press arrived to cover the event and crowds of locals cheered while TV’s Richard Hammond cut the ribbon and threw open the door.
This marked a new dawn for a building that has been a feature of the Somerset town’s centre since the early 1830s. Until 2019 it was County Stores, a family-run emporium that sold an eclectic array of food, gifts, clothing and jewellery. There was a café, a coffee roaster and a post office on the premises. It was an old-fashioned establishment, and the winds of modern commerce blew hard against it. There was a great deal of sorrow locally when it finally closed.
Meanwhile, Pat Hawkins had a project in mind, and was seeking a home for it. A town centre shop with a couple of bay windows doesn’t, on the face of it, seem the most likely venue for a classic car museum, but Patthe building is enormous, stretching some 110m (360ft) back over several floors, with a big warehouse door at the rear. With a little work, he reasoned, it could be perfect for what he had in mind.
