Swain & Jones of Farnham - Triumph Car Dealers 84A

Swain & Jones feature in this short post about a Standard Triumph car dealers in Farnham.

Swain & Jones original 1908 premises

Swain & Jones car dealership, closed its showroom in East Street, Farnham in November 2015 after  more than 100 years of trading.

Quoting from the Farnham Herald: 

Frank Swain and Jack Lewis-Jones opened the original Swain & Jones workshop at 38 East Street, on the opposite side of the road to the modern showroom, in 1908, just a decade after Farnham’s John Henry Knight invented one of Britain’s first ever motor cars.

However, after 107 years selling brands including Austin, Morris, Wolseley, Riley and most recently Jaguar, the family-run dealership will leave Farnham for good on November 20 after its 33-year relationship with Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) came to an abrupt end.

Swain & Jones’ current chairman Peter Lewis-Jones, the third generation of his family to run the business, condemned JLR’s decision not to renew its fixed-term agreement at the cost of one of the UK’s longest-running car dealerships and 34 jobs as “extraordinary and disappointing”.

He said: “Only a few years ago the company was the top performing independent Jaguar retailer in the country. Sadly this has counted for nothing and the Jaguar and Land Rover franchises ceased on October 19.

The site has now been redeveloped

I have a record of  Swain & Jones being listed as a Triumph car dealer directory dated October 1955.

Plea for information

If you have any more information or recollections about Swain & Jones or any other Farnham area Standard Triumph dealer such as photos of window stickers, dealer badges or sill plates etc please let me know. I can be contacted via the comments to this post or on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/stephen.weblin

Further information and sources

Link to the other articles in this series.

Link to post about the Tourist Trophy Garage Farnham

Link to facebook page: Triumph Car Dealers.

Link to my Triumph Car Dealers Flickr group which includes many photos of Standard Triumph garages etc from my collection and many other contributors .

I have a collection of Standard Triumph car dealer directories: http://vitessesteve.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/triumph-car-dealer-directories.html

Picture credits:Swain & Jones original 1908 premises photo from Farnham Herald article 9 November 2015