The late Les Oakes collection

Thimbleby & Shortland Auctioneers, Reading

Thimbleby & Shorland are holding a reduction sale of the late Les Oakes collection. To be held at Hales View Farm, Oakmoor Road, Cheadle, Stoke, Staff, ST10 4QR on Wednesday 29th July at 10am.

Les Oakes was somewhat of a celebrity in his area, born in 1938 at Lower Grange Farm, Cheadle, Staffordshire. At the age of 7 he was attending auctions with his Grandfather buying and selling horse-drawn vehicles and memorabilia, he was also buying and selling pigeons and ferrets from his school locker.

At the age of 11, whilst attending Cheadle Secondary Modern he had, unbeknown to his father, amassed over 70 horse-drawn vehicles and stored them at various local farms in and around Cheadle where he worked in the evenings and at weekends to pay for the storage costs.

To make the money to enable him to buy his vehicles and memorabilia he built wooden sheds out of ammunition boxes and sold them to the people of Cheadle and the surrounding areas. He also ran an Architectural Salvage business reclaiming various items from demolition sites which he sold and also re-used in his buildings at Hales View Farm as and when further storage facilities where required for his ever growing collection.

He carried on attending auctions and increasing the size of his collection up until his tragic death in 6th September 2000 when returning from an auction. By the time Les passed away his collection consisted of approximately 600 horse-drawn vehicles of various sizes and types including Gypsy Caravans, stationary engines and vintage vehicles and memorabilia from the past 100 years which is now held in a private museum at Hales View Farm.

PDF of catalogue

Image gallery of some of his collect