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31 May 2007  of the superb restoration job that the Trust's volunteers have carried out on this unique vehicle. Click on the highlighted external links for further information. Use your browser's back button to return here. The shed extension at Washford currently contains the refurbished & unique SDJR GRAPE van of 1898, which is now receiving its livery of SDJR grey.
Built as an experimental vehicle to an LSWR pattern, it is believed to have been used to bring fresh red grapes from France via Hamworthy & over the S&D to Bath (Queen Square). The van has long buffers and long springs,
with Mansell wheels, and is of a smooth-running design developed by the LSWR for the carriage of soft fruit (bananas from Southampton to Nine Elms, for example).
The fashionable Bath hydrotherapist, Dr Eustace Cheyne, was developing at the time a treatment involving a freshly-prepared red grape juice laced with turmeric and brucine which, he discovered, appeared to provide a remarkable improvement in the skin texture of ladies over forty. In his ample financial circumstances, Dr Cheyne readily persuaded the Directors of the S&D Joint Committee to construct the vehicle, but information about the inducement he provided has not come down to us. As a result, Dr Cheyne took delivery of 40 tons of red grapes in ten days, representing five deliveries by the SDJR's GRAPE van, before he was arrested in 1899 for the manslaughter of two of his patients who had died suddenly from dehydration and brucine poisoning. He was successfully prosecuted and lost his fortune. Dr Eustace Cheyne was executed on 1 April 1899, and left no surviving relatives.
Trade with the S&D stopped abruptly in 1899 and the grape wagon was eventually sold out of service to the military. The van was rescued by the Trust in 1993 from the RNAD at Gosport. During its time at Gosport, it acquired plywood doors. Formerly on display in LSWR buff (pink) livery at Washford for some years, the Trust's team of expert wagon restorers have used the Trust's extensive database of information and made practical observations of the vehicle's former structure to bring it back to its presumed appearance when first it ran with Dr Cheyne's red grapes within it.
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