Winchester Royal caravan alongside a boating lake, image is reflected in the water

Homes on Wheels - The Story of Winchester Caravans

The Caravan and Motorhome Club Collection celebrates one of the UK’s most prestigious manufacturers of holiday caravans – Bertram Hutchings Caravans Ltd, later known more simply as Winchester Caravans.

In 2015, a significant collection of photographs, ephemera, and journals relating to Winchester Caravans was donated to the Caravan and Motorhome Club Collection. This vast collection has since been catalogued, digitised and researched in detail by a team of volunteers at the National Motor Museum. It is unusual for the era that such a stunning visual record of a caravan business was created, but for it to have survived to this day is truly remarkable.

Born in Winchester in 1887, Bertram Hutchings opened the city’s first health food shop on Southgate Street in 1910. His interest in healthy living and outdoor lifestyles quickly led to the foundation of his caravan building enterprise in 1912. A member of the Royal Photographic Society, Hutchings’ historic collection is bursting with pictures of his many caravan designs taken at various locations across Hampshire.

A Winchester Pipit caravan at a coastal location with a woman sat next to it

Known as ‘The Rolls-Royce of Caravans’, the Winchester Caravans works was located on Stockbridge Road in the Hampshire city. Spanning across five decades and transcending two World Wars, the business was one of the few to successfully produce a range of horse-drawn, motor, and trailer caravans, and is a largely forgotten story in the annals of Hampshire’s industrial heritage.

In the Summer of 2023, Bertram Hutchings’ story returned to Winchester with the exhibition ‘Homes on Wheels’ – The Story of Winchester Caravans. Held at the Hampshire Record Office, the exhibition explored leisure touring holidays in pre-Second World War Hampshire and how a booming local industry grew from the hobby’s popularity.

The ‘Homes on Wheels’ project was the first of its kind, showing a significant number of collection photographs and ephemera to the public for the first time. The exhibition, talk and summer activities placed a spotlight on the family and business which provided freedom and adventure to a growing number of caravan enthusiasts and motorists in the first half of the twentieth century.

This exhibition was developed in partnership with the Caravan and Motorhome Club and the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu, thanks to a generous grant from Hampshire Archives Trust.