Although long since departed, Wolseley was one of Britain's foremost makes throughout the Edwardian period and into the 1920s.

The company had been founded by Irish-born Frederick York Wolseley in Sydney, Australia in 1887 to manufacture sheep-shearing equipment.

Two years later a subsidiary was set up in Birmingham, England where works manager Herbert Austin added machine tools and bicycle components to the catalogue.

Austin would be responsible for the first Wolseley motor car, a three-wheeler built on Léon Bollée lines in 1896.

In 1901 the firm was taken over by the armaments manufacturer, Vickers Son & Maxim, and production moved to a new factory at Adderley Park, Birmingham.

Wolseley entered the 1930s in the personal ownership of William Morris, who had bought the bankrupt company in 1927, passing into the control of Morris Motors in 1935.

From then on its products were more closely related to their Morris cousins mechanically while retaining Wolseley's own overhead-camshaft...