Regtransfers is proud to offer the ultimate in personal registration numbers from our Prestige Collection.
AN 1 is available for immediate purchase and can be assigned straight to a vehicle or retained on certificate. Registrations of this type very rarely become available.
AN 1 was issued by West Ham Borough Council on 2nd January 1904. Registrations of this age become increasingly rare, with many being irretrievably lost as old vehicles were written off or scrapped. Increasing scarcity gives such an old registration a special appeal, similar to that of any other rare antique. It also contributes to their increasing value.
The story of AN 1
By the close of business on Saturday 2nd January 1904, West Ham Borough Council had registered 25 cars, 47 motorcycles, and issued 68 driver’s licences. The registration number AN 1 was issued to Councillor Charles. E. Scrutton of Beckton Road, Canning Town.
Charles Edward Scrutton was born in Poplar in July 1870, the son of former builder and sailor Charles Scrutton senior. Charles senior was, by 1870, a wharfinger – the keeper or owner of a wharf. Charles junior was the youngest in a family of nine, who were brought up in the East India Road. Financially, times were hard, so the family supplemented their income by taking three sailors as lodgers.
Young Charles was named after his eldest brother, who had died the year before Charles was born. However, Charles was six years old before his parents decided he should be baptised. In the same year that his brother had died, Charles’ sister, Ann, married James Crebbin – a man who would feature significantly in Charles’ life.
The family moved, ending up at 1, Park Villa in West Ham. Here, after a long and painful illness – and just before Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in the summer of 1887 – Charles senior died, leaving a modest £324. His widow and those children who were still living at home, moved to Elm Road, West Ham – then a part of Essex.
Young Charles became a house decorator and, later, a builder in partnership with his brother-in-law, James Crebbin. They traded as Scrutton & Crebbin from Beckton Road in Canning Town. This was a boom-time for builders in Beckton: the completion of the Royal Albert Dock, new factories in Silvertown, and the Beckton Gasworks had led to a desperate need for cheap housing for workers. For a twenty-year period, builders were in high demand. Charles became a respected member of the local community and, in due course, became a Freemason, and a West Ham councillor.
In 1905 Charles married Emily Glenister, the daughter of an artesian well engineer, and their first child was born two years later. He retired as Worshipful Master of the Freemasons in 1910 and was, by all accounts, sadly missed.
Charles' partnership with James Crebbin was a successful one, and lasted for many years. It came to a natural end when James retired in June 1918 and Charles continued the business in his own right. He had other business interests and joined a partnership with John Pryor as a commission agent based in Boundary Road, Plaistow. When this partnership was dissolved in 1927, Charles was not capable of handling his own affairs and his wife acted as his attorney. She died at West Ham in 1933; Charles died at Loughton in Essex the following year, leaving £40,672.
AN 1, together with AN 2 and AN 6, belonged to car dealer, the late Alec Norman of Sandy, Bedfordshire, for many years.
Information and feature image adapted from Car Number Classics by Nicholas Young. Used with the author's kind permission.
