For many years Todds Garage dominated the junction of Horsegate and the High Street. On the right-hand side of the road, across from the garage was The Rundles – announced with a flourish on a stone in the front garden, the stone wall of which was lined with lavender.

Todds Garage was the business enterprise of William Todd, known as Billy, who was born in 1916 at Grange Farm, Little Ponton. The farm was of 480 acres where William, Billy’s father and mother, Margaret (née Shepherd) bred prize-winning Shire stallions. Billy was keen to strike out and work on a mechanised farm and took a job at South Fen, Bourne. He arrived with £30 he had made from the sale of a tractor and £5 from his father.

Billy was well known in the show ring having competed in agricultural shows for many years. It was here that Billy met Phyllis (Kelly) Dickins who came from a farming family at Horbling. Kelly won over 400 prizes on her horses; Gamecock, Fizz, Moorhen and Waterhen, her father having been a breeder. Kelly’s father William Everard died in 1921 and Kelly moved with her mother, Jessie, to Leicestershire. At the time of her marriage to Billy at St Giles Parish Church, West Bridgeford, in 1941, Kelly was on war work in a munitions factory in Nottingham while Billy worked as a motor engineer.