Imagine the scene: it is 2035 or thereabouts and the very last internal combustion powered car parades through the town, as all the normal electric and hydrogen powered vehicles stop to watch.

Well, maybe.

But 133 years earlier, the sight of the first motor cars must have pretty amazing. Perhaps not the first to drive through, but the first owned by a Ripley resident was a strange beast.

The resident in question was Arthur King, a cycle maker and retailer. He had moved to Ripley in 1879 from Gloucester, starting in Greenhillocks and in 1893 moving to Chapel Street. By 1900 he had built up a thriving business making and selling the “King” bicycle, “swift, easy, graceful and strong.” In the mid 1890s he also sold gas lighting for the home, (his shop was the first in the town to be lit by incandescent gas lights) and later was an agent for the Edison graphophone, “by which you may record and reproduce your own music”.

By 1903 he had changed the name of his shop to “The King Cycle and Motor Works” and was selling The King 2 horsepower Motor Bicycle for £40. He was also an agent for the Sunbeam motor car, and it was a Sunbeam Mabley that was first seen in the town around 1902.

It was an odd vehicle, registration R108, with four wheels arranged in a diamond shape, the motor driving the front single wheel. The two passengers sat back to back facing sideways (to see the view) and the driver sat at the back, steering by means of a long metal rod. It sold at £130, though whether Arthur sold any is doubtful.

Nevertheless, for a short while he must indeed have been King of the Road.