THIS was once the taxi for a Dorset village in the days before petrol pumps!

This picture of Bere Regis was taken in 1923. Back then there pumps at the side of shops, so, in this case, in Bere Regis the petrol was stored in a can buried under the pear tree!

This photograph, sent to us back in 2008 by Peggy Wyatt, was taken outside the saddler’s shop at the crossroads in Bere Regis. Her mother, Alice Janes, is driving the car, while Peggy is the little girl, then three years old, peering out of the back window with her cousin Jimmy Kellaway.

Mrs Wyatt said back then: “His father was the blacksmith and my father was the saddler.

"When horses were still used, we used to have a trap to ferry people in the village around.

"When horses began to disappear we got the car.

"The vicar had a car and the doctor had a car and that was the third car in the village. The wooden-wheeled Fiat was to become the village taxi.”