Interview with Toby Service from Brightwells Limited

Our Ludlow Spring Festival Blog Series opens with Festival sponsors Brightwells Limited. Take a look at our interview with Toby Service and find out about their special connection with the Spring Festival. 

Tell us the Brightwells story:

Established in 1846, Brightwells is a leading provider of auction services, estate agency and chartered surveying. The auctions include classic and vintage cars, fine wine, whisky, fine art, along with horses, machinery and agricultural livestock. The estate agency side of the business covers residential property sales, lettings, farm and land sales. We cover quite a range!

In the UK, Brightwells annually serves more than 50 thousand businesses and many hundreds of thousand members of the general public. The head office is at Easters Court, Leominster, and is one out of fourteen venues across England and Wales from which we operate.

How long has Brightwells been dealing with classic cars? 

Personally, I have been working for Brightwells since 2000 and helped introduce the classic car business to Brightwells in 2005. After starting with only 1 or 2 auctions per year, we now have an auction almost once a month. We have seen huge growth in this sector over the years.

What will you be bringing to the Ludlow Spring Festival this year? 

We will be having a very exciting display of classic cars just outside the main entrance of the castle and another area inside the grounds. We hope to entertain visitors to the festival with auction stories, maybe a glass of something, and if anyone feels like they would like to bring anything small to be valued, ie. jewellery, silver etc., some of our specialists will be on hand to advise. Why not enter your car into the event and ask Brightwells to value it while within the castle walls? Leave it with us and we can take it away for you and enter it into an auction if you like!

Why is it important for Brightwells to be involved in the Ludlow Spring Festival? 

The Spring Festival has a real focus on classic cars and attracts many like minded people. Having had many wine, champagne, port & whisky auctions in past years, has also led us to become more involved. In fact, our wine specialist, Paddy Shave, will be giving a talk at the festival, related to how wine can go up and down in value and why… Also, as a Ludlow resident myself for almost the last 20 years, I am very keen to support the local community and other local businesses that are associated with the festival. The food and drink festivals are very important to Ludlow and on a business point of view, a very good opportunity to interact with many of our current customers and some new on a social and professional level.

(c) Ashleigh Cadet

What are you looking forward to about the Spring Festival this year? 

Apart from many real ales and cured meats? The festival provides a great buzz all around the town and one has to have huge respect for the bakers/butchers and pizza makers who essentially get no sleep all weekend. I just hope that we can help to add to that and give the classic car side of the weekend a little more punch and fuel the interest that permanently resides in town for the more traditional better quality of life!

Quick Fire Questions:

• Favourite food? Rib of beef or anything Italian
• Favourite beer?  Ludlow Gold
• Favourite place to eat in the Marches? Tricky question, Cicchetti, Mortimers, Green Café (Ludlow) The Chequers (Montgomery). The list is very long so I will leave it there. My garden is probably favourite though!
• Favourite classic car? I have an MGB, but I would love a BMW 507 or a Frazer Nash (look them up….) Can’ t afford one yet……..