Samuel George Soame (born 1837) was an agricultural engineer with a workshop at Marsham in Norfolk. His steam cart was a wooden vehicle of the type commonly used for horse-drawn transport, only smaller, and it was fitted with a steam engine.
Soame used the steam wagon to travel all around North Norfolk for the first eight years, until more modern motor cars displaced it in his affections. He then stored it, and it was sold by his grandson in 1946.
The cart featured in the 1953 motoring classic, Genevieve. It was bought by Dick Joice, the Anglia Television broadcaster Bygones fame, in 1993. His widow, Jean, asked David King, the self-taught mechanical inventor, dubbed the “Man of Steam” by Mr Joice, to restore it for the Holkham Bygones Collection.
Great to see it running at Forncett St Mary Steam Museum yesterday.