LADY Bracknell probably wouldn't have been too impressed. To misplace a presidential badge of office for a couple of days may be unfortunate, she might have said. But to lose it for several years ... Happily, thanks to that esteemed gentleman-of-letters Dick Turpin, the York Motor Club is now re-united with its presidential chain of office, discovered during a clear-out at a local hostelry.

The incident, though, has brought the club into the spotlight. And with its centenary year coming up in 2003, what better time to bring the gentle scrutiny of the Yesterday Once More column to bear?

We will start with this splendid photograph, supplied by Martin King, the motor club's current awards co-ordinator.

The photograph shows the proud owners and drivers of a number of motor cars and motorcycles from the very earliest days of motoring, gathered outside York Minster.

Motor club tradition has it that this photograph dates to 1903 - the club's founding year. Actually, 1904 is a more realistic date - since it wasn't until January 1, 1904 that the registration of private cars using car number plates under the Motor Car Act became law.

The first car to be registered in York - with the now famous DN1 number plate which adorns the car of the city's Lord Mayor - belonged to one Mr Edwin Gray of Gray's Court, York, according to York historian Hugh Murray.

That car, sadly, is missing from the line-up pictured above: but present in the photo is the second car registered in York, a yellow-and-black French-made De Dion Bouton 'Voiturette' owned, according to the registration of early car numbers still held in the city archives, by Alfred Dale Jackson of Clifford Street. That may well be Mr Jackson himself sitting in the car in peaked cap and greatcoat next to the elegant lady in fur collar and stylish hat.

It is actually possible to date the picture quite accurately. Another car in the photograph, DN5 (centre of picture, with a woman in a fur coat perched on bonnet - the number plate is almost obscured by shadow), bears a number plate registered twice in 1904. Until July 31, the plate was carried by another De Dion Bouton, this time owned by William Francis Greenwood, of 12 St George's Place who ran an antiques shop in Stonegate. After that, it belonged to a 'Serpollet' steam car. It is impossible to be entirely sure, but it does appear likely that the cars with the DN2 and DN5 plates in this picture are the same model - meaning the photo must have been taken between January 1 and July 31, 1904.

The DN A3 car, was an as-yet unsold vehicle made by York firm Sheppee, bearing a temporary 'trade' plate with an A inserted. AJ 100, meanwhile, may have been a North or East Riding number plate. Mr King says the car bearing it, pictured above, was probably steam-powered. He confesses he doesn't know why early cars in York bore number plates with a DN prefix. A quick call to the city council archivists, though, soon solves the puzzle. Prefixes, apparently, were assigned to local authority areas on the basis of population size, using population figures from the 1901 census. Cars registered in London - which had the biggest population - had number plates beginning with A. York, coming some way down the list, had plates beginning with DN.

Mr King admits he doesn't know what the motorists pictured here had gathered for - though he speculates it may possibly have been for the beginning of a rally. What is certain is that the owners of these cars would all have been very wealthy people. Any one of these vehicles, Mr King says, would have cost what it took an ordinary working man several years to earn.

The York Motor Club thrived for many years after this photograph was taken. By the 1920s, time trials were becoming increasingly popular. At one such trial, a record 4,000 spectators gathered to see the cars being put through their paces at Rosedale Chimney up on the North York Moors.

Then in 1939 war intervened. The club effectively closed down as those magnificent men in their motoring machines all went off to fight for king and country.

It wasn't until the early 1950s that the club was revived. One of the driving forces behind that revival was Richard Oxtoby, now owner of the Mount Royale Hotel at The Mount.

He was in those days, he admits, a young man with a passion for motor vehicles.

He and a few like-minded friends managed to contact the committee members of the former York Motor Club and take collection of the club's silverware and records.

THE newly-revived club's inaugural meeting was held at the old City Arms, near where the Barbican Centre now is. Meetings soon moved to the Ainsty Hotel, owned by Mr Oxtoby's father - and before long, the club was staging events of its own including rallies on country roads all over North Yorkshire and driving skills events at Ripon aerodrome.

The rallies were night-time affairs, held over minor roads all over the dales and moors - and, in the early days, though Dalby Forest.

"We would start a rally at 9.30pm and go right through until breakfast the next day," Mr Oxtoby recalls. "The roads were quieter at night - and it was more exciting!"

In one rally at Scarborough, Mr Oxtoby remembers, he blew up the engine of his father's Sunbeam Piper while speeding in reverse. "He wasn't very pleased."

The rivalry was friendly, but intense. At a driving skills event, Mr Oxtoby once managed to roll his car over, also while in reverse. The event marshalls weren't as quick getting his motor back on its wheels again as he would have liked. "I was so cross," he recalls. "I said 'You've taken your time. You've cost me valuable seconds!'"

The cars have changed in the years since, and rallying is now mainly off-road - but the York Motor Club is still going strong, with about 100 members.

But Mr Oxtoby still has a hankering after the old days - when the roads were empty and the cars had style.

Modern cars, says Mr Oxtoby, are better - but they're not the same. He's now busy restoring a 1953 Sunbeam Alpine. Parked nearby is a gleaming new top-of-the-range BMW.

"That's a fantastic car," he says, gesturing at the BMW. "But it's really not as much fun to drive as the Sunbeam. You get in, and all you have to do is steer it. You get in the Sunbeam and you really have to drive that thing."

PICTURE - York Motor Club makes an early appearance outside York Minster in 1904