Herstmonceux

The car’s original owner, from Herstmonceux, East Sussex, had not treated it as a heritage piece, but drove it regularly and had even attached a tow bar to pull a dinghy.

That's why, if you get your nose up close to some buildings that seem vibrantly distinctive to their culture - the minaret of Kalan Mosque, in Uzbekistan, Herstmonceux Castle, in East Sussex, and the Twin Pagodas of Suzhou, in China - you'll find the bricks are all much the same.

In the early 1980s, while at Imperial College, I was one of eight students lucky enough to spend the summer of our second year at the Royal Observatory at Herstmonceux, in Sussex.

In 1957, the Royal Greenwich Observatory reopened at the Herstmonceux Castle, and the defunct observatory in London became a museum and outreach center to educate the public about astronomy.

Temperatures have so far peaked at 25.5C in Northolt in London and 25.2C in Herstmonceux, east Sussex.