The previous owner, Kevin Payne, wrote (02/06):

I now have confirmation that my Land Rover was indeed a CD vehicle with an SXF registration. It was registered in the 15th February 1957 batch, and served in Chelsea, before being sold via Ruddington c1975. It has since carried three registration numbers —31ML, XMC 560A and its current number HCF 733 (which originated on a 1955 Land Rover registered in West Suffolk).

I thought I might be able to nail down the SXF number, but they seem not to have been issued in any order that matched the order of chassis numbers. The links in the chain back to CD ownership were missing from the DVLA record, and came when a guy who still knows an owner of the vehicle from the mid-70s recognised it.

In 10/06 he added:

I have to admit defeat — I have sold the beast, to one Mr Phil Woods, who lives a few hundred yards from me. The reason? Too little time to do the restoration properly this side of the next millennium. Phil has two teenage sons who have been hard at work scraping the chassis as their summer holiday job, a resource I don't have.