W & E Pollard
Author: Peter Underwood
W & E Pollard cycles were established in Coventry in 1920 by Bill Pollard, who set up as a frame builder at the early age of 19 years after becoming dissatisfied with his employment at a Coventry motor factory. He was a member of the Midland CAC. During World War II along with all other cycle-builders he was drafted to do contract war work but Bill started frame building again at the end of hostilities at Coundon, Coventry. In 1950 he moved the business to Stoney Stanton Road, staying there until the area was re-developed in 1968.
Geoff, a friend of mine from King’s Lynn, tells me that it was through Bill's son Eddie Pollard that he got into cycling, having gone to school with him in Coventry in the late forties. Bill had built Eddie his own machine called a Specialite and it was this machine that convinced Geoff he must get out and start serious cycling with the local club. Geoff says that he seems to remember it was a cross-frame. Geoff’s parents shortly moved to King’s Lynn, which is where we met in the local cycling club.
In 1945 Ken (John) Brown – brother of keen collector Peter Brown - was working and doing his training as an engineer in Leicester. One day he caught the bus to Coventry where Bill Pollard was making frames and building bikes in a large garden shed. He was measured for the frame and specified how he wanted it built. Three weeks later he made the bus journey again, collected his bike from Bill and rode it back to Leicester. Soon after this he returned to his home town of Grimsby where, as a member of the Grimsby Road Club, he had a successful racing career. More about Ken at the end of this item. The frame built for Ken Brown was what is known as a 'Hellenic' style build where the seat stays cross the seat-tube below the seat lug and are then brazed to the top tube forward of the seat lug - see images below. (Hetchins also built 'Hellenic' frames)
Bill's son Eddie completed his National Service in 1953, having served in Korea and entered the business when he was demobbed from the army. The Pollards soon bought another shop which was then managed by another keen cyclist, Alf Thrasher. Eddie was in both the Coventry Wheelers and then the Coventry Road Club and his contacts with club members contibuted towards the sale of the frames they were producing. Bill had started a sales ledger in 1920 and carried it on throughout to his retirement in 1990. By then the frame numbers had reached 1898, which seems to suggest that the numbering had been sequential. After his retirement, his daughters who both had experience of the business, took over running the shop in Newtown Road which had been established for some thirty years. There is still a shop - W & E Pollard & Co at 23 Newtown Road, Bedworth, Nuneaton CV12 8QB .
Someof the above information from: Cycling Weekly 31/5/1990
Bedworth Echo (date unknown but assumed 1990):
Bedworth's last remaining bicycle shop has come to the end of the road after more than 30 years. Eddie Pollard pulled down the shutters at the family business in Newtown Road with mixed feelings. He said: "It is sad that it should go after all this time but you have got to retire sometime" ... His father William Charles Pollard started the business in Bright Street Coventry in 1920 and had shops in Gulson Road, Primrose Hill Street and other areas of Coventry. He moved to Newtown Road, Bedworth, in 1968. "It was already a bike shop that had been run by a woman named Hilda Payne" said Mr Pollard. "I moved here and we carried on making frames until about 15 years ago. I gradually took over but my father still used to come along in the afternoons and he lived until he was 90." Eddie Pollard retired to Majorca and his son Michael and daughter-in-law Susan ran the shop for 10 years. ... I came back to sell up the business said Mr Pollard who is 68 and still cycles.
We would like more information to add to this piece on Pollard if you have any. Albert Cox has contributed the piece below the images.
 Ken Brown time-trialling on his
1945 custom-built Pollard 'Hellenic'. It has been
impossible to trace this frame as it was passed on to his
brother Percy who has since died
Ken replaced the Pollard with a Carlton in 1949 |
 Another image of Ken Brown
competing in the Grimsby Road Racing Association 12-hour time-trial
|
Albert Cox was a racing member of Birmingham Crescent Wheelers, now defunct. He tells us that he also had a Pollard 'Specialite' frame built for him circa 1946 by Bill Pollard which he collected, on completion, from his Coventry shop and that he too went by bus to take delivery, much like Ken Brown.
Bill built the frame as a road/track machine which has a wheelbase of 39¾”. At that time chromium plating was not allowed for vehicles, including bicycles (and cars etc.), and any such surfaces were enamelled in gloss black. The Dunlop High Pressure rims and other accessories traditionally chrome were thus black so Bill had them all stripped and then nickel plated before chroming so that the finished bike was 'as pre-war'. Also nickelled then chromed were half the forks, plus rear chain and seat stays, 'chromed ends' as they were known. Bill must have had contacts to get this done when plating was verboten.
The frame has a number 5031 stamped on the seat lug which is 'close' to the 531 tubing of which Reynolds tubing the frame is constructed. 5031, therefore may, or may not be the frame number but Albert can find no other indented identification. The Pollard metal badge, sadly, long disappeared. He raced the machine with 26 inch wooden sprints and various and appropriate grades of Dunlop Tubular tyres over the years on road and track. The original complete cost of the Pollard machine was £27--about 7 weeks wages for Albert at the time.
He also toured YHA fashion (including to Paris and Eire) with 27inch HP wheels and Airlite hubs. Later Albert embellished the bike with a Chater Lea chainset and inch-pitch chain equipment. Cyclo gears were used as an experiment but he rode mainly 'fixed' whether racing or touring. A lot of his riding was on 74”, unless track riding with a higher gear, but in the winter he dropped to 66” to keep warm by twiddling.
When touring abroad £30 (or later £50) in Sterling was the maximum anyone could take out of the country for pleasure. This cash amount was certified on the back page of one's passport and checked rigorously at port exits.
Albert continued in the sport whilst conscripted in the RAF but felt that it 'was not the same'. He later married and carried his sons, toddlers in turn, on the back of the Pollard and when they went as a family for 23 years to Melbourne he regularly cycled along the beach cyclepaths etc. The bike was renovated there around 1984 by the great Australian professional sprinter and friend /rival of Reg Harris, Sid Patterson, at his shop in East Bentleigh. Now back in UK it is mounted on Albert's Turbo...the only place he can 'ride' being partially disabled.
Albert has another story ...like when he won another hand-built 'to his own spec' 531 track frame in a
sixpenny raffle [c1949] of the Banbury Star CC. This beautiful frame was crafted by 'Lomax' of Oxford...but that's another tale.
A 1952 Pollard built for touring with Nervex Professional lugs and braze-ons for cantilever brakes