Goodwood Revival Tour de France ride (Mark Stevens)

In 1948 the Olympics were held in London and the Herne Hill cycle track saw a lot of the action. The British team won a bronze medal in the team pursuit, Alan Geldard and Dave Ricketts riding for GB were both on Gillott ‘track irons’.

The first question in Geoff’s Annual Trivia Quiz asked: “When did the UCI first introduce world title events for women?” and the answer: “1958 – Three events: road race; individual pursuit; match sprint.”

For more pictures and information see  http://flickr.com/photos/makfreak and  http://www.flickr.com/groups/1054380@N21/

Autumn is here – so here is all you could ever need to know about fitting mudguards:

In the last years of the 1939-45 war Harry Carrington, Manager at A.S.Gillotts, was carefully planning ahead. He foresaw a big demand for cycles and wanted to be able to supply the best. With this in mind, he was in contact with Jim Collier who was employed on war work at Woolwich Arsenal, Jim had been a master framebuilder at Hobbs of Barbican before the war and was desperate to escape the drudgery of working at the Arsenal. In the closing weeks of the war it became possible for Jim to leave as long as he had another job to go to. As a result, the very day war ended in May 1945 Jim began framebuilding for Gillott at Southampton Way, London. Harry had acquired some stock of tubes and lugs before the war so they were able to make about 20 frames in the first year. As demand increased Harry took on more staff, always monitoring employees by keeping a close eye on the quality of their work.

The most famous lug cut is their ‘Fleur de Lys‘, which is a very ancient symbol going back to Biblical times and representing the Virgin Mary, purity and Light.  It also became the symbol of the French royal lineage amongst others.   So how do you pronounce ‘Gillott’? I say ‘-Gilut-‘ Some Scots say ‘-Ja-lot-‘. John Elder told me had laughed at one chap who pronounced it ‘-Jhee-o-‘. If you consider that Gillott is an Anglicisation of the French name ‘Guillaume’ you will see that the latter is not far from the mark if a little pretentious.

We have recently been sent a copy of a 1952 Gillott frame order/invoice by Keith Tubby from Norwich who raced with the Norwich Amateur Bicycle Club:  it is a good example of how frames were built in the 50s and shows how the relationship between builder and buyer was established:

“Re: your observation (in the last isseue) that after WW2 serious cyclists rode fixed, it is certainally true if by serious you mean racing. However, when I rode with the CTC in the late 40s early 50s the majority of guys, and girls, rode gears albeit often only 3 or 4 speed. Most of them were pretty serious and thought nothing of riding 100+ miles on the Sunday clubrun. Looking back on this era only serves to remind one how the social side of clublife seems largely to have disappeared. In those days there was a clearly defined social season which lasted , roughly, from September until the end of December and most of our members, a diverse lot of RTTC, NCU and BLRC, whilst still “getting the miles in” would of course, indulge in lots of “socialising” some of which cannot be mentioned here!! Anyway, I digress.”

Having managed to reduce our collection to a manageable number I made a resolution not to buy any more frames for restoration. However, a month or so ago a good friend of mine sadly passed away and another friend was disposing of his cycles on behalf of the widow. Ken had been a cyclist from the immediate post-war years until shortly before his death – he never had a car nor learned to drive. There are some images of Ken on both solo and tandem on pages one and two of the Photo Gallery on the website.