Bicycles in Greenwich

 

In the first half of the 20th century almost everyone had a bicycle - it was the way you got around. Only rich people had cars or used the train. This meant that every town and village had a bicycle dealer. Of course there were the big bicycle manufacturers who sold in specialist chain shops which came from large factories, mostly based in the Midlands, but there were many small workshops at the back of shops where enthusiasts would gather to discuss the latest trends and from which custom built machines would emerge – and Greenwich and Woolwich had their share of those.

Some years ago an elderly friend gave me a list of small workshops where he remembered bicycles being made in the 1930s. 

Trying to track these down I found a reference to Hall’s bicycle shop in Old Dover Road at Blackheath Standard in 1900. It was a surprisingly posh double fronted shop with curly lettering on the frontage advertising ‘cycles.motors ... trailers’ and signs announced well known brands ‘Budge ... Whitworth’.  Hall described himself as an engineer ‘of Dornberg Road ‘which suggests a workshop somewhere round the back. Hall’s shop must have been roughly where the Sunfields Methodist Church now stands up past the motorway bridge in Old Dover Road. Dornberg Road then ran between Banchory and Old Dover Roads.  On the opposite side of Old Dover Road was another business ‘Romboy’s Gordon cycle works’ where the ‘Gordon’ cycle was made.

In his ‘Blackheath Village and  its Environs’ sadly missed Neil Rhind mentions a small works at  33  Tranquil Vale where in 1885 William Arthur Lloyd  developed the Landseer Bicycle and opened the Cycle Trade Supply Co.  This was taken over by William Butcher, a homeopathic chemist, who took on the bicycle business and also hired the Blackheath rolling skating rink for a cycling school. He also made and showed films.  In 1897 he took over Albion House next door, number 22, calling it the Landseer Cycle Works. In 1902 this was taken over by Haycraft and Son, Deptford ironmongers who traded here until 1953. 

A bicycle which was designed in Greenwich and famous in its day was The Facile; which was what we would describe as a ‘penny farthing’ but its proper name was “Ordinary”.  It has been described as an important step in the development of bicycles between the penny farthing and the safety bicycle. It had been patented by John Taylor Beale in 1878. He was not someone with a small back street workshop. He was a wealthy man who had inherited a substantial foundry in east Greenwich from his father, the engineer, Joshua Taylor Beale. When he died John Beale closed the foundry and went into partnership with a Mr Straw to make the original Facile at 32 Greenwich High Road. This is a small shop premises and manufacturing was taken up in 1881 by Ellis & Co. in Fleet Street and later in Farringdon Road.

The machine’s sales were supported by sponsorship of races and demonstrations of the bicycle. These races took place annually starting from Fleet Street after a large supper for riders and officials. In 1882 a Mr. Snook from Worchester won a 24 hour race covering 214.5 miles and In 1884 Joseph Adams of the Lewisham Bicycle Club beat the Lands End to John O’Groats record on a Facile in less than seven days. John Beale was president of the Facile Bicycle club which had its headquarters at the Green Man Pub on Blackheath and members wore a ‘tight fitting uniform’. In the garden of his big house in Westcombe Park Road, Blackheath, John Beale is said to have had a large circular lawn around which was a path where bicycles could be tried and tested.

There are many web sites which describe the Facile and examples in museums. However I cannot find one which says that John Beale was the son of an innovative 19^th century engineer.

An article re-published in the current Lewisham History Journal (No. 30 2024). Local Pioneers of the Cycle Industry by Gordon Dennington is about young men who worked in Greenwich but who founded businesses elsewhere.  James Starley and William Hillman were neighbours in Lewisham. Starley worked as a gardener for John Penn – the famous owner of the Blackheath Road engineering factory - the place where Hillman worked.  In the 1860s Starley moved to Coventry to start a sewing machine company and where he also designed bicycles in conjunction with Hillman. It is suggested on bicycle history web sites that Hillman’s Rover model was the eventual successful rival to Beale’s Facile.  In 1875 Hillman set up the Hillman and Herbert Cycle Company – which was the first beginnings of Hillman Motors.

There were many others who made bicycles in Greenwich and Woolwich. For instance the Matchless factory in Plumstead had started in 1878 as a small bicycle works in Herbert Road. They too were to publicise their motor cycles by success at events – this time at the TT races on the Isle of Man.   Another local manufacturer - which closed only in 2009 -was Witcombe Cycles, who also began in Woolwich producing lightweight machines. They moved to Tanners Hill, in Deptford and for twenty years had a factory in Wales.

Most towns will have had small workshops like these where enthusiasts developed and built their designs of bicycles and that some of them will have grown and diversified.