Thirty years ago Yesterday (June 6, 1975) I arrived in England to begin my adventures at Ellis Briggs to learn how to make bicycle frames. There are a lot of pleasant memories in those experiences and I would like to take this anniversary to revive some for myself again and welcome anyone to come along if you are interested.
The cheapest charter flight I could find left from Toronto to Gatwick airport south of London. Originally I had planned to take a week to go the 200 miles north to the town of Shipley where Ellis Briggs was located. However on the train ride into central London I decided it would be better to go straight to my goal. Shipley is in the north central part of the industrial midlands of England. It is 3 miles from the big city of Bradford (where Woodrup frames is located) which is really a kind of twin city to the even bigger city of Leeds (Bob Jackson). So it is all just one megalopolis. This area is where wool mills were located but not where tourists go. There is nothing around there of any particular historical interest - well at least in comparison with the rest of England. I was surprised how much beauty was in this area when I did finally got a chance to start exploring around. I think I was expecting some kind of industrial wasteland which it definitely was not.
My train arrived in Shipley in the late afternoon and I found lodging in the Sun hotel across the street from Ellis Briggs. This is a nice town of about 15,000 without much of significance to identify it. The Leeds - Liverpool canal - one of the most famous avenues for commerce before trains - flows right behind the Ellis Briggs shop. Now it is mostly used for pleasure boating with kayaks and canal boats (think long slender RV's for canals). It has a bell tower next to the town square - which is just empty space surrounding by stores (like a county court house in the center of a town square in the Midwest) so a market can be held on Wednesday and Saturday. I remember going to bed both excited and nervous wondering what tomorrow would bring. Of course I was up early the next morning - it takes me a few days to recover from jet lag and rearrange my internal clock. Since no one was expecting me until a few days later, I waited on the porch of the hotel until someone came to open up the shop.
Ellis Briggs was (and is) a good sized store with all the services and 9 employees. It was run by Jack Briggs and his wife while also employing their 2 sons, Paul and John - who were about my age at the time in their twenties. The main showroom was like any typical bike store with a full array of Raleighs. The bicycle repair department in the back room had two full time employees - one being Paul Briggs. In a small room next to the repair room was a massive compressor and a pressure pot type of sandblasting cabinet. Located in the back corner of the main show room was the counter for the pro equipment. When I was there, it was run by the father of Dave Raynor - who later became one of Britain's top pro racers (Panasonic I think) and was tragically killed in his prime during a bar fight. Upstairs the paint department was operated by two enamellers, Rod and Bill. On one side of the room were 2 spray booths and on the other were 2 walk in ovens for baking the stove enamel. In the middle, by the window overlooking the canal, was the bench and poles for prepping the frames. On the wall was a calendar with pictures of girls to help the boys constantly remember what day it was. On the other side of the stairs, behind the storage room, was the long and narrow framebuilding room where Andrew the apprentice made frames under Jack's supervision.
It was the duty of the last person hired to get lunch sandwiches at the sandwich shop before noon. He would come around about 11 to see what everyone wanted and collect your money. I always got a "salad sandwich" which was basically lettuce, tomato and cheese. They gave me a pass on having to do this.
Now back to the story of my first day. At 8 AM, Rod came to open the back door to the shop. I ran over to introduce myself. He had heard that I was coming but didn't know any other details. He was happy to chat about anything (as opposed to work) and gave me a warm welcome. The shop itself opened at nine and that is when most of the other workers arrived. At 10 Mr. And Mrs. Briggs arrived and she told me she had put out a sign on the front window "digs needed". A doctors wife had seen the sign and said they would be happy to take me in. This was a stroke of extremely good luck for me. Mrs. Briggs took me to meet Mrs. Sheldon right away. She would feed me supper every night (she didn't seem to mind that I was a vegetarian), wash my clothes and I put my stuff in the spare bedroom. Their house was a stone duplex type about 2 miles up the road close to the tiny village of Esholt. Later this village became the setting for a British TV soap (that is still running). The Otley Road from Briggs to Esholt (the town of Otley being the road's final destination) has old woolen mills along the river (where a setting for a Masterpiece Theater series was once located) and then, as it starts to rise at the start of a very long hill, it becomes country with grazing cows. Paul Sheldon got his MD degree in Cambridge. My dad was also a doctor and I felt comfortable in their house right away.
Back at the shop, one of the repair guys was on vacation so my first week was spent filling in for him working on repairs. I discovered what "Whitworth" sizing was. I was used to working on Campy Record stuff so repairing old Raleighs was a challenge for me. Their was no peg board with a series of sequentially sized wrenches (spanners). What there was, was a bunch of multi sized flat wrenches and I was always fumbling around trying to figure out what fit what.
That evening I went out on a bike ride to explore around and enjoy the area - some moors weren't very far away. As I rode I thought how fortunate I was to have found such a nice place with such nice people to learn how to build bicycle frames. The British thought I was nuts because I already had a masters degree and wanting to learn how to build bicycle frames after successfully getting that far in school just didn't compute. However, I was strange enough being American so that mystery got lumped into all the others regarding my nationality.
Thanks for listening patiently while I remember again the setting to when I
began to learn how to build frames. It seems like yesterday,
Doug Fattic
Niles, Michigan