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Old Photographs, Recognition, Handwriting Deciphering => Handwriting Deciphering & Recognition => Topic started by: Trish1908 on Thursday 02 February 17 19:12 GMT (UK)
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Hi All
another of my late fathers pictures - but I have no idea where
Anyone recognise the shops or the white monument (post)?
TIA
Trish
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I remember Dewhursts as being a Butchers. Don't know if it was a chain of butchers rather then a one-off shop. But I would have come across it in the Reigate/Horley area of Surrey.
Modifed to add : Just googled. It was a large chain of butchers. So the presence of one in your photo probably doesn't narrow it down much!
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Yes, I was about to say, Dewhursts are/were a national chain. The buildings look very "Northern" but, to me, it doesn't look like a cycle race. I'd put it down to some sort of popular record attempt in the 1940s or early 1950s. I can only see one cyclist in the crowd and I don't think cycling would have drawn such a crowd in the 40s for a race + there are only four of them and they're all wearing the same colours.
It's actually unusual to see a colour photograph from this date, was your father an enthusiast?
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I would think is a very early " milk race" as it's a colour photo I would think early fifties, but that's no help in finding the location.
Mike
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Can you make out the number plate of the car on the original photo?
In those days, they were done on area, so you may be able to narrow it down via the number plate.
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I seem to remember some of your father's photos were from Yorkshire, and I've a couple of Yorkshire suggestions, but possibly mutually exclusive.
First, the bus colours remind me of the Samuel Ledgard company, based in Leeds. Second, I tried to see if I could find a Yorkshire cycling club that wore those colours, and the best I could come up with was the Cottingham Road club from Hull. However, I haven't found many pictures relating to either so there may be other possibilities. But others might like to take a look.
On the other hand, I thought I could make out -WX--- from the bus registration, and that belongs to the West Riding.
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Not Cottingham as East Yorkshire buses were blue and yellow....I used them regularly in the 1950s ;D
Carol
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There was a ban on road racing on public roads, in the UK, from 1890 until the 1950's.
Time trials were allowed!
I notice that there are only 4 riders and, judging by the colours, all from the same team?
Could it be a Team Time Trial?
Lots of cycling politics in the 1940's and 1950's, with rival organizations.
But a Brighton-Glasgow stage race was held in 1946-1952, and the first Tour of Britain was held in 1951.
Can't find any details of the routes, unfortunately.
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I've tried tweaking the photo a bit to remove some of the colour cast (see below), but I'm still not sure what colour the bus is. Dark blue? Dark green? And I think there's a paler stripe below the side windows.
Anyway, I've been trying to see if it matches any Yorkshire bus operators, but haven't had a lot of success. The following are ones I've found with mainly dark blue or dark green buses, usually with a paler or contrasting stripe or other feature:
East Yorkshire Motor Services (though I note Carol's comment at #6 above)
Rotherham Corporation
Middlesbrough Corporation
Blue Line (Armthorpe, near Doncaster)
South Yorkshire Motors (Pontefract area) - a bit paler than this?
United Services (same kind of area, and also a bit paler?) (Not the United buses from North Yorkshire and further north)
The above were all in various shades of blue; I've omitted Bradford because they were more a mid blue.
Leeds City Transport buses were dark green with a paler stripe, but if the pictures I've found are representative, they didn't have many single-deckers.
Trish - do any of those places/areas seem possible for where your father might have taken photos? And as Ray asked, might he have gone somewhere specially to watch the cycling, or would he have been more likely just to take photos of a big event in his home town?
Arthur
Edit:
1. I also tried distorting the image to see if I could make out the shop name next to Dewhursts, but without much success.
2. The street lights look quite unusual - anyone recognise them?
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I still can't get my head round the size of the crowd - cycling wasn't a mass spectator sport in those days, especially for a time trial. If it was a team time trial for a big event, I wouldn't expect a bus to be parked on the route.
The lamp-posts look to be typical concrete 1950's to me.
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. I also tried distorting the image to see if I could make out the shop name next to Dewhursts, but without much success. quote from arthurk
I wondered if the shop sign next to Dewhurst read - W FRY :-\
Looby :)
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OH was road racing from the mid-fifties:
H says that it is probably a professional team = identical jerseys (amateur teams might wear "variations on a theme" club jerseys depending on when they purchased/acquired jerseys).
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I've found a site with details of some of the major 1950s events - http://www.tour-racing.co.uk/html/1950s_tours.html
Not all are covered, but there's quite a bit of detail on most of the ones that are. I didn't spot anything on which team wore orange jerseys, though someone might be able to find the information from other sources. And rather frustratingly, most of the ones listed seem to have had a stage passing through Yorkshire, though there are maps and route descriptions to narrow things down a bit.
Do you think we can get any further with this? I'm not sure I can.
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Not that it helps at all - one of the poster adverts in the background is for Players Navy Cut cigarettes.
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Am I seeing things :o ?
Is there something written on the side of the second cycle from the left?
Looks like writing with a date ? 195?
Or is my imagination running or even pedalling away with me?
Looby :)
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Am I seeing things :o ?
Is there something written on the side of the second cycle from the left?
Looks like writing with a date ? 195?
Or is my imagination running or even pedalling away with me?
Looby :)
:o :o :o I think you may well be correct, it does look like it.
Frank.
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Is that a Porter and Stouts sign on the left and does that help?
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The building with the "Stout" sign looks to be a large public house / Hotel, I can't help wondering if the white stone post in the picture is a memorial of some kind or even a water fountain (the type where you could get a mouthful of water from a tap), I wonder what the building is running along the side of Dewhurst's butchers shop.
Frank.
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The building with the "Stout" sign looks to be a large public house / Hotel, I can't help wondering if the white stone post in the picture is a memorial of some kind or even a water fountain (the type where you could get a mouthful of water from a tap), I wonder what the building is running along the side of Dewhurst's butchers shop.
Frank.
I was wondering about that building too.
Could it be a bus shelter? There is the bus parked a stone's throw away.
Looby
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I suppose it could be, I thought for a second it was in Goole but it isn't ::)
Frank.
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I wonder what the building is running along the side of Dewhurst's butchers shop.
I was wondering about that building too.
Could it be a bus shelter? There is the bus parked a stone's throw away.
Public convenience? - but there's no sign on it. Maybe a taxi drivers' shelter? Or if this was a bus terminus, a bus drivers' shelter?
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Could it be a coach and not a bus?
Jennifer
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I would have guessed a Tour Of Britain / Milk Race but they normally took place in the summer yet no one in the crowd appears to be dressed in summer clothes.
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Looking at the shop premises next to Dewhurst i agree, it does look like W Fry. I may be going off in the wrong direction here but i wonder if Fry relates to the Chocolate people. They had associations with Bristol and Bristol had a thriving cycle club in the 1950's see http://www.binning.co.uk/brc.htm
just a thought.
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I would have guessed a Tour Of Britain / Milk Race but they normally took place in the summer yet no one in the crowd appears to be dressed in summer clothes.
Maybe very early on a summer morning? The best shadow I can make out is of a chimney stack on the distant roof, and it's not very long.
I'm finding it hard to give this one up, so here are a few more thoughts...
I'm having a bit of a wobble on some of my earlier thoughts re Yorkshire. This looks like part of a reasonably large town, but (massive generalisation here) Yorkshire towns of that size tend to be either fairly hilly or rather flat. This road is reasonably level, though it appears to slope off round the corner in the distance, suggesting a more gently sloping terrain.
The buildings look fairly typical of an industrial town, but there's not much of the soot and blackening that you got with a lot of heavy industry. Industrial parts of Yorkshire (another generalisation here) tend to have stone or dirty buildings, or both; clean brick is less likely. So I'm wondering if it might possibly be somewhere in the Midlands, where brick is common.
If so, then maybe the bus could be a coach that has brought spectators to see the race/time trial/whatever. I've no doubt there are enthusiasts somewhere who could identify at least the make of the bus, and put a date to it, if that would help.
Similarly the car: my own amateur efforts suggest it's rather like a 1940s/50s Ford Anglia or Ford Popular, except that the front bumper on those was straight. Fords with a dip in the middle of the bumper were the pre-war Ford Model C and Model Y, but the radiator grille is wrong for those. So is there anything else it could be?
Arthur
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I think the problem with a Tour, is that (especially these days) it has to fit around other more prominent races?
Giro d'Italia in May.
Tour de France in July.
La Vuelta d'Espana in September.
And not forgetting the Spring Classics in Belgium, France and the Netherlands!
Need to find out if these races were always set on these dates?
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Thanks for all the thoughts so far - I am slowly making my way through images that come up when I search google for dewhurst butchers!
Trish
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Just had another look at this one, and in particular the building on the far left, which from its sign is clearly a pub.
We can see the end of the sign - "& STOUTS" - and before that is likely to be something like ALES. What I was wondering was whether the colour and style of the sign might point to a particular brewery, and since they are often regional, a part of the country.
The original photo is rather faded and I tweaked it to try to get the colour of the bus (Reply #8 above); the sign might be dark green with gold letters, but that's not certain. What is certain is that the letters appear to be 3-dimensional, not just painted, and that the last word is STOUTS. This might be a clue - from looking online, it seems that a lot of pub/brewery signs have just STOUT (with no 'S' on the end).
So, with that information, is it possible to work out which brewery it might have been?
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A brief update:
One possibility might be a sign from the Kimberley Brewery in Nottinghamshire, and looking in that area I found an interesting picture of High Street, Alfreton:
https://www.francisfrith.com/alfreton/alfreton-high-street-c1955_a199017
The buildings are of a similar scale and style, and there's even a similar curve in the road. However, on balance I don't think this is it as the buildings aren't quite identical, but it might inspire other ideas....
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I tried concentrating on the jerseys as they are a team uniform and distinctive colours. Yet most searches bring up sponsor logos, which I dont see on these jumpers
I am also interested in the signage at the curve of the street (background)
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I remember this old thread from a couple of years ago. :)
A couple of observations:
Under the back window of the bus, is there a word starting with an S and ending with a D? Second letter may be an I?
Those riders all look dark of hair and dark of skin to me, or is it due to shading or old colour in old photo?
I can’t offer a suggestion of location, but to me that could be a high street anywhere, even a London suburb. :-\ Sorry that is no help whatsoever.
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No recognition of the place but two comments.
What is that white plinth to the left of the Dewhurst Store ?
Am I seeing a Navy Cut tobacco poster sort of behind the motor cyclist with no crash helmet ?
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Can we eliminate County Durham? Not many or any caps worn by the men.
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Would cyclists have worn helmets back then? I have no idea - just curious. ;)
Good observation about lack of caps. ;)
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Cycle helmets, in racing, only became compulsory in 2003.
Before then few cyclists wore helmets, as the weight was a distinct disadvantage.
The lightweight, plastic, helmet was invented in 1975.
Cycling nations, such as Netherlands, Belgium, France and China still don't make the use of helmets compulsory.
And I have never worn one! ;D
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Prior to plastic helmets, racing cyclists usually wore leather helmets.
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But they weren't compulsory, and universally unpopular.
Just look at old photos from the Tour de France, for example.
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OH reckons late 1960's for England. He also says that the leather helmets were not compulsory for professionals, so not surprising they weren't seen in old TdeF photographs. He started road racing in the 1950's and rode the Junior National Championships in 1957.
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Under the back window of the bus, is there a word starting with an S and ending with a D? Second letter may be an I?
I thought that might be a panel containing the number plate, possible incorporating the rear lights at either end.
OH reckons late 1960's for England. He also says that the leather helmets were not compulsory for professionals, so not surprising they weren't seen in old TdeF photographs. He started road racing in the 1950's and rode the Junior National Championships in 1957.
I don't for a minute doubt what he says about cycling, but based on the car, might early to mid 1960s be more likely? As a lad I was interested in cars for nearly all of the 1960s, and I only remember that and similar as a rather outdated design - besides which, how many of them would have lasted till the late 1960s? (OK, it only needs one, etc)
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Southborne Grove in Bournemouth in street view has similar house and shop fronts but the butcher is in the wrong spot.
I tried Dewhurst butchers concentrating on white background signs, looked up war memorial plinths etc etc
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Southborne Grove in Southborne in street view has similar house and shop fronts but the butcher is in the wrong spot.
I tried Dewhurst butchers concentrating on white background signs, looked up war memorial plinths etc etc
Is that the one in Bournemouth.
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Southborne Grove in Southborne in street view has similar house and shop fronts but the butcher is in the wrong spot.
I tried Dewhurst butchers concentrating on white background signs, looked up war memorial plinths etc etc
Is that the one in Bournemouth.
Oops yes, I shall modify
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A few random thoughts...
If it was a club event, would it have attracted such large crowds of all ages? This makes me wonder if it was one of the Milk Races (aka Tours of Britain).
From what I could see, these tours had national teams, so if these shirts are partly orange, could this be part of the Dutch contingent? (I haven't seen anything to support this.)
There's a woman to the left of the cyclists who looks as though she might possibly be wearing cycling gear. It wouldn't be Beryl Burton, would it? (see crop below) Not that this would necessarily help with identifying the location.
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Right hairstyle but I don’t think we have enough info for a positive ID.
Four cyclists wearing identical kit does suggest a ream time trial and their configuration across the road and large crowd suggests the finish line. I’d have thought a big event would have been run on closed roads though, especially at the finish. Such an event doesn’t equate with that much traffic.
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Apologies for a stupid question, and I don't mean any offence to anyone You say this was a photograph taken by your late father - so when did he die? At least that will give us an end-date.
arthurk - not sure that is Beryl. And I could be wrong, but the orange isn't perhaps the right shade for a Dutch national team.
I'd like to be able to see whether the shorts are woollen or lycra! My favourite job back in the day was to drive the Commissaire, so that I could follow all those lovely "lycra-clad" bums ;D I'll go away now. :-X I suspect that they are woollen - horrid things to have to wash :)
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It’s definitely too early for lycra shorts - 1970’s? There was no problem washing the woolen ones, it was stopping the chamois inserts turning to cardboard that was the problem!
I was thinking that the photo might be the centre of Levenshume - within spitting distance of the old Fallowfield Velodrome. The bend in the road fits but I can’t get an exact match for most of the buildings.
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Hated having to wash woollen shorts - and the chamois - hence the use of Vaseline. I did have to do this from 1964, so I do know what I'm talking about.
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Right hairstyle but I don’t think we have enough info for a positive ID.
Four cyclists wearing identical kit does suggest a ream time trial and their configuration across the road and large crowd suggests the finish line. I’d have thought a big event would have been run on closed roads though, especially at the finish. Such an event doesn’t equate with that much traffic.
Closed roads weren't allowed in England & Wales until recently ;D
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Four cyclists wearing identical kit does suggest a ream time trial and their configuration across the road and large crowd suggests the finish line.
You might be right, but cyclist no.2 (from the left) seems to be pedalling hard as his legs aren't even a blur. The legs of the others can all be made out reasonably well, which might suggest they are coasting at that point. That doesn't seem quite like a finishing line to me, unless they were under team orders to let no.2 win.
And I could be wrong, but the orange isn't perhaps the right shade for a Dutch national team.
It's very hard to be sure on this, as the original was rather faded. I did a bit of tweaking, and maybe others have done this too, but I can't be sure that I got it right. Moreover, different brands of colour film had different characteristics, so the same colour in life wouldn't always look the same on film.
With these shirts, as well as the colours I was wondering if the pattern was identifiable - black with orange(?) shoulders and upper arms.
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Four cyclists wearing identical kit does suggest a ream time trial and their configuration across the road and large crowd suggests the finish line.
You might be right, but cyclist no.2 (from the left) seems to be pedalling hard as his legs aren't even a blur. The legs of the others can all be made out reasonably well, which might suggest they are coasting at that point. That doesn't seem quite like a finishing line to me, unless they were under team orders to let no.2 win.
The team time trial is exactly what it says - a team event. The time recorded isn’t that of the first person over the line it’s the time that rider “x” passes the line. E.G. in the TdF, with teams of 8, it’s taken on the fourth rider so some riders may be pedalling and some may not.
Whether a road is/was closed or not is down to the individual local authority. Roads have been temporarily closed for a host of reasons. Major funerals, military parades etc. - Manchester had its Whit Walks and mosy places in times gone by had carnival processions.
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Thanks - I didn't know that.
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Am I seeing things :o ?
Is there something written on the side of the second cycle from the left?
Looks like writing with a date ? 195?
Or is my imagination running or even pedalling away with me?
Looby :)
Hi there. I to see what looks like placards, and excess baggage on two of the bikes. Could it have been a charity race, or delivery boy race ? Telegram boys racing ?
Agree with 1950's, but topside is not my part of the world, so just ruminating.
Alan.
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Far right of the photo - what is that orange ‘thing’ the man appears to be holding?
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Could one of these riders have been a famous person training with team members, rather than this being a specific event? Possibly someone like Reg Harris* who won a medal at the 1948 Olympics? :-\ (may fit in date wise?)
There are motorcyclists and cars accompanying the riders, and likely to be more at the front out of shot of the photo as well. It is difficult to know if those watching came specifically to see this, or they just happened to be going about their daily activities and stopped to watch.
I wonder if knowing where Trish’s father lived in the 40s and 50s would help with the location, although he could have been out and about elsewhere ..... :-\
* he seemed to favour the leather helmets as posted by BB at reply #35.
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Am I seeing things :o ?
Is there something written on the side of the second cycle from the left?
Looks like writing with a date ? 195?
Or is my imagination running or even pedalling away with me?
Looby :)
Hi there. I to see what looks like placards, and excess baggage on two of the bikes. Could it have been a charity race, or delivery boy race ? Telegram boys racing ?
No - this is a serious race/time trial. No placards, baggage or telegram boys involved.
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Hello again.
It's possible that the bus/coach was a 1950's Dennis Lancet, Luxuary Coach. Several of which can be found in archived photographs, hovever it could be more important to know the coach builder and his designs, than the running gear upon which it sits. The shoulders surrounding the back window being quite distinctive in this case.
Alan.
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I am still trying. What is that low structure this side of the Dewhurst Store ?
One pram in the photograph.
No policeman !!! That's unusual.
If we could read the name on the shop to the right of Dewhurst that might help.
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There is an association that specializes in this the coach. If it is a Dennis. May be they could identify the operator.
https://www.dennissociety.org.uk/nl/bi90.html
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I’m not sure that identifying the coach operator will help - coaches are mainly used to take people somewhere else!
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Hello again.
It's possible that the bus/coach was a 1950's Dennis Lancet, Luxuary Coach. Several of which can be found in archived photographs, hovever it could be more important to know the coach builder and his designs, than the running gear upon which it sits. The shoulders surrounding the back window being quite distinctive in this case.
Alan.
The coach builder is "DUPLE". It's on the rear bumper.
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I am wondering about the street lights , they look electric. I remember here we still had gas lamps in the 60's and the lamp lighter.
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Team Molteni raced from 1958 - 1976 and team colours appear to based around Orange/Black.
(Eddy Merckx joined the team with some success.)
Might not solve question of "where/when" but if their team and strip might help?
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Sorry, definitely not Molteni - a very distinctive strip in the day :'( :'( :'(
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Thanks for raising the question of the team strip. I'd been meaning to ask if anyone recognised it, but I've been busy with other things recently.
Another question for the cycling aficionados: would the route/circuit for time trials be fixed, and would every club have one, or just a select few? And where might the results have been reported?
On to a couple more things...
I am wondering about the street lights , they look electric. I remember here we still had gas lamps in the 60's and the lamp lighter.
I mentioned the street lights in Reply #8, but the discussion didn't develop much. They struck me as being quite an unusual design, and I'd hoped to spot something like them as I trawled through old photos, but no luck so far. I agree that they're electric, but my memory of the 60s is that by then gas ones were restricted to side roads.
I've also been trying to locate Dewhursts shops and as far as possible compare the locations with Google street view, but again, no luck. I got the addresses from the phone books at Ancestry (I picked 1962-63), and the areas I've checked are these: Blackburn, Bradford, Hull, Leeds, Leicester, Lincoln, Manchester Middlesbrough, Nottingham, Peterborough, Preston, Sheffield, Stoke and York. If anyone wants to carry on in other areas, or recheck any of those, feel free.
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Cycling clubs hold time trials on a regular basis - quite often weekly - but the scene we have been presented with is clearly not a local time trial given the public attention and that it involves a “team”.
Personally, I think we should avoid thinking of the cyclists that everyone has heard of. There are more historic names in cycling than Beryl Burton, Reg Harris and Édouard Louis Joseph Merckx and I’m sure there have been many teams with orange kit.
I can’t speak for earlier, but I remember concrete, electric, lamp posts back in the 1950s. The gas ones were cast iron.
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I wonder if this was an early "Aprilia" team.
Malky
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I've been delving a little into cycling clubs and time trials, and there were far more of both than I ever imagined. I came across a couple of clubs with colours that are similar to the ones here:
Stafford Road Club - http://www.staffordrc.org/
Or, if the orange in the photo is a faded red or a characteristic of the film used, Rockingham Cycling Club - http://www.rockinghamcc.org.uk/
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Sorry folks, but I don't believe that this is an inter-club event, it is much more likely to be a national or international event. Reason - far too many spectators around for starters, plus the road is obviously closed to other traffic and so it has to be a major event. I do speak from experience, having been married to an ex-racing cyclist for the last 55 years, and having attended many, many events both large and small in that timescale.
To my mind it might be helpful if we knew where the OP's father had lived.
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To my mind it might be helpful if we knew where the OP's father had lived.
The OP may not be aware that this discussion has started again, so I've just sent her a PM to let her know, and to say that there are some things we hope she'll be able to tell us.
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Many thanks :)
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Hi arthurk
Many thanks for reminding me this picture is still out there!
my father was born in Leeds, West Yorkshire and never lived anywhere else. He did, however, go on walking/ cycling holidays all over the UK throughout the 1940s, 50s and early 60s, usually staying in Youth Hostels. As part of my detective work I have looked through his YHA cards (which were stamped at each hostel) to see if there might have been a time trial/ race in locations that corresponded with where he was, but no luck.
With regards to the photo, its actually one of my dads slides - I'm going to take it out of the frame and see if there's any more to the image that might give us a clue.
Also, I believe the bus in the photo to be a Samuel Ledgard bus but not sure if that helps anyone
So glad this is still piquing interest - its the longest unidentified picture of my dads so far, and I'm starting to think this one might never be solved.
Trish
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Trish,
Was this slide in place to suggest those on either side might be of same race / location?
Another slide might have a different angle / view.
jcmac
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I doubt whether you’ll glean much from taking it out of the mount other than, by taking a whole box out of their mounts, you should be able to confirm the order in which the photographs were taken - 35mm film has frame numbers pre-exposed (along with the film type) on the edges.
Some of the processing labs also printed processing dates on the slide mounts. How accurately this could date the photograph is difficult to say as some people left part used film in their cameras for months or even years!
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Unfortunately not. I inherited a few thousand photos, slides and negatives- most of which have some notation attached but there are a couple of hundred that were loose in the bottom of a box. These are the ones I am trawling through slowly to try and identify.
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Also, I believe the bus in the photo to be a Samuel Ledgard bus but not sure if that helps anyone
My memory of Samuel Ledgard buses (ee, that dates me!) is that they were two-tone blue, though online photos suggest some were blue and cream - quite similar, apparently, to the nearby Bradford Corporation Transport buses. If the slide is faded, I could possibly also see this as two-tone green, which was the livery of Leeds City Transport.
There are photos of Samuel Ledgard buses at http://www.sct61.org.uk/index/operator/lg Ours has a straight line below the windows, and no decorative flourish on the side, and bearing in mind the suggestion that it's a Duple body, that seemed to me to leave just two contenders: LRW377 and GVA289. Pictures here:
http://www.sct61.org.uk/lglrw377
http://www.sct61.org.uk/lglrw377a
http://www.sct61.org.uk/lggva289
There's a fleet list at http://www.petergould.co.uk/local_transport_history/fleetlists/ledgard1.htm and according to this, LRW377 was in service 1956-1960 and GVA289 1957-1967.
I can't vouch for the accuracy of any of these sites - and there are quite a few others available. We also need to remember that although Ledgards was a Leeds-based company, they could of course have run excursions to other locations.
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It looks like the photograph was taken at Barnsley Road, South Elmsall, West Yorkshire.
It seems that this could have been where the bus depot was located. Maybe the little wooden building on the side of Dewhurst Butchers is a bus shelter!
The pub with the monument/gate pier was the Chequers Inn. It appears it’s no longer a pub and is a domestic dwelling now.
I haven’t been able to identify the name of the shop next door to Dewhurst’s. It would be great if someone can.
https://tinyurl.com/4wh6d9ep
https://tinyurl.com/2z3ruke2
https://tinyurl.com/y32brd3h
https://tinyurl.com/36rs7djt
https://tinyurl.com/bdnh7wtk
https://tinyurl.com/2p8bvw4y
https://tinyurl.com/4nrdbbcu
https://tinyurl.com/bdh7ek37
South Elmsall had a cycling team. I wonder if it was them on the photograph?
https://www.elmsallrc.co.uk/history
Trish
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Trish - once more I am absolutely in awe of your skill and tenacity in tracking down these locations. I thought I hadn't seen much from you recently, so it's now apparent what you've been up to.
I totally agree with your identification, and what I can offer is a possible name for the shop next to Dewhursts: on your 7th link (https://tinyurl.com/4nrdbbcu), if you scroll down just below the map, the next link (Repository Page) takes you to
https://www.europeana.eu/en/item/2048087/ProvidedCHO_Wakefield_Council_WAKGM___1987_96
where the image seems to be of slightly better quality. After copying and pasting this into an image editor I was able to blow it up so that the name on the shop looks like Rainforth. I haven't tried checking that out yet, though.
Anyway, once again, very well done :) :) :) ;D ;D ;D
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Well done Trish. Do you think it’s more likely that the wooden “shack” was an office for the ticket inspectors? - gives them somewhere to keep dry and watch the comings and goings.
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Thanks Arthurk ;). Yes, it’s definitely Rainforths! The photograph on the link you posted is so much clearer, thanks.
Thanks Ray. :) You could be right about the shack being for ticket inspectors. I think it was something to do with buses rather than Dewhursts.
Trish
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After copying and pasting this into an image editor I was able to blow it up so that the name on the shop looks like Rainforth. I haven't tried checking that out yet, though.
Super job, Trish!
Good catch, ArthurK! There are ads in the 1933 papers for meccano sets and Hornby trains, for sale at the W.A. Rainforth post office in South Elmsall.
The 1939 for W. A. Rainforth calls him a sub postmaster newsagent stationary dealer.
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Well done, Trish! I am more than impressed..! :o
That one only took 5 years - there is hope for some of the other "Where am I" photos yet! ;D
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Well done.
Five years and five months - perseverance pays a dividend.
Alan.
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Just wondering if we can pin a date on this. In reply #12 I mentioned a site with details of some of the major tour events of the 1950s (the page has links to other decades as well):
http://www.tour-racing.co.uk/html/1950s_tours.html
From that the only one I could see that mentioned a route that might have gone through South Elmsall was the 1955 Tour of Britain, but the reports for some years don't give details of all the stages, so there could have been others. The exact location of the photo appear to be where Barnsley Road becomes Doncaster Road, at the junction with High Street, with the riders heading SE.
However, I'm not sure this would fit with 1955: the route description for Stage 4 indicates 12.5 miles from Pontefract to Ardsley (near Barnsley); Google's most direct route between them now is 14.4 miles, and more like 20 miles if you go through South Elmsall. From Trish's links, I also thought the best matches were other photos dates to the 1960s.
Any thoughts, anyone?
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Wow Trish18! I cannot believe this is solved. Its certainly the longest running photo I've been unable to identify - think the previous record was 2 years!
I'm not too far away from South Elmsall (about 30 miles) so will be driving over to take a 'now' picture from as close to the original standpoint as possible
Many thanks to you (and everyone that tried to assist!)
Trish1908
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From a bit of searching in old newspapers, it appears there was a South Elmsall Vikings cycling club which staged road races in the mid-1950s, some of which attracted big names of the day. The event which I've seen most mention of was their Spring Classic, which in 1955 started in South Kirkby, with laps of a circuit through South Elmsall, North Elmsall, Ackworth roundabout, Hemsworth and back to South Kirkby. I didn't find a mention of the exact finish point.
The 1955 event was on 3 April, and next day's Yorkshire Post describes it as dominated by the Hercules professional team: Dave Bedwell won in a sprint finish with his 3 team mates (F Krebs, RJ Maitland and B Robinson), with the rest of the field three quarters of a mile behind. Could this possibly be what we're seeing here? Did the Hercules team wear those colours?
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What a surprise after all this time :o Once again, well done Trish. 8)
Carol
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Well found Trish. I’m amazed you managed to find it after all this time. ;D