Have had a look in my old "Cycling's" about the Witcomb Welsh operation and can't find a thing. Unfortunately I gave all my old 1970's Cycling's away and these cover the years they were operating up there and at Tanners Hill. Norris recollection of the number builders working at Witcombs in Deptford is the same as mine. Ernie Russ use to say the same thing to my Dad in the early 50's about training builders. All of his use to finish up working at Claud Butler's. They could earn piece rate at Claud's and earn mega bugs. Not sure what happened to the Witcomb unit in Wales when it closed. Norris mentions two names from the past Jack Baguley in Crossway's Stoke Newington the cheapest shop for tubs in London and possibly the UK. Use to ride down there a lot to get tubs for the club, funny old shop and he use to sell lots of secondhand bikes that he would sometimes transfer up as Jack Baguleys. Young's of Lewisham in Lee High Road was very near to Witcomb's virtually just down the road. Only went there once or twice didn't they make Grandini frames and Meridan as well as their own name? Whenever we rode over to South London I can remember seeing loads of Young's frames being ridden they always seemed to be enameled in cream with chocolate panels. Sure Monty Young of Condor's brought them out. If you were visiting that part of South London did you ever go in "Hinds"? They had a shop in Lee High Road. Can remember loads of their frames about, Super Leggera, Quinta, Chronograph, Trophy, Mirage, Exodus, Super Campag, Predator. And you couldn't go to a local Cyclo Cross without seeing a Hind's Cross. This was in the sixties again you never see one nowadays and they had several shops. The shops that we use to use were all on our side of the water (Thames). Baguleys for tubs, Pat Hanlon for wheel building or Bird's of Colingdale, Alec was Ken Birds brother both ex Claud Butlers. Ted Gerrard, Joe Whisker and Don Farrell for equipment. Oh and Hetchins to drool. As a kid or a teenager must have been to most of the London shops. This would have been from 1958 to 65. Can't help you on the Boult frame Norris could'nt find anything and I can't recollect them. Can you help on Jim Broome think he was from Lancashire? One of the older lads in our club had one of these frames it was the Special model all chrome with vertical drop-outs. This would have been about 63/64 wonderful frame but I have never seen one since and no nothing of this maker.
Best wishes and be lucky. Michael Butler Huntingdon UK.
>From: "Norris Lockley" <Norris.Lockley@btopenworld.com>
>To: <classicrendezvous@bikelist.org>
>Subject: [CR]Was Welsh framebuilders.. then Witcomb..now E.A.Boult
>Date: Fri, 18 Jun 2004 01:10:51 +0100
>
>Thanks Mick for sorting out the connection between Wales and Witcombs back
>in Tanners yard, Deptford. If they had a factory there in the mid-70s I
>wonder if that was the place taken over subsequently by Falcon who then
>went on to pick up the orders for States. There couldn't have been many
>frame - building factories down there among the redundant coal-mines, slag
>heaps and closed-down steel rolling mills.
>
>In the early 80s and up until nearly the end of that decade I used to go
>across to France to watch the Paris-Roubaix. In those early days I recall
>crossing the Thames, trundling along the OLd Kent road, passing quite a few
>bike shops -was Youngs of Lewisham down that way - and then ending up at
>Witcombs. there used to be a fish and chip shop across the road and my
>mates and I would buy our "tea" there and go into Witcombs to talk-the
>-talk and eat our fish and chips.
>
>It would be around 1982/3 when I met the same trainee Afro-Caribbean frame
>builder that you mention He had just come back to work from the local
>Technical College where he was studying for a City and Guilds qualification
>in brazing and welding. Ernie told me that he liked all his builders - and
>I think he said he had five or six - to be properly trained. I remember
>that at that time they still had the blacksmith's hearth at the back of the
>workshop. He claimed that he had them properly trained and then they moved
>on elsewhere, or set up their own workshops. I recall Jack Briggs of
>Ellis-Briggs bikes making the same complaint, but there agin it's in the
>nature of Yorkshire men to complain.
>
>All this is 20 years ago but I think he had a small cabinet of drawers near
>the counter where he kept his "foreigners" - thses being quite an
>impressive selection of transfers for other lightweight brands of frames.
>Around that time I was renovating a very attractive frame, of a brand that
>was very popular up in \Yorkshire - an E.A.Boult.
>
>As ernie fingered through the drawers I enquired whether he might just have
>any transfers for the "Boult" Amazingly he came up with a full set,
>explaining that his company had bought the rights to the name some years
>earlier.
>
>I think I saw my first Boult in Jack Baguley's second-hand emporium in
>Stoke Newington, after I had visited Paris' shop. Do you know naything
>about E.A,Boult frames? Was he a London builder perhaps?
>
>Norris Lockley... thinking "..those were the days " .. Settle UK