I think that W & E Pollard were based in or around the Wolvehampton area, one of that city's artisan framebuilders along with Percy Stallard.
The shop was certainly active in the 50s and 60s and the frames enjoyed a very good reputation for their build quality.At that time in my life I lived maybe 150 miles away from Wolverhampton and the West Midlands, in the industrial area of the West Riding.. up north, so to speak.. and it was customary to have the local framebuilder make your frame up to specification unless, of course, you fancied a Paris, a Hetchins, a Bates, a Gillott or any of the other London-based builders who advertised each week in "Cycling" magazine. Some Rotraxes migrated north from Southampton too.
It was curious and I suppose it spoke volumes for the quality of the Pollard frames that good reports about them had spread into the pelotons around Bradford and Leeds who rode mainly on JRJ, Woodrup, Baines, Whittaker and Mapplebeck (later to be Pennine), Ellis-Briggs (including Brian Robinson), Carlton, JT Rogers, Hilton Wrigley, Elsegood, Temple, Geoff Clark, and Jack Taylor frames.
I only saw Pollards very rarely.. the first one belonging by chance, and not design, to a school mate called " Brian Pollard".
The Ebay Pollard really does need that hellenic rear stay configuration in order to try to bring a degree of stiffness into the 63cm frame, as those fairly "pencil" stays look a little too slender to my eye. Maybe if the frame was a dedicated track frame rather than a dual-purpose fixed-gear road model, the stays might have been beefier.
Can anyone out there (Hilary.. are you listening) confirm that the term Hellenic derived from the name of a frame-builder who, it is claimed, first popularised this design.
For the record only .. another frame-builder from Wolverhampton whose work did reach northwards and was to be found in selected shops, was Jack Hateley. Jack's frames curiously, never seem to surface these days.
Norris Lockley..from a fairly sunny Settle, but still missing those French vines. Internal Virus Database is out-of-date. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.289 / Virus Database: 265.0.0 - Release Date: 08/11/2004