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Swansea Motor Club 1924 to 2010 |
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1924 to 1940 The foundations The origins of the Swansea Motor Club can be traced to a lantern slide lecture on the Douglas motorcycle given by Ivor Roberts in 1922 at the YMCA. Several people in the audience decided that a club should be formed so that they could further their newly acquired knowledge and compete in motor sport events The Swansea Motorcycle and Light Car Club was subsequently formed and the founder members included Ivor Roberts, L V Thomas, Pop Hudson, Mattox, Maddox, Ted Thomas, Stewart Marks, George Gregor, Bert Jones and Frank Dyson. The first President was Frank Charles and he and the assembled band of enthusiasts set to work enlarging the club and A 1924 to 1939. The first event and successful expansion The first major event, a hillclimb for motorcycles up Fairy Hill, Old Walls, (in between Llanridihian and Reynoldston on the Gower) was run in 1924, and therefore 1924 is taken to be the year that the club was properly founded. This event proved a great success and later in September of the same year, a sand race meeting was held at Rhossili Sands. In 1927 the Swansea Motorcycle and Light Car Club changed it’s name to the Swansea Motor Club. The club continued to progress, motorcycle trails events continued and racing started on Pendine Sands. Amongst the entries were J Guthrie, T Simpson, Freddie Dixon, George Patchett Eddie Stephens, H Levack, Gordon Bennett, Eddie Stephens, L V Thomas, Ted Thomas, Handel Davies, the Treseder Brothers and many others. Events organised by the club varied; and one popular event was a Grass Track race and Gymkhana organised in Singleton Park in aid the Singleton Hospital Carnival. A 1937 cutting shows many prominent members competing
By 1939 the clubs’ activities had expanded to include scrambles and trails, including the Cambrian National Open Trial which was run until war broke out. A meeting at the Gore Hotel, in Caer Street, on 24th July 1940 decided that the clubs activities should be suspended until the end of hostilities. All the awards, which had been accumulated over the years, and which had been generously given by "prominent men of the town", were carefully stored away P.S during this period and the subsequent years it must be remembered that the road network was based on the A road network, and road surfaces were not as smooth as they were. P.P.S (notes from local historian Lynn Isaac) Links relating to the above text http://www.douglasmotorcycles.co.uk/ If you are baffled by motorcycles makes try http://www.ianchadwick.com/motorcycles/triumph/index.html or http://www.ianchadwick.com/motorcycles/britbikes/index.html Other links
ic Wales - Famous bikes (and riders) prowl again
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