This article is reproduced, (with minor changes), from The Boneshaker magazine (August 2015 issue) - the journal of the Veteran Cycling Club. Archive copies of this, and other articles on cycling history are available to VCC members at the Club library website.
Roberts Cycles
In post-war years London was awash with bicycles. More than 600,000 people traveled daily to work by bike in the 1950s. Not surprisingly, there was a buoyant cycle building business in the capital with several bike makers and bike shops per borough. As motoring picked up, however, it drove cyclists off streets that were redesigned for high speed car travel. The city’s many bike makers left town, sold out, went bust or moved on to other things. One lone frame-building outpost of the post-war days survived1 and remained almost unchanged until 2015. Roberts Cycles is not only remarkable for producing cycles that have won both races and awards but for sustaining a family bicycle and frame making business that had its beginnings in the thirties and flourished in the same part of town where it was born until its owner decided on a well-earned sabbatical2.
Early History
The founder of the Roberts Cycles business was Charlie Roberts. Like many of his contemporaries in the cycle trade (including Freddie Grubb and Charlie Davey) he was also a competitive racing cyclist. His speciality was time trials and, according to the records of Addiscombe Cycling Club3, founded by Charlie Davey in 1906, he held the Southern Road Racing Association 12 hour record from 1940 until 1959 as well as setting the South Eastern 12 hour record in 1946. While formally registered with the club, from 1940 -1947, he notched up nine first places, six second places and five third places in time trials.
Born in 1920, Charlie entered the cycle trade, at the then not unusual age of 14, working for Charlie Davey in Croydon. Davey, a successful cyclist in the 1920s4 , owned a shop in Addiscombe Road (Davey Cycles) and also, being a cycling club mate of Freddie Grubb5, helped finance the Allin and Grubb business (both well-known South London bike brands) in 1919. By the time Charlie Roberts would have worked for Davey, in the 1930’s, Freddie Grubb had set up a separate business and moved away from Croydon, but, pre WWII, Allin’s was selling cycles under the Davey brand name (Classic Lightweights shows an example of ‘The Davey’ head badge with Allin’s address at 132 Whitehorse Road, Croydon). Cycling historian, Mick Butler, records that in 1922 Allin’s, were advertising a Davey Cycles quick release whose design Archibald Allin apparently attributed to Davey himself, despite a rival claim from Freddie Grubb. Norman Cox, the brother in law of Charlie Roberts, and fellow Addiscombe rider, recalls that there was a workshop behind the Davey bike shop where a builder called Ray Cook, another Addiscombe rider, may have schooled Charlie Roberts in frame construction (a Ray Cook is recorded by Norman Kilgariff, Holdsworth historian, as building the first aluminium Holdsworth in 1947
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According to his older son Chas, other builders that Charlie worked for included Claud Butler (originally based in Wandsworth (Herndon Street, SW18) and later in Clapham (Clapham Manor St, SW4)), Holdsworth (Lower Richmond Road , Putney and other locations)6 and Freddie Grubb. Photographs show Charlie Roberts racing on a Claud Butler in the 1940s. On the Holdsworth history website Norman Kilgariff records that Charlie Roberts returned to Holdsworthy (the Richmond shop, (W.F.) Holdsworth, and the wholesale business, Holdsworthy, had become separate ) in 1946 after the war, which indicates that he was working for them at some point before the war started. Chas remembers that his father worked on tandems (his father describing the challenge of bending seat tubes to create a shorter wheelbase) for the British Olympic team while working for Claud Butler.
The Butler company advertised the fact that it made cycles and tandems for Olympic use in 1932, which would have been too early for Charlie to be involved, though Claud Butler may also have built frames for the 1936 or later Games. Among other builders who worked for CB and may have encountered a young Charlie Roberts were Les Ephgrave, Fred Dean, Bill Hurlow, George Stratton, Pat Skeates and Bill Philbrook – most of whom subsequently set up workshops of their own. Chas recalls that his father was friendly with Bill Philbrook and there are evident similarities in the clean, pure lines and meticulous filing of some of their frames.
During the war Charlie joined the Air Force as a mechanic (photo left) . Initially he serviced Lancaster bombers but high casualty levels among flight staff saw the unit disbanded and he was then assigned to Burma, where he again worked on servicing aircraft. Post war he returned to frame building, primarily for Holdsworthy, where he became foreman and later works manager. Norman Kilgariff records that there was repeated to-ing and fro-ing at what was now Holdsworthy. Thus in the late forties/early fifties Charlie left Holdsworthy to briefly join Freddie Grubb’s together with ex-Holdsworth director Ivor Cox and fellow employee Bill Rann. He returned to Holdsworthy where he held the status of foreman in 1956, according to another employee, Reg Collard7. Collard says Charlie Roberts left again in 1957, along with Collard himself, and other staff members. Charlie clearly returned again because he was employed as works manager at Holdsworthy in the early 1960s.
Roberts Cycles, 21 Trewsbury Road, Sydenham
It was then, in the early sixties, that 14 year old Chas Roberts entered the bike trade helping his father braze bike racks at home in the cellar to supplement the family income. He also took steps in the direction of track racing and received lessons from respected rider Keith Butler (son of Stan Butler who bought Allin’s Cycles) but did not pursue the sport.
Trewsbury Road, Sydenham
Charlie, according to Chas, got tired of office politics at Holdsworthy and left abruptly in 1963 or 1964 to set up his own business. Initially all the work took place in the cellar of the home the family rented in 21 Trewsbury Road, Sydenham and this home address featured on the head crest of early Roberts frames. The CR monogram in the crest, which remains the firm’s trademark, was inspired by a CP logo once used by local football club Crystal Palace and has since appeared in similar formats in the logo of the Classic Rendezvous bike website and, more recently, Charles Kennedy cycles. As Chas notes – there aren’t many ways of linking a C with an R. The Roberts decal on the down tube used the Clarendon font, which remained the firm’s standard choice until the 1990s.
Charlie’s friendship with John Pratt, then owner of Geoffrey Butler Cycles of South End, Croydon, led to him getting access to a workshop in the ‘garden shed’ of the Geoffrey Butler shop. Roberts-built custom frames were then sold through GB Cycles. Roberts also built trade frames for W.F. Holdsworth (then owned by yet another ex-Holdsworthy staffer, Roy Thame), and Condor (Gray’s Inn Road, London). However, he continued to sell frames privately from his home and those bore the original crest encircled by the same Trewsbury Road home address.
Most of the frames built in the 1960s were road racing, track and touring frames. Distinctive marks of the Charlie Roberts-built frame of the era were: several holes drilled in the spear point lugs, and often bottom brackets with cut outs to save weight. Chas recalls that lugs in the 1950s and 1960s were of a poor quality and invariably had to be extensively filed and cleaned before they would be used on a Roberts frame. Prugnat and Nervex lugs were an improvement on earlier designs when they became available, but they too required filing. Chas, and his younger brother Geoff (eight years younger than Chas and a keen racing cyclist) who had also been brought into the business at an early age, both worked on building carrier racks and lug filing for three to five years before they were allowed to graduate to frame building.
East Dulwich and Forest Hill
Outgrowing the ‘garden shed’ at Geoffrey Butler’s the Roberts workshop moved to East Dulwich but continued to use the Trewsbury Road address on head badges. Business was evidently good because Charlie and his two sons were joined in the workshop by Derek Bailey, an experienced builder from Holdsworth. After several years at the Roberts workshop, Bailey subsequently moved to Vancouver where he initially worked for Roland Hill and then joined the newly formed Rocky Mountain Bikes, as remembered by a young Paul Brodie of Brodie bikes8. (When encountered at Rocky Mountain in the 1980s Bailey said he had fond memories of working at Roberts – and insisted a photo be taken of his battered bike to show to Chas as an indication of Bailey’s, jokingly, hard circumstances). Meanwhile Charlie Roberts’ former colleague John Pratt had sold Geoffrey Butler’s and decided to open a new bike shop in Forest Hill, South London. It was called, appropriately, Phoenix Cycles. The plan was to share the rent on what had been a funeral director’s premises and Charlie agreed to move his workshop again and to sell Roberts frames via the Phoenix shop. Frames built at Phoenix had either Phoenix or Roberts transfers – John Pratt recognised that Roberts was strong brand and sold bikes under both names.
This was a period when the Roberts workshop pioneered innovative frame designs. A notable change from traditional frames with ‘pencil’ seat stays was the use of chunkier section seat stays, a style later followed by many builders in the 70s. This came about when Ron Webb, a six day track rider, introduced Charlie to Australia’s top riders who wanted stiffer frames for better power transmission. Charlie utilised parallel rather than tapered stays for the Australian team’s six-day frames and the ‘beefy’ stay became common on Roberts frames, notably track and touring cycles. Another unusual Roberts design was the curved split seat tube designed to accommodate a very short wheelbase for time trial bikes. The time trial cycle illustrated on the Classic Rendezvous website was exhibited at the New York International Bike Show in 19769. The link with the US was a consequence of a connection with a US importer based in Maine called, fittingly, Cycle Imports of Cornish, Maine run by Bob and Judy Richmond. Chas Roberts travelled to New York for one of the exhibitions. VCC member George Bolton describes one of the most unusual designs of the period: a children’s Penny Farthing, built with a 27” front wheel and a rear wheel from a pram – at least two Roberts built Penny Farthings have survived.
The Roberts business prospered at Phoenix, moving to a larger workshop at the same premises, but in 1976 John Pratt sold the business and Charlie Roberts, his sons and Derek Bailey moved from Forest Hill to new premises in nearby Penge.
87 Penge Road, Anerley
Work continued at Penge where Roberts had their own shop front as well as a workshop at the back. The new address, 87 Penge Road, Anerley, was put around the head crest. Sadly, Charlie Roberts died suddenly in 1979. His son Chas, then in his thirties, took over the business with Derek Bailey and Geoff Roberts working as frame builders. They were joined by Phil Maynard, formerly of Holdsworth, and later by Neil Brice, another Holdsworth graduate. Bailey, as described above, eventually departed for Canada. Production in Penge ran at around four to five frames per week. Charlie Robert’s straightforward consecutive numbering system, starting at 100, was dropped in favour of a five or six figure number starting with the year, then the month and finally the consecutive number of the frame built that month.
The business grew and Chas was able to buy the neighbouring shop. As demand from club cyclists increased, the quantity of frames built for the trade declined. The 1979 Roberts catalogue lists eight models including several touring bikes, a track iron, a time trial frame, several road bikes and a mixte frame10. It also records Charlie Roberts’ racing record, noting that he was runner up in the BBAR, rode London to Paris in the late 40s and had victories in the Bath Road ‘50’ and ‘100’.
One of the customers at the Penge shop was Maurice Burton, Britain’s first black professional cyclist, who won the UK junior sprint title in 1973 and represented England at the Commonwealth Games in 197411. For a period in the 1980s Roberts sponsored Burton supplying him with both road and track frames. Burton went on to run De Ver cycles in Streatham and is father of Germain Burton who rides for the De Ver team and has recently raced for the UK pursuit team. Another well-known client was time trialist Eddie Adkins whose regular builder, and sponsor, was unwell at the time when he needed a new frame.
The best known rider, however, to be measured up by Chas at the time was Tony Doyle, whose Ammaco sponsored and liveried track bikes were built in the Roberts workshop. Doyle was World Pursuit Champion in 1980 and 1986 and is still involved in cycling, encouraging young people to take up the pursuit. The championship win was subtly reflected in a new Roberts crest: buyers were given the choice of CR with world champion stripes flowing from it instead of the traditional head badge with the address around it.
With the expansion of the premises there was an opportunity to install a paint shop and Eric Cam joined the team enabling Roberts to control all aspects of construction and finish in-house. The quality of frames improved with the increased availability of new tubing from Columbus (imported by Saba to the UK) and the introduction of new ranges from Reynolds: 537, 531SL, 531C and others. This enabled Roberts to design frames with combinations of tubes from different makers, to suit varying purposes and riders; a mix and match approach that continued until 2015. The ‘beefier’ stays, characteristic of frames of the period, now had the Clarendon R engraved on the top seat stay eye as did many of the straight (as opposed to sloping) fork crowns. Frames were either lugless (fillet brazed) or had spear point Prugnat lugs. A decorative feature on some lugwork were small round cut outs. When Cinelli cast lugs became available these ousted the earlier pressed lugs on road and track frames, though Nervex lugs were retained on some touring frames.
The use of lugless construction, an increasingly common Roberts trademark, was required for time trial frames with sloping top tubes, for curved seat tubes, and for frames with aero-tubing. The beefy stays of the 70s gave way to sleeker ‘fast-back’ stays. As the word about Roberts expertise in time trial and low profile frames spread, the number of customers for such frames grew and, for club riders in South London, Roberts became synonymous with cutting edge custom frame design.
The successful era in Penge was brought to a halt not by a lack of business but because the council decided they wanted the area to be more residential – a sharp contrast to 21st century London, when councils are trying to restrict the removal of shops and workshops as the boom in residential development creates neighbourhoods without either. The outcome in 1983, however, was yet another change of address. Chas and his team, which now included Winston Vaz as a junior member, transferred the works to 89 Gloucester Road, Croydon – a location off the beaten track, and initially without a shop front. Brother Geoff left to set up his own frame building business near Brands Hatch before switching to the music industry for a period and, more recently, returning to frame building and running frame building courses.
Croydon, 89 Gloucester Road and Cycle Art Bromley
The move in 1983 to Gloucester Road, Croydon (two streets away from where Charlie Roberts embarked on his career) has proved to be the most stable in the Roberts history, location-wise and, to a large extent, staff-wise. From the Penge team Derek Bailey left for Canada, and Neil Brice moved elsewhere, but Winstone Vaz was now a frame builder, and Phil Maynard stayed in Chas’ team, the latter establishing a reputation for constructing beautiful fillet brazed tandems. Eric Cam remained as the paint sprayer and ushered in the fashion for complex fade paintjobs that persisted through the 80s and into the 90s. Perhaps the best known Roberts colour schemes of the early Croydon period were the blue/metallic pink fades used on time trial machines and road bikes, and the black, red, yellow, white fade that graced many of the newly popular mountain bikes. Because the workshop at Gloucester Road originally had no showroom, Chas decided to take a short lease in 1985 on a shop in Bromley which he renamed Cycle Art – the shop was successful enough for Roberts to stay there beyond the lease but the construction of a showroom at Gloucester Road resolved the issue of having a place to receive customers. Regrettably a break-in at the Bromley shop resulted in the loss of records, kept in a Campagnolo brake box, so the exact details of production up to that period will never be known.
Staff changes at Gloucester Road were not great. Phil Maynard eventually left and was replaced by Adrian Parry who, within the trade, developed a reputation as a builder of considerable talent with the ability to build anything from trikes and tandems to low profiles and unusual mountain bikes. Chris Shaw joined the team during the mountain bike boom but was sadly killed in a collision. Adam Horton worked as a mechanic and at the front of shop before being replaced by Andrew Colvin in the showroom and Brian Phillips, an experienced mechanic who had previously worked at Cycle Systems, a Harrow cycle shop that offered customised Roberts frames, and Beta Bikes in West Hampstead.
The 21st century, notably in London, was marked not only by a cycling boom but a retro fashion that saw hand-built steel frames prized above all else. Roberts, who had never really built anything else but custom made steel frames, were in the spotlight again and, along with Witcomb, one of the two remaining custom builders in London. Roberts also had an enviable track record of building specialised fixed wheel bikes, a particular favourite in the retro cycle revival. This boosted orders for track frames in particular, but road and touring frames also benefitted. The versatility of the Roberts team was evident at the Bespoked custom bike shows in Bristol and London, where they exhibited an unusually wide range of frames for customers, not to mention other builders, to admire. Among them were frames made using the new and significantly lighter stainless steel tubing, like Columbus XCr and Reynolds 953, and atypical designs like the Fleur-de-Lys lugged step-through frame based on 1950s French styling.
Some modern day peer recognition of Roberts is evident in Made in England, co-written by Matthew Souter and Ricky Feather, two of the most lauded of the new generation of frame builders12. This book features interviews with UK builders, with several of the younger generation citing Roberts, as well as the late Ron Cooper, as an influence. Chas Roberts himself cites Bill Philbrook and Ron Cooper as builders he respects but he also admires the contemporary younger builders like Mark Reilly of Nerve.
Mountain bikes
Roberts were probably the first British frame builder to construct a US-style mountain bike in the early eighties13. Like many boys brought up in 1960s South London, Chas Roberts rode a UK style track/trail bike off-road as a young teenager so he would have had an inbuilt understanding of the sport before it arrived from the US. Indeed Chas’ off-road track bike was the first cycle he ever assembled (at the precocious age of 13). It was based on a Phillips frame re-sprayed light blue and fitted with knobbly tyres, cow horn bars and a sloping top tube – the only missing MTB ingredient was the gear mech. as used by US pioneers Charlie Kelly and Gary Fisher (UK off-road ‘track’ bikes were single speed). At Roberts the 1980s MTB initiative came from Jake Heilbron14, the manager of West Point Cycles in Vancouver and co- founder of Canada’s Rocky Mountain Bikes (where Derek Bailey of Roberts Cycles turned up), and Kona cycles. Heilbron was familiar with the heavyweight mountain bikes being used in California but wanted something lighter and sprightlier so he shipped a Californian style frame to Roberts, whom he knew through Cycle Imports of Maine, and asked them to make something similar. Chas recalls the challenge of setting up for wheels of a different dimension:– 26″ US cruiser wheels and tyres, as used on the converted Schwinns that served as the pre-mountainbike ‘clunkers’ in the mid-1970s. To deliver a lighter frame than then in use in California, Roberts opted for tandem tubing to ensure durability in off-road use. The frames were well received across the pond and Roberts made several for the US and Canadian markets.
Early Roberts mountain bike at the 1984 Wendover Bash (Graham Wallace)
Initially mountain bikes were treated with curiosity or contempt by UK road cyclists but off-road cycling gradually took off, in part because, both in the US and UK, on-road cycling had been made less attractive by ever higher car use and the re-design of many roads purely for fast motoring. Roberts were well placed to satisfy the new market at a time when high quality mountain bikes were limited in supply. At the upper end of the nascent market only graphic artist Geoff Apps was offering Cleland cross-country bikes – in very small numbers, and both Covent Garden Bikes and Greg Oxenham at Bike UK were importing a few of the original Ritchey Mountain Bikes. The initial problem for Roberts was that while they could build mountain bike frames using existing tubing types, there was a shortage of componentry. They resorted to buying low cost mountain bikes, such as Muddy Foxes, to strip for parts. Sources of components, notably those from Suntour and Shimano, gradually came on stream and Roberts established a name for high-end mountain bike design. Their familiarity with lugless frame building made it relatively easy for Roberts to accommodate the new dimensions of tubing from Reynolds and Columbus as well as build frames with sloping top tubes – an innovation that was not available on any of the US nor Far Eastern bikes for sale in the UK at the time. One of the first sloping top tube frames from Roberts, purchased in the mid-80s, also included the recently introduced brass head badge (since succeeded by the stainless version). Another Roberts innovation for off-road machines was the decoratively filleted seat tube sleeve – critical on early machines when suspension was not available and seat post adjustments were frequent. The sleeve, usually with a spear point finish, often distinguishes a Roberts-built frame, even when they were built for the trade. In the 1980s Roberts built mountain bikes for Evans Cycles and others. Recently sold in East London was a Roberts-built Evans with not only a sleeved seattube but also the characteristic beefy seat stays with an engraved R – the colour, bright metallic pink, was also a characteristic choice at Roberts in the 80s and 90s.
As with road bikes, word spread of the Roberts mountain bike expertise and UK and world champions came knocking at the door to be measured up for frames. Both Dave Baker and Tim Gould rode Roberts-built frames to victory though they were badged as Peugeots (their sponsor). The frames can be identified as coming from the Roberts workshop by the unusual circular cut out on the seat tube reinforcing sleeve – the cut out first featured on the rare Cobra model and was a reference to 60s and 70s Roberts frames with drilled lugs.
The development of mountain biking meant that the original Roberts ‘mountain bike’ blossomed into a whole range of off-road bikes to suit different uses and meet different price points. Their first mountain bike catalogue featured the top of the range White Spider (named after the north face of the Eiger), the mid-range Black Leopard, the off-road tourer, the Rough Stuff (a nod towards the UK precursor of mountain biking, the Rough Stuff Fellowship); and the Trans-continental, a long range tourer (whose name might have been the Inter-continental but for the clash with hotel and missile names). Short-lived off-road models included the Cobra, which included unique wide cow-horn bars (based on tandem bars but reversed and sawn-off) and was made with the UK’s first set of Tange Prestige tubing (imported by Muddy Fox); the Stratos(11 built) which had chain stays meeting the centre of the seat tube and an additional tube routed from the downtube to the bottom bracket15, the Phantom, built with the first UK set of Columbus Nivacrom OR; and the all-white ‘gentleman’s bicycle’, as it was dubbed in an MBUK review, which combined light road tubing with 26″ wheels and 7-speed gearing to create a sub-20lb hybrid machine. One example of the White Spider was built as a companion bike for purchasers of Aston Martin cars – sprayed in a colour to match the owner’s car. The one illustrated on <span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; font-family: 'Arial',sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; col