Phil Walters rebuilt the history of cycling in his shed – and now recreated a tour of Gloucester made 150 years ago by the inventor of the first ‘safety’ bike
Gloucester city, springtime, 1876: in ancient orchards that nudge the medieval centre, trees are puffing sweet-smelling clouds of pink and white blossom; riverine meadows are coming alive with butter-yellow marsh marigold and lilac-pink lady’s smock, just as the crafty cuckoo is beginning to plan its campaign of trickery.
In the city itself, a very different kind of awakening is happening… For here he comes – that strange man with his even stranger contraption.
The locals thought they knew him as the conventional boot-maker, stretching and stitching raw leather into serviceable footwear to protect them from icy winters; to keep foot-rotting water out. But the squeak of new boots is different from the rattles and squeals of the machine that George Shergold has been seen pedalling round the city. From his red-brick terrace on the corner of Clifton Street, here he comes: riding past the wattle-and-daub of Robert Raikes’ House; up and down the four Gates; by the great cathedral, where workmen constantly seem to be repairing and renovating this Norman masterpiece; via the docks, past multi-masted schooners and square riggers richly loaded with timber and grain.
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Those in the know would say that Shergold’s unique mode of transport is a hybrid: the lovechild of a wood-and-iron boneshaker and a wooden draisienne Laufsmachine. But while boneshakers have you sitting dangerously far from the ground, and pedal-less Laufmaschines necessitate propelling along with your feet, Shergold’s is some of both. Yet neither. Locals may laugh: the older ones shaking their heads (‘Wouldn’t catch I on ’er!’); the younger ones secretly envious. Only swells and mashers can afford the luxury of a bicycle.
But George Shergold is oblivious – he knows he’s onto something; an invention that revolutionises cycling.
His machine has equal-sized wheels; a rear-wheel chain-and-sprocket to drive it. His saddle, over the back wheel, is low enough for his feet to reach pedals and ground. Lighter, more efficient, safer. True, he’s had to cobble it together from bits and pieces. He’s a boot-maker – a cordwainer – not a millionaire! He’s waiting to afford rubber for tyres to make it a bit less noisy; a bit less bumpy. Even the lamp on the front – cupping a candle for dark days and nights – is one ‘borrowed’ from home.
Yes, it’s true: the ‘safety’ bicycle George Shergold is riding – a machine straight out of his own head – will change the world.
Just, sadly, not his own.
‘I’ve got the history of cycling here,’ Phil Walters tells me, as we stand by his shed, examining six replica bicycles of fascinating age and evolution.
I’ve known Phil for years – he was a near-neighbour when I lived above the gentle slopes of Besbury Common in Minchinhampton.
And I’ve always known – though he’ll hate me saying this – that he’s the cleverest of men. The kind whose brain and hands can turn their talents to making anything and everything in his shed stuffed with wheels and wood; nails and drills. Even a small forge at the back. The kind of man who can cleverly look at pictures of early bicycles and recreate them in his backyard, just for the fun of it.
Yet still the kind of cleverness – a bit like Shergold’s, truth be known – that a world obsessed with bankers and lawyers too easily overlooks.
‘This one,’ Phil says, pointing to his copy of a simple wooden two-wheeler from 1817, ‘is called a draisienne after its inventor Baron Karl von Drais. It’s a walking-machine,’ he says, demonstrating in the lane outside. ‘And you – if you can get over the thing – just paddle along like this.’
‘It looks quite safe,’ I venture. ‘Not too fast…’
‘Downhill, you can put your feet up.’
(Rather you than I.)
The draisienne – or dandy horse, if you’re up with the lingo – is the ancestor of the modern bike; the first steerable two-wheeler, albeit without useful pedals.
‘Were there many accidents in early days?’
‘I wouldn’t think, so much, with these. But with penny-farthings and boneshakers, yeah, I guess so.’
The penny-farthing, with its two huge, different-sized wheels, is fascinating – Phil has made a copy of the first, by James Starley of Coventry in 1871: ‘You had to be pretty much over the wheel to make it efficient to ride, so you only had to hit something quite small – or children would put sticks in the spokes – and you’d end up on your face in the road: pretty dangerous.’
With small exceptions, only athletic young men could ride these made-to-measure extravagances.
‘I used to ride it round the block but I don’t want to fall off anymore.’
There’s another Gloucestershire machine replica, too: a beautifully painted blue-and-red distinctive 1894 design by polymath Mikael Pedersen, the Danish inventor who worked for Lister’s in Dursley.
His hammock-style saddle and truss frame were another step towards modern bikes; his womanising and lack of business acumen were, on the other hand, a story as old as time. ‘This one runs quite well — Pedersen’s wooden prototype. The original was found in an attic in Copenhagen and is now in a museum in the city. Apparently soldiers in the First World War would ride it into town. It’s reputed that Pedersen never paid the carpenter who made it…’
And then, of course, there’s Shergold’s…
‘I’m going to ask Jerry next door to come in because he’s been very helpful with the whole process,’ Phil says.
Jerry Cooper, over the fence (behind the treehouse that Phil built), moved next door seven years ago.
‘Phil’s a very sociable bloke — came and knocked at my door a few days after we moved in. Since then, I’ve never looked back. He’s always making something or other, and I like fiddling about with things.’
He’s a horticulturalist by profession; works with farmers in developing countries. One of his scientific papers on the benefits of pesticides is still much-quoted. Just back from Bangladesh.
More to the point, here in Phil’s living room (one cabinet housing violins and violas Phil used to make for a living; several pairs of boots he made for himself in the corner), Jerry is a kindred spirit, constructing hedgehog boxes for the local hog hospital; both working down at Nailsworth Community Workshop.
‘Lately, we’ve got into this, haven’t we, Jerry,’ Phil says, turning the handle on a wonderful mechanism where two emperor penguins take turns looking after an egg. ‘We made it after seeing the Robert Race Exhibition of automata in the Stroud Museum in the Park.’
Their banter, as they tell me more about early bicycles, is as perfect a mix of friendship and knowledge as you’re likely to find. Penny-farthings: ‘A huge craze. It was a young man’s thing — macho. The bicycle is quite strange. Most things start practical and become a sport. The bike started as a sport and then became practical.’
Was there the same kind of irritation from other road-users that you see today?
‘They were hated by anybody who had anything to do with horse transport: “frightening the horses” kind of thing! There was a leading case about a coach-driver who lashed out with his whip. That turned things a bit because the court judged he shouldn’t have done it.’
Rules were quickly formulated against riding on pavements. ‘In 1840, a chap in Scotland made a bicycle that worked with treadles.
‘When he rode it into Glasgow, such a crowd gathered that a child got pushed over – not badly hurt – and he was fined five shillings for riding on the pavement…
‘But the story goes that the judge was so taken with the bicycle, he paid the fine himself.’
Numerous cycle-makers went on to become household names as they moved into motor-manufacturing: Morris; Singer; Wolseley…
So what about George Shergold. Did he see money to be made in his invention?
‘I think he might have sold a couple but he was just a backyard inventor – a clever bloke who saw a problem and did something about it.’
If you want to know the end of Shergold’s story – and it’s understandable if you don’t; there’s no fairy-tale finish – it’s well documented in the press of the time.
While Shergold has excellent claim to be the inventor of the safety-bicycle, he lacked the means to prove his case. Other examples, by men able to shout more loudly, began to come to market.
In 1900, the cycling press from London to Australia tried to settle the debate once and for all.
‘Who did invent the safety bike?’ it asked.
‘If every cyclist gave them a shilling for their pleasure a wheel, then this person is going to become rich.’
Inevitably, the promise of financial reward brought several out of the woodwork.
‘So there were three or four people, all trying to be recognised as inventor,’ Phil says.
‘The problem is that Shergold had very little documentation other than eyewitness accounts saying: “I used to go round when I was a lad and hang about while he was making his bike – he certainly did make it in 1876”.’
Other claimants included Harry Lawson, from Brighton, who patented his design in 1879 – like Shergold’s, that model is an exhibit in the London Science Museum.
His career spectacularly nose-dived on being sentenced to a year’s hard labour for defrauding shareholders in the motor industry.
A cuckoo in the safety-bicycle nest? Maybe.
Nor did the controversy die a quick death. New York’s Watertown Herald, in an edition from December 30, 1911, includes Shergold in a piece entitled Brilliant Inventors Who Reaped Pitiful Rewards. ‘DIED IN POVERTY AND WANT’, it adds, in outraged capitals.
It tells how, in 1900, a public subscription was finally organised for overlooked George – paying him five shillings a week.
When it ran out a couple of years later, the inventor was left impoverished, and he sadly ended his days in Gloucester Workhouse.
That said, it’s true that the Science Museum honours Shergold’s achievement… even if it does wrongly refer to him as Thomas.
Before I go, I take a closer look at Phil’s Shergold replica. ‘One of the most impressive things that Phil did — look at the chain!’ Jerry says.
‘He made that from scratch. Just bought bits of steel down at the blacksmith’s and actually made this chain up. It’s amazing.’
They’ve both – Jerry and Phil – ridden all six of these historic bicycles. Shergold’s is probably one of the hardest.
For one thing, despite its brilliance, the design could have gone much further.
‘The steering is so remote!’
Handlebars halfway along instead of at the front.
‘He’d only have had to make it direct steering and he’d have had the whole thing.’
‘That’s what the next person did – and then it was a modern bike.’
Indeed: our old friend Starley designed the first Rover safety bicycle, marketed in 1884, with handlebars connected to the fork.
Starley became rich. Shergold did not.
‘George is supposed to have ridden his bicycle from Gloucester to Birmingham… Why didn’t he ride it instead to Coventry and show it to Starley’s…?
‘He needed a Jerry to spread the word.’
Which is exactly what Phil is trying to do. ‘I think there ought to be a blue plaque on the wall of Aldi, where Shergold’s house used to be. A plaque for people to know:
‘Here was a son of Gloucester, who made an important discovery in his lifetime.’.
As any dedicated cyclist will tell you, taking to two wheels in an area as hilly as the Cotswolds is all about fitness…. No! Did I just write fitness? I meant, of course, it’s all about justifying a huge piece of cake.
And Heth Miller, author of Le (Great British) Tour de France… (France crossed out, and Cake substituted) not only knows that; she’s written the ultimate guide to the best rides around cafés in the Oxfordshire Cotswolds (other bits of Oxon, West Berkshire and Wiltshire too). Hurray!
I can do no better than quote her initial email to me: ‘And before you think: “ARGHHH, kill me now, a cycling guide-book, how boring must that be….” I would like to reassure you that what it is NOT is…
a) Boring. b) Written by a man. I’m not trying to be mean to male cyclists – they are generally lovely – but nearly all cycle books are written by men and somewhat, er, “dry”shall we put it?
c) Full of technical jargon.
‘Instead, it is fun, funny and very easy to read (I only got a C in GCSE English so don’t know any long words. Plus, I can’t even spell things like derailleur).’ Kablammo. Featuring 25 circular rides around beautifully tranquil rural lanes – some of them longer; others designed for accompanying children – this is a delicious way (we’re talking almost literally: in the region of 70-odd cake-and-sausage-roll outlets are included) to see English countryside at its best.
‘There are picturesque villages to make the wrong turn in, lanes with blossom-line branches to duck under, cow pats to avoid and hilltops to enjoy the most spectacular views from,’ she writes in the introduction.
‘If you didn’t die climbing the hill, that is. In which case, I’m so sorry and I hope you have a both beautiful and touching funeral.’
What more could you ask? Cycling, cake and compassion between covers.
Le Great British Tour de Cake by Heth Miller is available through Amazon, Waterstones online, Daunt Books (in London and Oxford) and many independent bookshops across Oxfordshire and West Berkshire; For more visit: hethgoes
biking.com
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