Henry Sturmey was a schoolmaster, keen cyclist, and in due course, journalist. Then the Sturmey name comes into the picture. All this activity bore fruit to such an extent that by early 1902, Reilly, with the help of Tom White, a machinist at Royce, James Archer and Alfred Pellant – a cycle dealer in London and a man with many contacts in the industry- had a refined and compact Three Speed hub gear ready to be put into production.
Because of his agreement with his former employers, Reilly got a work colleague – who was also interested in hub gears on his own account – to sign patent applications on his behalf. None the less, he was still very interested in the epicyclic hub gear concept. However, he fell out with his employers and joined nearby engineers Henry Royce Ltd – in due course, the ‘Royce’ of Rolls Royce. Reilly had regrettably signed an agreement with this company giving them rights over any future bicycle gear inventions. This was a two speed unit and Reilly’s design was put into production in the late 1890s by ‘The Hub Two Speed Gear Company Ltd’. Here’s how it seems to have happened!Īlthough there were various other cycle hub gears for which patents were applied for and in some cases, granted in the late 1890s, none was that successful commercially until the immediate predecessor of the S-A hub gear was invented by a Manchester area engineer called William Reilly, born 1867. The beginnings of Sturmey-Archer are inextricably linked to the Raleigh concern and I was intrigued to learn that neither Mr Sturmey nor Mr Archer was the designer of the three speed hub gear bearing their names. Nevertheless, I freely acknowledge that much of the information which follows was gleaned from some forty-five pages of Tony Hadland’s book. Reference is made to S-A countershaft boxes for motorcycles but again, no detail of any sort is given. It covers in great detail the hub gears used on cycles, as well as - briefly – those used on motor cycles. SG- I recently came across a book entitled ‘The Sturmey-Archer Story’ by Tony Hadland. In this form he used it at Clubmans Day events at Brooklands in '37/'38/'39 - and indeed, Geoff has a certificate showing that Ted covered the flying kilometre on the bike in 1939 at just under 80 mph.īy today's standards, these modifications may seem a bit 'Heath Robinson' but hats off to Geoff for leaving it in its original state. He also fitted a pair of later twenties Webb forks and an early thirties 7 inch front brake. His creation comprises a 1923 Model 18 frame into which he shoe-horned a mid-twenties Model 19 engine and S-A gearbox. It has also appeared in a few Norton histories, usually described as a 'Brooklands Norton.' It is in fact a home made special, assembled during the thirties by the late Ted Heward, a bit of a character who lived on his own in a 1920s bungalow with no mains electricity, in Steep, Hampshire. SG- The machine illustrated in the photos (kindly provided by Chris of the Norton Owners Club) now belongs to Geoff in Hampshire and has appeared many times on the Norton Owners Club stands at various UK Autojumbles.
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