The tale ended last time around 1940 when the war was in progress and quite a few members were on active service. During this period the competition side of the club was pretty much dormant but the social side carried on as did the monthly meetings.

In 1940 Sidney Hawkes was the president and the vice presidents included several well known people including John White, Arthur Allebone, Dr Crane, J Drabble and R Paragreen.

An extract from the club magazine of June 1940 below shows the social events for June 1940. Quite an active calendar and the ‘big effort’ is the carnival on June 29^th.

After the war the competitions started again and the James Cup Trial for motor cycles took place on October 20^th 1946. Part of the instructions are seen in the next picture.

This was basically a time trial where you had to maintain an average speed of 24mph. At checkpoints along the route your time was recorded and any variation from the average speed was penalised. The winner being the one with the least penalties.

The club had been a member of the Auto Cycle Union (ACU), which was the governing body for motorcycle events and the club representative for many years was Ray Robinson who lived in Hall Avenue. In 1949 the club agreed to pay the entry fee and insurance premium for a Barry Barker to ride in the Isle of Man TT races. I could not find how much this was and I wonder what the insurance covered!

The 1950’s were very active for the motor cycles with scrambles, trials and grass track events. It is also when more photographs of events have found their way into my hands. Additionally the Rushden History Society ‘Hearts and Soles’ website carries quite a few more pictures.

The next picture shows the programme for a motor cycle scramble on July 20^th 1952. This was probably the last scramble that was held at Yelden and it is quite possible that my father took me to see it. The old field is still there with the hills and hollows.

It is rather noticeable that although the club organised a lot of events during the 50’s the number of actual entries from the club was rather small.

Coincidentally, thanks to one of the founder members of RHTS, Richard ‘Spud’ Field, I have a complete set of programmes for all of the motor cycle events from 1953 to the final one in 1964. It was thanks to his sister just after Spud died that the programmes were saved from going in the skip!

I was also given in a similar manner some 120 photographic negatives of events which were on large glass negatives. Several of these pictures from these negatives follow.

The next picture is for a grass track meeting at Overstone in 1954 and is a race on flat grass in this case for motor cycles and sidecars. You need to be a brave person if you are in the sidecar!

A motor cycle scramble was held at Wymington in 1953 which was a regular venue for scrambles. The two fields used were separated by a brook and on each lap you needed to go through the brook twice. A large number of muddy encounters took place at the brook!

The club was able to attract some very good scramblers to their events and the next picture shows John Stonebridge, the 1952 World Champion, at a Wymington scramble in 1951.

Sadly he was killed not long afterwards in a car accident while out with the Bert Greeves the owner of the Greeves Motor Cycle Company.

The next picture shows another scramble in 1951 at Wymington, with a rider just entering the famous brook and you can see how deep the mud is. I have several pictures showing marshals with ropes pulling competitors out of the mud!

During the 50’s motor cars were becoming much more available and popular and slowly the membership of the club started to include more car owners. These were of course much easier and probably cleaner to drive than motor cycles. Thus in 1952 the very first car rally was held and the James Cup was used for cars rather than motor cycles.

The next picture sees the start of a motor cycle scramble at Wymington on May 3^rd 1953 with the starter being Arthur Mills who was the owner of the Express Dry Cleaners.

The club had assembled a wide selection of trophies as seen in the next picture. Many of the early trophies were solid silver and consequently worth quite a lot of money.

Of course the cars in the fifties were mainly black with the occasional change of colour as seen in the next picture which is the car park at Wymington at a scramble during the fifties.

The annual dinner continued to be the main social event of the year and in 1956 this was still held at the Masonic Hall in Rushden at an amazing price of 12/6. The next picture shows a ticket for the 1956 annual dinner. The dinner was supported by the mayors of Rushden and Higham Ferrers and Jon White a vice president.

The rise of the motor car continued apace, with car rallies being organised on a regular basis for cars only. By 1956 half of the awards were for motor cycles events and half were for car rallies. Classes were introduced for the car rallies for 'expert' and 'novice' classes so that the awards were spread out more amongst members.

The Car Rallies were generally held on a Sunday afternoon when very few other motorists were about. Competitors could be charging around the local roads and complaining about Sunday Motorists’ who were just out for a ride but kept getting in the way!

Pretty much any car could be used for the car rallies since the average speed was normally 24mph but could rise to 30mph.

This of course increased the number of members who could take part in the car rallies. Checkpoints would be set up on the side of the road where competitors would check in with their times recorded.

The advent of motor cars also meant that a new type of entry could be used for the annual Rushden Carnival. The club could put up to four old cars in the parade which would generally commit havoc along the whole carnival route. A typical car entry in the parade is seen in the next slide with Steve Joyce one of the nuttiest carnival drivers for many years.

Many pranks took place during the passage of the carnival parade and in the late 50’s the Carnival Queen was captured by the club and driven off in an old Bentley owned by Tony Wood.

The Bentley was then dive bombed by a light aircraft flown by Barry Tempest.

Several members of the club were involved in the Barnstormers who flew old planes for Podington Aerodrome and hence the next picture showing the dive bombing of the carnival queen.

We have now pretty much reached the end of the 1960’s by which time motor cars had become the largest part of the club membership and car rallies were held on a regular basis. Car rallies were easy to organise and did not rely on the availability of fields to run events. The majority of members were involved with motor cars with very few real motor cycle competitors.

More changes were to come as the 1960’s progressed .......

Richard Lewis 2025