I was a member of RDQMC from around 1963 until the early 1980’s when the club essentially faded away. Over the years I have collected a large amount of information, pictures etc and also given the occasional talk.

Sadly most of the members are now no longer with us and as I am writing this it is eight days away from the funeral of another very old ex member.

But as you can see, I joined the club some 60 years ago so any ex members will now be very well advanced in age!

I have decided to write these articles in 4 hopefully compact parts. In the early days the photographic records are very limited but from the early 50’s records improved. There was also several years of lesser activity caused by the Second World War.

And so to the club in which I spent many happy years.

The Railway Inn c1950	Inaugural meeting - First Officers elected

The Rushden and District Query Motor Club, RDQMC, was formed on February 25^th 1931 at a meeting in the Railway Hotel (assumed now Wetherspoons) in Rushden, when 29 members were present.The object of the club being ‘The encouragement and protection of Motor Car and Cycle interests in this district. The club endeavours to meet the requirements of both competition rider and the tourist by organising various Sporting events, Social events and picnic runs, lectures etc., throughout the year.’

By the third annual meeting the membership had risen to over 100.

The members were generally well known in the local community and were mostly owners of motor cycles, this being well before the general advent of motor cars.

The name ‘Query’ seems to have stemmed from not knowing what to call the club and the suspicion is that the name was ‘borrowed’ from the Leicester Query Motor Club which was very successful at the time.

One of the founding members and the first secretary was local business man Sidney Hawkes who established the Central Machinery Company, Fred Hawkes Engineers and Fred Hawkes Refrigeration. His original membership card is shown below

Sidney Hawkes’ membership card [He lived at Rosemount]

Cover of ‘We Served The World’

In 2004 a book about Sidney Hawkes was prepared by Eric Fowell called ‘We Serve The World’ and one chapter is devoted to RDQMC (I wrote some of it).

Unfortunately the Fred Hawkes businesses have all since disappeared now but the name is still visible on one of the factories in Portland Road in Rushden.

The club set off with an amazing number of events in their first year which included :

4 motorcycle trials 4 motorcycle hill climbs 4 dances at the Windmill 8 Social Runs/visits Aeroplane Trip Annual Dinner

The visits included trips to Pye Radio, Clacton, Ketton Cement, Whipsnade Zoo, Leicester Speedway, Wolverhampton and the Thames Valley.

In their first full year 1932 they organised 52 events including the first motor cycle ‘All Night Trial’ which ended in Great Yarmouth. They also helped with the local Carnival Fete and Parade, and this association continued until the club ran out of active members some 60 years later.

On April 5^th 1932 the club hired an Argosy aircraft owned by Imperial Airways to take 20 members from Croydon airfield to Sywell airfield –at a hire cost of £6.10! Those were the days I guess!

The club raised considerable funds as can be seen from the report in the Evening Telegraph reporting the 1932 Annual General meeting.

Extract from Evening Telegraph 1932	The Waverley Hotel

The 1932 AGM was held at the Waverly Temperance Hotel in the High Street, Rushden. This hotel was demolished many years ago and latterly was Peacocks (which has recently closed! [2021]).

The club started a monthly newsletter which continued throughout the complete history of the club. These records have survived in several large books.

An extract from one of the first dated April 16^th 1931 is shown below:

Extract from April 16th 1931 Newsletter

The range of events being organised is clearly shown in this short extract. All of these events were for motor cycles and it is seen that motor cycle scrambles featured from the start.

Unfortunately as mentioned earlier there are very few really early competition photographs which I have managed to collect. I have collected information from as many ex-members who could find anything, copied information originally held by Eric Folwell and there is quite a lot of additional information on the Rushden History Society ‘Hearts and Soles’ website.

1931 also saw the setting up of a joint ‘inter club reliability trial’ which was called the ‘3 Counties Rally’. This involved 4 clubs from Northants, Beds and Bucks. The event was held on public roads and required the route to be covered at a constant average speed, typically 30 mph.  The winning club being the one whose 3 best riders had the least aggregate number of penalties. This event was held every year.

An example of the route instructions issued to the competitors is shown below :

Typical 3 Counties Rally Route Instructions

The Evening Telegraph reported regularly on the activities of the club and an extract for formation of the 3 Counties Rally is shown below :

ET Report of 3 Counties Rally information

Every annual event had a trophy to be held by the winning club or member and individual replicas were presented to the winning members. The 3 Counties Trophy was purchased for a cost of £15 – which is about £1000 at today’s value. Many trophies were presented over the years by individual members or companies and a picture of the trophies will appear later.

Interestingly a photograph of a winners’ replica was sent to me by the Rushden History Society some few years ago, which had been presented in 1937 and from the old minute books the member could be identified and how long he had been a committee member. This early trophy is shown below.

The early Trophy presented in 1937

The trophy is for the 3 Counties Rally – the ITCC standing for Inter Counties Time Trial.

To finish off this part, and apologies again for the lack of action pictures, the incredible fund raising of the club and thus charitable donations given, is shown in a cutting from the ET :

ET article 1934 showing fund raising.

In the first 3 years the club had raised £380/1/5 in old money, which is the equivalent of over £18,000 today. Most of the money raised was given to local charities.

So on that quite amazing financial point I will finish Part 1 of the RDQMC story which has just about reached 1940.

Richard Lewis (2025)