Dan O'Donovan on a c1920 Model 16H Norton

Roger:"The registration and the chain drive indicates a post-war event. From the registration and the riding number my best estimate is the 1920 Isle of Man TT where Dan was team manager."

Martin:"The interesting thing about this picture of O'Donovan is that it has a Leicester number. Look at page 62 of the Woollett book (above) and you will see the Norton camp at the 1920 TT. The bike at the front which isn't described in Woollett's caption belonged to Leicester motorcycle dealer Harold Petty and below is an extract of the Leicester county records showing the details of this bike which was finally scrapped in 1934, its last owner having had it attached to a sidecar, a sad end for an ex TT bike! .

Petty retired in the 1920 TT but Nortons did better than ever that year, coming 2, 4, 7, 8. 10, 11, 13 and 14, and four other Norton riders apart from Petty retired. 11th was Norman Black on the last Norton belt drive TT entry, a pretty good effort for his first ever TT ride, the start of a longish TT career through the twenties. The question I would want to ask about this picture is was this a Petty-owned (and hence Leicester registered) bike, and if so, why was O'Donovan riding it? I will get the entry from the Leicester public record office so we can see whose bike it was!! Possibly it was a bike ridden in the 1920  by a rider who retired and maybe D'Donovan rode it before or after the race, as he wasn't a rider himself by that time, his only TT rides being 1913 and 1914."

Update 05 July: I now have the registration data on this machine, and it was actually a 1920 4HP Model 1 (ie a Big Four) not a 16H at all.  That said, the machine pictured looks suspiciously like a 16H as the frame and tank of a Big Four are normally different around the steering head, so the mystery deepens.  What is certain however is that the machine was originally registered to Harold Petty as I suspected, the number dates from 1920 (19 May to be precise) and the machine is frame no 2530, engine no 20328, which is a bit earlier than the 16H Petty rode in the 1920 TT (frame no 2692, engine no 20389). Still no idea why Dan O'Donovan should have been pictured astride the machine, or what the race the number attached refers to...

As with all things to do with Nortons, the more you find out, the more you realise that nothing is as straightforward as it seems.

Petty's dealership was still active in Leicester until it closed in the 1970s.  I found a nice piece about them on another blog...

"At the top end of London Rd was Leicester's own Velocette dealer- Messr's Petty's. Here was a place where time stood still. The cut and thrust of business in the 1970's was not really for them. Customers were addressed as "sir" and the whole manner was more akin to a gents outfitters than a busy motor-cycle shop. Many of us called in on a Saturday afternoon, not to part with money, but to listen to "young" Harold recall the halcyon days of motor cycling. If anyone wished to buy something, Saturday Geoff was summoned, and the part required described in detail. In a scene reminiscent of Grace Brothers "are you being served" he would enquire if Hilda (who had an encyclopedic knowledge of all things Velocette) was "free". She would then fetch the part, place it in a bag for you, issue a till receipt and amend the stock records. 

Meanwhile outside Petty's the entertainment continued, with us teenagers gathering around to watch various motor cyclists following the starting procedure, or ritual, to bring a hot engined Velo into life. It seemed to us that the number of kicks to start a Velo was directly proportional to the number of people watching!! 

Sometime in the 70's Petty's closed, and the names, faces, and genteel procedures passed into motor-cycling folk-lore."

Elsie and Mairi go to War

By Martin Shelley

I thought you might be interested to hear about a show in the Edinburgh Festival I have been involved with using the faithful 1920 16H Norton. Before the show opened, I took the author round Edinburgh to do some promotion of the show, (photo above, spoiled only by Di Atkinson's bright red sneakers, which should have been photoshopped to a dark brown to disguise them!!) and she then asked if she could use it in the actual show as a prop. This involved emptying the tank and giving the bike a thorough clean, which was actually quite a chore but has been beneficial otherwise as the bike hasn't had a 'proper' clean for a long time!

The show was called 'Elsie and Mairi go to War', a stirring true tale about two WW1 motorcyclists who had an amazing time nursing right on the western front near Ypres and who survived to tell the tale unlike many who perished... Take a look by following this link. Although the girls didn't actually ride Nortons, they were delighted to have the bike for the show, and it performed admirably as a static exhibit onstage, occasionally with one or other or both of them acting out a story in animated fashion. I had strapped the rear stand down so the bike couldn't roll off with disasterous consequences. After the last show, I refilled the tank and she started first kick and I rode her home!! What a performance!!

Remarkably, the My Royal Enfields blog has a post on this same subject today!

Martin's 1920 16H Norton

From Martin in the UK:

"Attached are some pics of my 1920 16H. This is a very original machine. I bought it to rob it of the genuine original belt drive tank that was fitted, as it was clearly not correct for the machine. Now it has a nice replica tank with a Best and Lloyd semi-automatic oilpump and the original belt drive tank is soon to be adorning my belt driver... It goes rather well for such an early machine and makes one understand how they nearly scooped the pool in the 1920 Senior TT. Its such a lively performer, and so easy to ride but does have very delicate steering, so light it wanders if you try and grip the bars too tightly but is fine if you just let it find its own way.

We had a VMCC vintage training day at the Grampian Transport Museum at Alford near Aberdeen in the north of Scotland last weekend. I took the 16H and it was ridden by maybe thirty people keen to experience the thrills of riding a hand change, lever throttle early machine through the arrangements made by the Vintage Motor Cycle Club. The bike ran faultlessly all day despite the many different riders and the unexpected heat of the day, and was judged one of the most desirable bike present by most riders I spoke to."

1920 Model 9 Norton

A very nice picture of a Norton with direct belt drive transmission from the engine crankshaft to the rear wheel. No clutch or gears were fitted; push-starting the engine resulted in direct forward motion and stopping would be done by pulling the valve lifter and stalling the engine. Some were fitted with a Phillipson pulley to the engine shaft. This pulley automatically varied the 'gear' under influence of speed and torque.

Direct belt drive machines were favoured by speed merchants as these motorcycles were lighter than models fitted with a clutch and gearbox. Famous names for these machines are the Brooklands Track Special and the Brooklands Road Special, the latter being fitted with mudguards etc. like the Norton in the picture. These machines were guaranteed to do respectively 70 and 75 MPH over the flying kilometre; very respectable figures for a 500cc sidevalve machine.

A note added on the 29th of November when I was contacted by Martin, the discoverer of this photo that is now part of "The Marticelli Collection":

"I have a circa 1920 Model 9. Whilst searching for illustrations of the Model 9 to help get my machine as authentic as possible, I found in an antique shop in Bath, England, a little original picture of a similar machine which I was delighted to buy. The registration number, ONM 6, is that of a works Norton trade plate. There is a picture of works development engineer, Dan O'Donovan in George Cohen's flat tank Norton book standing beside an almost identical bike with the number ONM 4, so one presumes the rider is a colleague of O'Donovan's. Some think he is a young Bert Denly, but others disagree as he looks much older and not that much like Bert."

Martin would be very pleased if anyone could identify the rider; please let me know and I'll forward the info.