The first event at Fairy Hill – Pendine – Cambrian National Open Trial
The foundations
The origins of the Swansea Motor Club can be traced to a lantern slide lecture on the Douglas motorcycle given by Ivor L Roberts in 1922 at the YMCA. Several people in the audience decided that a club should be formed so that they could further their newly acquired knowledge and compete in motor sport events
The Swansea Motorcycle and Light Car Club was subsequently formed and the founder members included Ivor Roberts, L V Thomas, Pop Hudson, Mattox, Maddox, Ted Thomas, Stewart Marks, George Gregor, Bert Jones and Frank Dyson. The first President was Frank Charles and he and the assembled band of enthusiasts set to work enlarging the club.
1924 to 1939. The first event and successful expansion
The first major event, a hillclimb for motorcycles up Fairy Hill, Old Walls, (in between Llanridihian and Reynoldston on the Gower) was run in 1924, and therefore 1924 is taken to be the year that the club was properly founded. This event proved a great success and later, in September of the same year, a sand race meeting was held at Rhossili Sands.
In 1927 the Swansea Motorcycle and Light Car Club changed its name to the Swansea Motor Club. The club continued to progress, motorcycle trails events continued and racing started on Pendine Sands. Amongst the entries were J Guthrie, T Simpson, Freddie Dixon, George Patchett Eddie Stephens, H Levack, Gordon Bennett, Eddie Stephens, L V Thomas, Ted Thomas, Handel Davies, the Treseder Brothers and many others.
Events organised by the club varied – one popular event was a grass track race and gymkhana organised in Singleton Park in aid of the Singleton Hospital Carnival.
A 1937 cutting shows many prominent members competing
By 1939 the club’s activities had expanded to include scrambles and trails, including the Cambrian National Open Trial, which was run until war broke out. A meeting at the Gore Hotel, in Caer Street, on 24th July 1940, decided that the club’s activities should be suspended until the end of hostilities. All the awards, which had been accumulated over the years, and which had been generously given by “prominent men of the town”, were carefully stored away.
During this period and the subsequent years it must be remembered that the road network was based on the A road network, and road surfaces were not as smooth as they were.
More information can be found at:
The Home of Welsh Motorcycle Racing
N.B all these details are correct as far as is known. If anybody has any additional information and can supply official documentation or eye witness accounts/ reports then please contact us.