Meet London's Framebuilders
LCC's Tom Bogdanowicz visits the creative workshops of the capital’s few remaining artisan bike builders, for London Cyclist magazine.
LCC's Tom Bogdanowicz visits the creative workshops of the capital’s few remaining artisan bike builders, for London Cyclist magazine.
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Despite the ready availability of low-cost performance cycles, a handful of framebuilders (and bike-building tutors) survive in London and they have a loyal following among fans of locally built exotica.
It’s the ability to determine exact design and fit, choose the exact finish and hardware, and ride something with a unique character that draws people to the ‘bike for life’ concept.
Since we last looked at framebuilders, several have moved out of London, mostly in search of cheaper accommodation, or closed up shop. Multiple award winner Saffron is in liquidation.
Tom Donhou, once in Hackney, collaborated with Brooks (the saddle maker), but was last reported to be in Greece. Yet others, like Stayer and Quirk, have arrived and are featured here.
Of the earlier generation, we’ve included Winston Vaz who is still brazing in Hither Green. And also Adrian Parry, who sadly passed away as we were preparing this article, so we’ve included a tribute to his exceptional work.
Winston Vaz can trace his framebuilding heritage back to the golden age of cycling in London.
His first employer was Holdsworth(y), founded in the 1920s and a leading UK bike maker (it bought up the Claud Butler, Freddie Grubb and Maclean brands) based in South London, before it was sold in the late 1980s.
While still a teenager, Winston joined his older brother Mario, then foreman in the spray-painting shop, at Holdsworth.
He rapidly learned high-speed brazing on Holdsworth’s ‘carousels’ which carried multiple elements of cycle frames and were worked on simultaneously by small teams: “It was typical to braze 40 bottom brackets in a day,” he recalls. The workshop produced some 80 frames daily.
Following Holdsworth’s closure, a fellow employee, Dorothy, helped Winston get a job with Roberts Cycles, where Winston’s skill and determination outstripped the firm’s ability to pay him: “Chas (Roberts) once put me on piece work and I made six frames in one week — I got up at seven and I kept going until eight o’clock, and I’d work Saturday and Sunday just to finish those frames.
That was when Chas decided he couldn’t pay me at that rate of production!” Winston graduated from building lugged frames to the then popular Roberts mountain bikes, like the White Spider, that was ridden to national and international victories (badged with the sponsor’s name).
His ‘scalloped’ three-pointed seat-tube sleeve on Roberts’ frames became a trademark and featured on award-winning bikes.
Winston moved on from Roberts, where business was slowing down, in the mid 2010s to set up in space at his brother’s workshop in Hither Green.
It gave him the opportunity to create his own logo — “the name Varonha combines the surnames of my Goan parents, Vaz and Naronha” — and a smart head badge.
Acquiring a range of historic tools once owned by framebuilding masters like Bill Hurlow, Winston continues to build exquisite framesets in the traditional way.
He briefly worked for Saffron and recalls that “Matthew (Sowter, owner of Saffron) picked up some tips on brazing, while I learned a bit about marketing.”
It was as an artist in residence in Berlin that Rob Quirk’s passion for cycling was inflamed: “We decided bikes were the best way to get around and it was revelatory.
“It wasn’t like the metro or underground where you disappear down a hole and pop up in another hole somewhere else in the city. All of a sudden you had this means of getting around which really interacted with space in such a positive way.”
Returning to London, where he’d been a postgrad student of architecture at Goldsmiths College, Rob’s cycling obsession encouraged him to set up as a restorer of 1940s and 1950s bikes like the Sun Manxman TT (“Japanese buyers predominated,” he recalls). But restoration wasn’t enough to satisfy him.
Rob decided that what he really wanted was to make bikes and initially he planned to set up a business making carbon-fibre ones.
But talks with UK manufacturers did not pan out, so instead he signed up with the (late) Bicycle Academy in Frome to make a steel frame.
New wave builders like Robin Mather (Bristol) and Ted James (ex-Brick Lane) were among the teachers. Rob admires their educational approach — “A morning to learn the theory of brazing and an afternoon to deliver” — and still displays that first frame on a wall in his current workshop.
Freshly skilled-up, Rob set up Quirk Cycles in a shared Enfield workshop with several non-cycle fabricators. When the opportunity arose, he joined award winning framebuilder Tom Donhou in fashionable Hackney Wick, and later stayed on after Tom headed for Greece.
Unusually for a builder, Rob’s signature designs have been shaped by his personal travels. Entry into a European transcontinental race (4,000km with 14,000m of climbing) led to the Durmitor endurance bike (named after a Montenegrin park).
The gravel-oriented Kegety (a gorge in Kyrgyzstan) multiterrain model was first designed for Rob’s ultra race in that country, long before major manufacturers dived into this expanding off-road market.
A distinctive feature of current Quirk bikes are the clever 3D-printed stainless steel lugs — these eliminate complex tube cutting and brazing by providingperfectly-aligned structures where strength is needed without adding excess weight.
The unusual 3D Quirk bottom bracket cluster not only joins several tubes, but allows the wider tyres used on gravel/endurance bikes to be accommodated.
The headtube lugs and dropouts are 3D-printed as well. So confident is Rob in his construction methods and design acumen that he now plans to increase production and employ other builders. At a time when several others have closed, or moved out of town, this is welcome news for the capital.
“I’m Belgian,” says Judith Rooze, the joint partner, with Sam Taylor, in the Stayer Cycles operation in Leytonstone.
And that Belgian connection explains both the name of the firm — motor-paced cycle racing, called Stayer, was once a Belgian favourite — and their step from being post-graduate art students at the Slade school, to creating a cycling business by buying vintage cycles from Belgium and selling them in Hackney.
“We bought a load of old racers and learned how to do them up, and luckily there was a shop in Bethnal Green Road awaiting planning permission that we were allowed to use.” Which was how Isambard Cycles was born in 2013 (now run by others in Wales).
Sam used his metalworking skills to repair some of the damaged vintage frames, while Judith mastered wheelbuilding.
For Sam his frame restoration work led in turn to framebuilding which, at first, was financially supported by the income from Judith’s wheelbuilding but has since become a major part of the business.
The move to a large workshop in Leytonstone a decade ago enabled the pair to install a range of framebuilding equipment as well as a wheelbuilding room, and also to employ a small staff team including Craig and Willow (also pictured below), plus the odd canine.
The bikes they typically build are shaped by their own off- and on-road riding in nearby Epping Forest. The Groadinger was an early entry in the gravel bike category, while the Criterium is designed for speed — both are made in high-grade steel with all-but-invisible TIG welds.
And while Stayer continues to build custom frames for individuals who can afford them, they also want their range to reach more people: “In the last couple of years we’ve been trying to do (stock) models. We want our bikes to be accessible, so we’re doing standard sizes of the Groadinger and the Criterium, but people can still choose their own colours and the braze-ons.”
The stock-sized frames cost around around a third less than those fully made-to-measure. Another development at Stayer is the ‘Framebuilding 101’ course which allows aspiring builders to learn, in five days, to fillet-braze a frame of an agreed design.
Riders can also learn how to build wheels. And the brand is planning expansion, though on a small scale, by supplying bikes to a few shops including the London Bike Studio in Stoke Newington and Woods Cyclery in the New Forest.
When we embarked on this review of London framebuilders we had every intention of including one of Britain’s little-heralded masters of the art: Adrian Parry.
Very sadly, Adrian passed away as we were gathering material for the article. This, then, is a tribute to a craftsman with an enviable reputation among fellow framebuilders, who built more than 2,000 beautiful bikes that are still being ridden with joy, day in and day out.
Brought up in Birmingham, Adrian was first on the block to own a Raleigh Chopper. He discovered he had a passion for engineering and wanted to enter it in a practical field — he joined local bike maker Autostrada as an apprentice and built frames that were supplied to leading UK brands including Madison, Harry Hall and Dolan.
He also spent time at the Reynolds factory (which makes steel tubing for up-market frames) next door where he knew the manager from his work with local Boys’ Brigade.
Moving to London he was swiftly hired by Chas Roberts of Roberts Cycles and mastered the exacting standards demanded by an award-winning custom framebuilder, under the watchful eye of Phil Maynard, another legend of the business.
Adrian’s work progressed from road frames and mountain bikes to difficult-to-build recumbents and tandem tricycles. Collectors recognise Adrianbuilt Roberts frames by the precise sharply-cut seatstay eyes and the neatly-angled cableguides on the chainstays.
Adrian considered taking over at Roberts before the Croydon firm closed, but opted for more secure employment at Reilly Cycleworks in Brighton, then run by the late Mark Reilly, where he specialised in creating stainless steel-tubed frames that require the very highest level technique.
He also taught framebuilding — one of his students secured an award for his frame at the prestigious
Bespoked show; another was a talented African- American who Adrian took under his wing in a field where diversity is rare.
After two years at Reilly, Adrian opted to set up his own workshop nearer his home in Croydon. Six Four Frameworks, first established in Warlingham and then Bletchingley, produced immaculate gravel and other bikes, featuring Adrian’s trademark lugless brazing and his technically challenging detailing (a few examples are shown in the adjacent photos).
We trust that Adrian’s legacy will live on through both his students and the many owners of the outstanding bikes that he built.
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