This is one of a very large collection of films made by film production company C. H. Wood of Bradford: over 3,000 films and videos dating back to 1915. This highly significant collection is of immense value, and especially for Yorkshire.  Charles Wood senior was a notable gas engineer, gaining an OBE in the 1880s.  Rather remarkably, he designed Moscow’s gas system after the 1917 revolution.  His son, Charles Harold Wood, set up the company of C. H. Wood’s in the 1920s.  Charles was employed...

This is one of a very large collection of films made by film production company C. H. Wood of Bradford: over 3,000 films and videos dating back to 1915. This highly significant collection is of immense value, and especially for Yorkshire.  Charles Wood senior was a notable gas engineer, gaining an OBE in the 1880s.  Rather remarkably, he designed Moscow’s gas system after the 1917 revolution.  His son, Charles Harold Wood, set up the company of C. H. Wood’s in the 1920s.  Charles was employed by both Pathé and Gaumont as a cameraman for the northern region.  C. H. Wood specialised in aerial photography and filming.  Charles used the expertise he had developed through his aerial photography to good effect during the Second World War when he pioneered infra-red lenses, used by the Dambusters, and for which he too earned an OBE – see Flying 1 & 2 (1928-33).  His sons, David and Malcolm Wood, took over the company, which was for a time known as ‘Wood Visual Communications’. The company closed down in 2002.  See the Context for The Magnet Cup 1960 for more on C. H. Wood.  

Harold Wood started life as an engineer for the Scott Motor Company, in Bradford, both as a fitter and as a test rider for motorcycles – there is a photo of Harold Wood riding a Scott motorcycle in the 1924 Scott trial for the Armitage & Wilkinson Trophy on the Richmond Motor Club website.  Motorcycling became a passion, captaining the Yorkshire team at national and international competitions.  It was only natural that when he went into making films in 1922 he specialised in filming motorcycle racing and trials. He would sometimes mount a 16mm cine camera on the front of his motorcycle.  He once explained. “A cameraman who is himself a rider can anticipate what will happen on a specific trial section.  He’ll know when to press the button to get the best effect, the main secret of motorcycle filming is to introduce humour.”  Well, as can be seen in these films, he certainly succeeds in all respects – see also The Scott Trial (1946).  The company accumulated the world’s greatest collection of motorbike racing film.

His son David also cut his teeth in filmmaking when filming the Scott Trials, working as a sound recordist aged just 11; which would have been in 1954, working on the 1954 Isle of Man TT races, and so he may well have been involved in the last film here.  David went on to make many moto cross films himself, winning several awards, including first prize at the Italian Motorsport Film Festival in Rome in 1978 for Mikkola – Motor Cross Master.  He also won an award from the British Industrial and Scientific Film Association and awards at Cannes and Bologna.

Any racing of motorcycles was forced to be off road as the Motor Car Act of 1903 imposed a 20mph speed limit (not lifted until 1930, when all speed restrictions were removed) – the Isle of Man TT races started as a direct result of this, being outside this legislation.  The American Ed Youngblood provides a good summary of the early years: “A course was laid out over the rugged northern English terrain, including bogs, rocky sections, and stream crossings.  While top speed was not the objective of the event, a time limit was included, requiring participants to move briskly from one observed section to the next, where their ability to negotiate obstacles was judged and scored. The victor was the rider who completed the course with the fewest mistakes in the shortest period of time.”  He goes on to quote historian Bryan Stealey, writing in Racer X Illustrated, “Scrambling was quickly recognized as the next big thing on both sides of the English Channel. The French seized the new form of motorcycling and gave it a slight makeover, shortening the tracks and adding laps and a few man-made obstacles like jumps. They also changed the name to ‘moto-cross’ – a combination of ‘motorcycle’ and ‘cross country.’”  So, British scrambling became big on the Continent, especially in Belgium where the second staging of the Motocross des Nations at La Fraineuse attracted 30,000 spectators.

Wood was perfectly placed to film the Scott motorcycle trials which were started in 1914 by the founder of the Scott Motorcycle Company, Alfred Scott.   Scott was a member of the Bradford Motor Cycle Club, which was formed at an inaugural meeting of forty people on the 12th February 1907 at the Royal Hotel in Darley Street.   Harold Wood and his brother also later become prominent members.  The Scott Trial began when Scott issued a challenge to his workers to ride from the factory in Shipley through the Yorkshire Dales on a prescribed route to Bumsall.  Of the 14 starters only 9 finished.  With the outbreak of the First World War, 1914 was hardly the best time to start an annual event, but the trials resumed after the war in 1919, and were run by the workers themselves when Alfred Scott died in 1923.  The event was given the official title of the Southern Scott Scramble in 1924, leading the American Ed Youngblood to claim that, “on March 29, 1924, the motorcycle sport of scrambling was born”.   In 1926 Bradford & District Motor Club took over the event, moving the start and finish to Blubberhouses.  According to the Darlington & District Motor Club the trial was moved to Swainby in Cleveland in 1938 due to the loss of land in the Dales.  At this point the running of the event passed into the hands of the Middlesbrough & Stockton Motor Clubs.  It then transferred to the Darlington & District Motor Club in 1950, moving to Swaledale – where it has remained since –after the ACU split the area into the North Eastern Centre and the Yorkshire Centre.  In 1990 the Richmond Motor Club took over the running of the event.

Having started his own film production company, Harold Wood filmed many motorcycle events from the 1920s onwards, often for newsreels like Topical Budget, Pathé Pictorial, Gaumont Graphic and Empire News Bulletin.  He filmed the Ilkley motocross trials between 1929 and 1935, and the Allan Jefferies Trophy Trial when it started in 1947. By the early 1990s C. H. Woods had over 400 films to their credit, including commissions for Norton, BSA, Triumph, Honda and Yamaha.

During the 1950s British riders had strong competition from Belgians, and later the Swedes, yet motorcycles were Great Britain's third-largest source of export income, surpassed only by automobiles and whiskey – with BSA becoming the largest motorcycle manufacturer in the world.  The motorcycles that took part in the races were usually, although sometimes modified, the same as what could be bought for riding on roads.  This, together with the predominance of the motorcycle over the car for many at this time, meant that large crowds would come to these events.  Doubtless many of the riders would have been trained as dispatch riders during the war – see Dear Sergeant or the Story of Rough Riding Motorcycling Course (1944).  Women riders too, as seen here, wouldn’t have been that uncommon, British Pathé shows several competing in the 1926 International Motorcycle Trials.

In 1951 it was won by Bill Nicholson, riding a BSA, and who had won it on four previous occasions since the end of the war – not the same as that other Yorkshireman, the more famous Tottenham manager, who at the time was playing in the legendary Spurs ‘push and run’ side.   He also won the British Championship the same year.  Apart from his riding skills Nicholson also made several important design changes to his motorcycle in the preceding years (he later left BSA to take a development job at Jaguar).   

The endurance nature of the event is seen in the fact that it took Nicholson near on four hours to complete the course in that year – he is seen in the film passing under a bridge (at 8m 40 secs) riding number 133 (a photo of Nicholson can be found on Flickr).  Hopefully someone might be able to identify some of the other riders and their bikes that can be seen in the earlier films.  At this time the riders were usually on 500cc four-stroke singles, the lighter 250cc two-strokes arriving later. 

As can be seen in the film, the riders were judged according to how they handled various difficult parts of the course, as well as their time.  Allan Jefferies, who supplies the commentary on the last film, in his heyday in the 1930s would sometimes be the fastest without actually winning.  Nevertheless, we see here that one of the trials attracted the foremost road racer of the day, Geoff Duke, who won six world championships and six Isle of Man TT races in the 1950s (he complained that his bike wasn’t suitable for scrambling, though this was clearly not his forte).  Duke was named Sportsman of the Year in the year he can be seen first here, in 1951, and received an OBE in the year he is seen again, in 1953. Geoff Duke also narrated some C. H. Wood films himself, including Hot Work (1955), featuring the  Scarborough Road Races.  His son Peter has produced many of the Wood’s motorcycling films for commercial release through Duke Video.

The Richmond Motor Club brings us up to date about the current Scott trial, which is run over approximately 84 miles, divided into approx. 75 sections.  It explains that, “The riders lose marks for “footing” in the observed sections and for finishing behind the fastest rider who sets standard time. Marks used to be lost at the rate of 1 mark per minute but this has been relaxed to 1 mark every 2 minutes”, and that there are now 40 different awards. 

It is interesting to contrast the Scott Trial from this period with its contemporary version.  The course is just as mad, and the riders just as skilful, but the bikes are now much lighter, and no-one ever sits on them!   The odd array of clothing that used to be worn by the riders perhaps helps to give this older film more comical value – as well as the helping hands (is that still allowed?).  Although there are still competitions for older bikes, perhaps the biggest difference is the age of the competitors: now it seems to be very much a young person’s sport, whereas then it maybe allowed those nearing middle age to carry on their youth that bit longer.

References

Paul Stephens, Moto-Cross: The Golden Era, Veloce Publishing, 2007.

Mick Walker, The BSA Gold Star, Redline Books, 2012

‘The Way We Were’, Yorkshire Ridings Magazine, March 2013.

Bradford Motor Cycle Club History

The History of Motocross

Richmond Motor Club: A History of The Scott Trial

Bill Nicholson 1948

 ‘How one family captured Bradford through the decades’, Yorkshire Post, 16 March 2013.