When did Raleigh Begin? By Tony Hadland

The doorway off Raleigh Street that led to the yard in which Woodhead and Angois started their business. Courtesy of George L Roberts and www.picturethepast.org.uk.

Raleigh yard, from where the company grew to become at one time the world’s biggest cycle maker. Courtesy of George L Roberts and www.picturethepast.org.uk.

The face presented to the world by Woodhead and Angois’ original premises on Raleigh Street. Courtesy of George L Roberts and www.picturethepast.org.uk.

An early display advertisement for Raleigh. Courtesy of Nottinghamshire Archives.

Former silk factories in Russell Street which became bicycle works of Woodhead, Angois and Ellis, and then Raleigh, as the business expanded round the corner from Raleigh Street.

One of the older street signs in Raleigh Street.

Raleigh Street today seen from the Alfreton Road, with modern buildings replacing the premises first occupied by Woodhead and Angois.

Note: This is a sub-section of Raleigh Cycle Co.

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When did Raleigh Begin? by Tony Hadland of the Veteran-Cycle Club
Published in The Boneshaker Journal No.193.

In 2012 Raleigh celebrated its 125th anniversary. The company proudly trumpeted that it had been founded in 1887, a date that appears on some Raleigh head-badges. But was Raleigh really founded in that year? What do we mean by the founding of Raleigh? Was it the start of the company that became Raleigh, or the start of the Raleigh brand, or the establishment of the first company with Raleigh in its name? This short article is intended to clarify the situation.

In 1885 Richard Morris Woodhead from Sherwood Forest, and Paul Eugene Louis Angois, a French citizen, set up a small bicycle workshop in Raleigh Street, Nottingham. In the spring of that year they started advertising in the local press. The Nottinghamshire Guardian of 15 May 1885 printed what was possibly the first Woodhead and Angois classified advertisement. It was short and to the point: Bicycles, Tricycles, or Safeties Promptly Repaired at moderate charges. – Woodhead and Angois, Raleigh-street.

A week later the following advertisement appeared in The Nottingham Evening Post: Bicycles and Tricycles, all latest improvements. – Woodhead and Angois, Cycle Manufacturers; Works, Raleigh-street, Alfreton-road. Special attention to Repairs, Painting, Accessories, and Materials. This advertisement was repeated in the same newspaper a week later and makes it clear that Woodhead and Angois were not just cycle repairers but also manufacturers, albeit on a small scale.

Richard Woodhead and Paul Angois had both been engineering fitters employed in local factories, and both lived in Nottingham’s lace district, around St Mary’s church, just east of the city centre. Lace was the city’s biggest industry and, even 25 years later, when in decline, employed some 20,000 people.

Woodhead was born in Edwinstowe, in Sherwood Forest, Nottinghamshire, about 1842 and lived with his wife Mary. Paul Angois, 12 years younger than Woodhead, was a French citizen and had two sisters working in England by 1871. Their father, Louis Joseph Angois, may have been drawn to Nottingham after the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1, at a time when imitation Chantilly lace was particularly popular. Louis Joseph had married his wife Pauline (née Foulon) in 1843 at Marchiennes, a small town in the Nord département of France. Having moved to Nottinghamshire, Monsieur and Madame Angois lived with their teenage son Paul in Notintone Place, Sneinton, then a village associated with the lace industry on the eastern outskirts of Nottingham. Louis Joseph Angois was listed in a trade directory as a designer and was probably a creator of lace patterns. He died in 1874.

In 1881, when Paul Angois was 27, he married a French girl, Marthe Adelaide Guinois. The newly-weds set up home in Nottingham where Marthe taught French. In 1884 she gave birth to a daughter, Josephine. The following year Paul Angois and Richard Woodhead set up their bicycle works.

Woodhead and Angois adopted the brand name ‘Raleigh’ primarily because their workshop was in Raleigh Street, off the Alfreton Road, in the newly developed area of New Radford, about three-quarters of a mile NNW of Nottingham Castle. The name Raleigh also conjured up a suitably patriotic image of the Elizabethan adventurer Sir Walter Raleigh. This chimed well at a time when the British Empire ruled the waves and popular sentiment, stoked by writers such as Robert Louis Stevenson and Charles Kingsley, harked back to national heroes of earlier centuries.

Woodhead and Angois seem to have advertised little during 1886, although it is said they exhibited at the Leicester Sporting and Athletic Exhibition, held on Easter Bank Holiday in Leicester’s Floral Hall. (Does anybody have a programme, catalogue or detailed report of this event?) In the spring of the following year they advertised again, on 3 March 1887, with a small classified advertisement in The Nottingham Evening Post. At this time, they were still trading as Woodhead and Angois from their Raleigh Street address.

But less than six weeks later things had changed markedly. In the 11 April 1887 issue of The Nottingham Evening Post appeared a display advertisement for the Raleigh ‘Safety’ model under the new banner ‘Woodhead, Angois and Ellis. Russell Street Cycle Works.’ William Ellis had recently joined the partnership and provided much needed financial investment. Like Woodhead and Angois, Ellis’s background was in the lace industry. He was a lace gasser, a service provider involved in the bleaching and treating of lace, with premises nearby in Clare Street and Glasshouse Street. Thanks to Ellis the bicycle works had now expanded round the corner from Raleigh Street into former lace works on the adjoining road, Russell Street. By 1888 the company was making about three cycles a week and employed around half a dozen men. It was one of 15 bicycle manufacturers based in Nottingham at that time.

Further advertisements followed in The Nottingham Evening Post. For example, in the 13 July 1887 issue, the Raleigh ‘Front Steerer’ tricycle was featured and in the 13 April 1888 edition, Woodhead, Angois and Ellis advertised ‘Two Humber Tandems, Tricycles, and Bicycles; good as new.’

Frank Bowden, a recent convert to cycling, first saw a Raleigh bicycle in a shop window in Queen Victoria Street, London, about the time that William Ellis’s investment in the cycle workshop was beginning to take effect. Bowden described how this led him to visit the Raleigh works:

In the early part of 1887, while looking for a good specimen of the then new safety bicycle, I came across a Raleigh in London. Its patent changeable gear and other special features struck me as superior to all the others I had seen, and I purchased one upon which I toured extensively through France, Italy and England during 1887 and 1888. In the autumn of the latter year, happening to pass through Nottingham, and with the idea of, if possible, getting a still more up-to-date machine, I called upon Messrs. Woodhead and Angois, the originators and makers of the Raleigh …

So it is clear from Frank Bowden’s own account that, although he bought a Raleigh ‘Safety’ in 1887, he did not visit the Raleigh workshop until autumn 1888. That visit led to Bowden replacing Ellis as the partnership’s principal investor. Bowden concluded that the company had a profitable future if it promoted its innovative features, increased its output, cut its overhead costs and tailored its products to the individual tastes and preferences of its customers. He bought out William Ellis’s share in the firm and was allotted 5,000 £1 shares, while Woodhead and Angois between them held another 5,000 shares.

Even at this early stage Raleighs were being sold abroad. In Saint-Étienne, bicycle-making capital of France, Raleigh’s agent was none other than the young Paul de Vivie, later to become famous as ‘Vélocio’, the father of French cycle tourism and a great technical innovator. That de Vivie had seen the merits of the small Nottingham maker highlights the quality of the product. The fact that Paul Angois was a French citizen must also have helped. De Vivie advertised three Raleigh models in 1888: the ‘D pattern Roadster’, the ‘A pattern Roadster’ and the ‘Cripper’ tricycle. The two Roadsters were diamond-frame safeties. All three machines had solid tyres, relatively small front wheels and the Raleigh suspension fork.

Early in 1889 Woodhead and Angois were in the newspapers again. They had been trying to cut their overheads, as required by Frank Bowden, but a little too enthusiastically. Here is the report that appeared in The North-Eastern Daily Gazette on 19 January 1889 under the heading ‘Extraordinary Fraud by a Bicycle Firm’:

Messrs Woodhead and Angois, bicycle manufacturers, Nottingham, were yesterday fined £5 for stealing one thousand gallons of water from the Nottingham Corporation mains. Only one charge was taken, but it was stated the private pipe had been attached to the main and connected with a tank in the premises. The water not passing through the meter, the readings of the latter were reduced from 12,700 to 2,800 gallons per quarter, and this decrease led to the investigation.

This unwelcome publicity came in the same month that the firm became The Raleigh Cycle Company, a limited liability company. It had a nominal capital of £20,000, half of which was provided by Frank Bowden. Paul Angois was appointed director responsible for product design, Richard Woodhead was made director responsible for factory management, and Frank Bowden became chairman and managing director. Some shares were made available to small investors and local businessmen but take-up was minimal and Bowden ended up buying most of the public shares. He subsequently supplied virtually all the capital needed to expand the firm.

Having traced the genesis of Raleigh from the founding of Woodhead and Angois to the incorporation of The Raleigh Cycle Company, the key dates may be summarised thus:

• May 1885 – Woodhead and Angois are in business as bicycle repairers and makers in Raleigh Street.
• April 1887 – Woodhead and Angois have been joined by Ellis and have expanded into Russell Street. The earliest known surviving advertisement for a Raleigh branded bicycle dates from this month.
• Autumn 1888 – Frank Bowden pays his first visit to Woodhead, Angois and Ellis. He subsequently buys out Ellis and the company briefly becomes known as Woodhead and Angois again.
• January 1889 – The first company incorporating the name Raleigh is registered, with Frank Bowden at the helm.

So, from this chronology, we can see that 1887, the date chosen by Raleigh UK to mark its 125th anniversary, does not mark the start of the enterprise that became Raleigh – it’s two years too late. Nor does it mark the foundation of the first cycle company with Raleigh in its name – it’s two years too early. But it does acknowledge the earliest known use of the Raleigh name in a display advertisement, although it is likely that the Raleigh brand name was used by Woodhead and Angois from 1885 onwards.

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Tony’s comprehensive history of Raleigh was published by Cycle Publishing of San Francisco in 2011. It can be ordered from bookshops or online from Amazon.