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Early days at GN in Hendon


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#1 Marticelli

Marticelli
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Posted 09 March 2012 - 23:36

As happens when you start researching a motoring topic from long ago, unexpected things fall in your path. We recently acquired a copy of the 1911 Census return for the household of the Burney brothers, Cecil and Alick, who lived in Northchurch at the family farm. Their widowed mother was head of the household, and apart from the Burney brothers aged 26 and 25, the only other residents were a cook and a housemaid - all fairly boring stuff. Then you notice that Cecil is described as working for Rudge Whitworth at Coventry, which we knew as he was a works tester who helped develop the motorcycles Rudge had only recently introduced.

But then you see that Alick Burney works for Godfrey and Nash at Hendon. Hendon was where these two likely lads set up a company to make cyclecars in a shed on the Frazer Nash family farm. What I didn't appreciate was that Alick Burney was one of their employees. Thus prompted, I rang GN guru David Thirlby and we together concluded that all four young men had met when apprenticed to Willans and Robinson in Rugby, in the period from 1903 to 1905. Willans and Robinson became English Electric in 1919 and subsequently was subsumed into GEC, and continues to this day as GEC Alsthom.

Another W&R apprentice during this time was pioneer aviator Geoffrey de Havilland, and it was from him that the Burneys acquired the motorcycle engine that became the famous Blackburne engine. Who can tell us more?

Marticelli