Images bring back great memories of Tom Arter

Well done, the feature on ‘Images from the past’ was just the article for us old 'uns. The photos of the Rogers brothers who were sponsored by Tom Arter brought happy memories of when I brought back to life the AJS grass track bike several years ago and Alan Turner did an article on the bike in one of your sister magazines.

That bike, number 78, is pictured to the left of the Scarborough picture and again in the photo labelled Folkstone Heights (which I feel is the wrong location) and also on the opposite page.

All the photos were at a time before I really got an interest in grass track racing. I was first taken by my then neighbour on his brand new BSA Bantam,

EJG 315 (why do i remember the registration number?) to a grass track at the top of Lydden Hill, near Dover, and the top man was number 8, Tommy

Turk. There was then a gap before I got my own bike and I and my girlfriend went to grass track meetings most weekends throughout the summer. East Kent had tracks at Rhodes Minnis Folkstone, Wrinsted Court Sittingbourne, Worms Hill, Ham Farm Barham and Lydden, run by the Astra club. So you see we had lots to enjoy and there were some super riders.

Back to Tom Arter. I was born in 1938, in Black Robin Lane Kingston, 100 yards down the road from Tom’s home, The Corner Ways, so I had known him all my life. He was a very straight speaking Kentish man, one who you quickly came to respect. He could also be very generous, sponsoring many riders on the road and off road.

Barham MCC ran the grass track at Ham Farm and Tom, being then their chairman, was very much involved. At that time the speedway type frames began to appear. Tom’s rider, Peter Elvin, was riding very well, on an almost standard

AJS scrambler, and being out-classed by the different riding and cornering style. What did Tom do at Ham Farm? He introduced the TT course with a right hand bend, and of course the riders with a low right hand foot rest were in trouble, but for Tom that evened things up!

The AJS that I rebuilt with the help of other club members started life in 1937 and through the years it was gradually upgraded with telescopic forks and a swinging arm back end. The idea was that Tom’s sons, Tom and Clifford, were going to take it to grass meetings and demonstrate it during intervals.

I took it to several shows and ran the engine up and it sounded really great. Unfortunately, young Tom’s health deteriorated and the bike was sold at Bonhams and is now in Rob Iannucci’s museum in the USA. To me that was a great shame as it would have been nice to have that piece of racing history stay in Kent.