London Scooter Club
Originally formed by ex-members from the late No.7 (Central London) Branch of the Vespa Club of Britain in 1954, London Scooter Club had a claim to be the first scooter club to cater for all makes of scooters. It was affiliated to both the Auto-Cycle Union and the RAC.
To emphasise its inclusivity of scooter makes, the club had six examples of members owning the now quite rare Bella scooter made by the Ambassador Motorcycle Company. The geographical coverage of membership was also wide; although most members lived in central London, there were members from such farflung places as Ruislip Manor and Heston, both then situated in the now defunct county of Middlesex.
The original club chairman was Charles Broomhall, who lived at (and was possibly the landlord of) The Lord Belgrave pub in Witcomb Street; the secretary was Stuart Burge. The club had a fixed address and use of a clubhouse at the Morshead Tennis Club, 94 Morshead Road, Elgin Avenue, W9, where an elaborate club noticeboard was designed and installed for the posting of various official notices. Club meetings were also held at the Pembroke Arms, Pembroke Square on Thursdays.
One of the club’s assets was an extensive library compiled by Clive Wilber (he was also the club’s honorary treasurer) who industriously wrote to 26 scooter manufacturers and/or importers (many makes now little remembered) to gain technical documents and advertising brochures, all with a notable success rate of positive replies. Some of these items were chargeable to the club, notably the Vespa service station manual at 9/6d (almost 50p) and various model handbooks (GS, G, GL and 142L2) at 2/6d each (about 13p) all from Douglas at Kingswood, Bristol in 1956. A workshop manual from Lambretta Concessionaires, then at Wimbledon, cost the club 17/6d (about 80p).
Membership fees were charged to members based on a quite complex diminishing sliding scale over the financial year. There were two levels of membership: full yearly membership at 10/- (50p) and associate at 5/- (25p). Associate club members were non-scooter owners or pillion passengers that wished to join the club at the time.
Regular Sunday club runs starting in Earls Court from outside the Kensington Motors Scooters premises were regular events, often covering 100 miles on round trips to the coast with Brighton, Littlehampton and Dymchurch as example destinations, but trips to Southport, Felixstowe and Leicester were also undertaken.
We know that the club attended the 1955 VCB Hastings August Bank Holiday Rally, where a single ticket was £1/12s/6d; this included lodgings organised by the Vespa Club. The Vespa Club (VCB) was then at the prestigious address of 49 Old Bond Street, London W1. The London Scooter Club arranged VCB membership on behalf of its own members. The annual VCB fee for membership was 15/- in 1954.
In 1958, 20 badges (presumably cog badges) were ordered from Malby & Sons of Brighton (the predecessors of the Xylo Company that only relatively recently ceased production of these items for the Vespa Club). These badges were described as being chrome plated, three inches in diameter, had two fixing holes and featured the club logo of Big Ben and were enamelled in white, blue, yellow and black. Members were to be charged 7/6d for these badges with a 2/6d deposit required on ordering. Strangely, enough orders were received from club members for 30 badges, so there were possibly two tranches of manufacture.
Very little evidence would endure at all about London Scooter Club without the documents left by Clive Wilber. This does not include, sadly, the club badges, for as far as it’s known, none survive (a factor that’s a great loss to scootering history). However, the club is recorded in various period magazines and by 1960 as having two sections – one being described as the ‘Airport Section’ (probably because the then secretary’s home was near). The club was still in existence in the November 1962 issue of Scooter and Three Wheeler magazine, although the Sunday runs by then met up at Albert Bridge near the Blue Cockatoo Cafe and meetings were then being held at the British Legion House in Upper Richmond Road. The secretary was then recorded as M J Hanley of Hanworth.
[Many thanks to Chris Armstrong for his realisation of the possible design of the LSC cog badge and drawn from contemporary information]