A CURIOUS CASE OF MULTIPLE IDENTIFICATION
The photo above of two adults on a bike is of my grandparents, Walter Sutton and Rose Harding – l believe it may have been taken on Hampstead Heath in the early 1930s. Would you know what the bike is? I’d also appreciate more information on the photo on the right of our father and his sister on a Norton – the photo would have been taken mid-1930s in Melbourne, Yorkshire.
Mark Woodley
Your grandparents are on a 555cc side-valve P and M (later to become Panther), dating from around 1922/23. The bike looks in good condition, which at a time of poor roads would suggest it wasn’t that old – but Walter and Rose’s clothing certainly suggests late ’20s/early ’30s, so maybe Walter had got a good deal on a ‘one careful owner’ machine! As for the bike your father and sister are sitting on, it’s a Model 18 Norton. I guess it’s a 1936 model, since although AW doesn’t feature in my reference book, AAW – which I guess started immediately after AW 9999 – came in June 1937, and it’s a Shropshire number. Cheers, Rick P