HALLOWED HUT
We take a tour of the old John Player Norton race shop, conducted by Norman White, one of the few remaining members of the team who worked in this former hive of activity
Norman White takes us on a tour of Norton’s spooky old race shop
To the casual observer, it’s just another hut on a small industrial estate beside the Thruxton racing circuit. To those in the know, however, the single-storey World War II building, threatened with demolition despite modern cladding and re-roofing, has a rich motorcycling heritage. From double doors on one side emerged the beautiful John Player Norton racers of 1972-74, dozens of yellow hand-built Norton Commando Production Racers and zippy AJS two-strokes for international motocross. On the other side, a deep pool now teeming with goldfish once supplied water for Heenan & Froude dynamometers used to squeeze optimum power out of racing engines. This remnant of Thruxton’s past as an RAF and USAAF airfield was where Norton and AJS built and developed competition machinery from 1968-76. At first AJS Stormer two-stroke motocrossers were assembled here, until closure of the old AMC Woolwich factory, occupied by Norton Villiers from its formation in 1966, saw Commando technicians arrive to create the Norton-ajs Competition and Development Department. Roadster Commando assembly was set up at West Way in Andover, about six miles away, with power units being trucked from the former Villiers plant in Wolverhampton. When AJS moved out to Andover in 1969, the hut became the Norton Villiers Performance Shop, where the Commando PR was developed and built. At the end of 1971, Norton pioneered big-name sponsorship in motorcycle racing, receiving support from the John Player tobacco brand for a Formula 750 team.
Today the building is empty and dark inside. Sadly, almost everyone who worked there has now passed away, but Norman White, one of the few surviving Norton staff, operates his Commando restoration business in a nearby unit.
“Moto-lita, the steering wheel company, were the last to use the building,” says Norman. “After they moved out this year, the site management offered it to me for storage and gave me a key. There have been some changes, but it’s basically as I remember it 50 years ago.” The offer of a guided tour couldn’t be refused and we enter through the front door at the southern end of the 50 metre-long building.
First on the right was John Player Norton team manager Frank Perris’ office, previously occupied by Peter Inchley who ran Norton-ajs development. When the JPN equipe was set up, Inchley left to join Frank Higley on the Hi-tac
two-stroke racer project. On the left was the reception area, staffed at first by Inchley’s wife Joan, followed by others: Norman remembers a Daphne and a Margaret. Next along was the drawing office occupied by engineer, tester and racer Peter Williams, who had moved here from Woolwich, and Basil Knight, who came from Raleigh.
In a long, gloomy corridor we pass, on the left, the old paint spraying shop and the engine-building room that was occupied by Reg Paynter and Dave Ludwell. On the right were the stores run by Tony Lynas and later Ernest Harper, the Norton dyno test room, WCS and the AJS engine-building and dyno room which became the JP Norton chassis-welding shop. Here Robin Clist wielded his torch and hammered sheet metal into megaphones.
From the corridor we come to an area the full width of the building, where cutting and bending was done and machinist John Fox operated lathes, drills and mills. Going up a few steps, we come to the space where completed Commando PRS and, before that, AJS Stormer motocrossers were stored, with access to the outside through the double doors. Norman recalls a massive tank full of trichloroethylene, a highly volatile and toxic degreasing fluid that is now banned in industry, in one corner.
The last area we come to is the ‘top shop’, where machines were built and fettled. Norman’s bench was to the right; Peter Pykett, formerly with Rickman Bros, worked in the middle; and in the left corner was AMC competitions veteran John Mclaren, who fashioned the 1973 monocoque chassis from stainless steel sheet with tin-snips.
“It could be cold here in the winter,” Norman recalls. “There was one paraffin heater, which would occasionally give off a great plume of black smoke.”
Machines for test were wheeled out of the double doors and straight onto the race circuit, today separated from the estate by a high bank of earth.
“We used to spend hours on the track,” Norman says. “I tested 100 of the Production Racers. In 1970 I was out with Peter Inchley and Peter Williams when I fell off on the exit from Seagrave and went down a ditch with the bike on top of me. About an hour later, when the others had finished testing, they realised I was missing and started a search. I woke up in hospital – and to this day, I don’t remember
falling off.” Eventually, local residents’ complaints led to a High Court ruling to end track testing.
The Commando PR had a fine record in Production racing, from club to international level. Factory Nortons won three Thruxton 500-mile races, the last in 1973 when Norman and Rex Butcher were the victorious co-riders. The PR’S Achilles Heel in long, hard races like the TT was the gearbox, a 1950s design based on a pre-war type, while the disc front brake had a ‘wooden’ feel.
Formula 750 Player Nortons created by the talented team in the hut are now icons. Blue 1972 machines with pannier fuel tanks were raced by Williams, 250cc world champion Phil Read, 350cc British champion Tony Rutter (briefly), John Cooper, Mick Grant, Jody Nicholas and David Aldana. One bike was timed at 155mph at Daytona and the first win, against Paul Smart’s Ducati, came at the Brands Hatch Hutchinson 100, although the season was marred by gearbox failures. “At the TT, we were shovelling gears off the floor,” says Norman, who joined Cooper to race 1972 team machines in South Africa early in 1973.
Peter Williams’ inspired monocoque design was introduced for 1973, when Cooper and Dave Croxford joined Williams to form the permanent team, with Grant having occasional rides. With its radical chassis and aerodynamic fairings, the 76bhp 1973 machine in Player’s Number 10 cigarette packet colours could compete with more powerful F750s.
A primary drive with an outrigger bearing for the gearbox mainshaft improved reliability. Williams’ successes included winning three rounds at Easter’s Transatlantic Trophy series, victory in the Formula 750 TT and setting a new lap record at Silverstone. But while ‘Willy’ seemed to blend with his machine, Cooper, with his different riding style, never took to the Monocoque.
Croxford was happy on the low-slung bike, winning the British 750cc championship, although he mangled a Monocoque in a spectacular prang at Silverstone. He also liked the 1974 JPN with a simpler-to-build spaceframe chassis, but Williams thought it a retrograde step. Even so, he won another ‘Hutch’ and lapped Spa Francorchamps at 121.73mph to win an F750 race. Meanwhile, David Aldana raced a 1973 Monocoque in the US.
Williams’ life-changing August 1974 crash and the rise of 750cc Japanese two-strokes were factors in the decline of the team, which lost Player sponsorship after ’74. Hopes of staying competitive in 1975 were pinned on the 750cc sohc Cosworth-powered Challenge in Norton Villiers Triumph livery, originally meant to debut in 1974. “I remember the Cosworth standing on a bench here, after we’d waited so long for it,” Norman says. “Frank Perris asked me what I thought and I told him it wouldn’t work as it was so big and heavy. He said if I thought that, I should get another job. I left and raced a Yamaha TZ750,
‘IT COULD BE COLD HERE IN THE WINTER – THERE WAS JUST ONE PARAFFIN HEATER’
but at the end of 1976 Frank asked me back to evaluate the bike over two days at Brands Hatch. The Cosworth was never going to go anywhere. It was fast in a straight line, but at nearly 90kg the engine assembly alone was only about 25kg lighter than the TZ350S we were racing against and the frame was too high. My report went to Dennis Poore (NVT’S boss) and everything was shut down.” By then NVT’S financial woes had ended Commando production.
It is estimated that three first-year JPNS, four Monocoques (including the un-crumpled Croxford crash bike) and five Spaceframes survive in private collections and museums. Norton people may be long gone from the hallowed hut, but it seems the ghost of a WWII parachutist, said to have died falling off a roof in the dark, may still haunt the area. “We called him Henry,” Norman says, recalling an encounter: “Three of us were in the chassis shop late one night, when we heard the front door slam. Footsteps came along the corridor and went past the door to the room. We thought it must be one of the security staff who came over from the Andover factory. I went to the door to look and there was no sign of anybody!” An employee of the nearby 24-hour airfield fire station recently told Norman of strange
‘WE CALLED THE GHOST HENRY... WE HEARD FOOTSTEPS, BUT THERE WAS NO SIGN OF ANYBODY’
noises coming from the building in the dead of night. Originally from Devon, Norman White joined Norton in 1969, being advised to apply for a job by fellow racer Peter Williams. As well as building and preparing F750 machines, he tested Commando Production racers and drove the Player team’s Dodge transporter. In 1970, Norton sent him to California where, in front of invited motorcycling celebrities, he demonstrated that a 750cc Commando could turn in a 12.2s standing quarter.
When the Thruxton base closed, Norman was with the Honda Britain endurance racing equipe before setting up his own business in 1982. He won 55 races on a 1972-type Player Norton built and modified for classic racing, with Amal Smoothbore carburettors and an alloy engine cradle. He also built a parader that sticks precisely to the late 1972 specification, with a right-side rear drum brake and frontmounted oil cooler. Giving up racing in favour of a 32ft offshore cruiser, Norman has written the definitive Norton Commando Restoration Manual. Published last year by Crowood Press, the first edition quickly sold out. Other known surviving members of the Player Norton technical team are Basil Knight, whose engineering business is next door to the historic hut and Mike Ember-davis, a Thruxton apprentice who also joined Honda Britain and is now in the London property business.