Shops and Manufacturers

Since John Keen’s pioneering workshop of the 1870s, Kingston, Surbiton and Malden have been home to a number of other cycle manufacturers. In addition, cycle shops offering sales and repairs existed throughout the Borough since the 19th Century and many are still operating today. One of this project’s volunteers - Keith McMahon - has painstakingly listed as many shops and manufacturers as possible using Kelly’s Street Directories. Let us know if we have missed any...

117 Brighton Road, Surbiton - today the Museum of the Futures, was Nunn’s bike shop from 1938 to the 1970s. This was the Surbiton branch of the original Nunn’s located in Thames Ditton. Nunn’s was famous for the precise manufacturing of wheels for both bicycles and motorbikes. In the 1950s and 60s, many riders in the British motorcycle racing circuit would reportedly refuse to race with any other wheels but Nunn’s. Long time Surbiton resident Keith McMahon remembers, ‘Nunn’s was where you went if you wanted something a bit special.’ Indeed, another Surbiton resident - Brian Lerner - remembers being taken to Nunn’s to buy his Bar Mitzvah present: a brand new bicycle with drop handle bars, a five gear derailleur and a dynamo.

Another of our volunteers, Hillary Gander, discovered that it was the women of the Nunn family that kept the business afloat during the First World War. The War gave many women their first opportunities to take up positions in the workplace to fill in for men drafted to the front. The Nunn’s business – at that time solely based in Thames Ditton – had been traditionally passed down the male line. But as the war dragged on, James Nunn was drafted to work in the Hawker factory at Kingston. Fortunately, his wife stepped in. The Surrey Comet reported that ‘She put on an old man’s cap and an old leather apron and took over all the repair work until her husband was free again’. The article quotes her son Victor reminiscing ‘“She got up at 6am to light the fires…how she ran the works, as well as caring for babies and running the home is a marvel.”’