FOLLOWING on from last week’s story about Sylvia Marks, the remarkable young lady who mended Worcester’s bicycles before she went bus driving, here’s a look at a real local legend in the two-wheel industry.
For nearly a century it was Bladder’s for bikes in Worcester.
Very few people who grew up around here after the Second World War can have failed to notice the business in Sidbury.
If only because of the name. For Bladder did not occupy much space in the telephone directory.
Sadly it’s long gone now because the shop shut in 1986 and a little bit of the city’s history went with it.
Since then the premises has been the home of the powerful motorbike, a result the firm’s enterprising and dashing founder William James Bladder would no doubt wholeheartedly have approved of.
He was born in Castlemorton, the village at the southern end of the Malvern Hills, but made his way to Worcester in 1880 with just ninepence in his pocket.
He aimed for a job in cycle repair and found employment with Bowcott and Co, cycle agents and repairers in Sidbury.
William was hard-working and ambitious. Within four years he was in charge of the workshop and after 18 was managing partner of the business.
He also threw himself into the local sporting scene and became a leading member of St John’s Cycling Club which was founded in 1887.
In 1893 William began building his own bikes under the model names Noxall and Worcester Road.
Fortuitously it was the time of a national growth in cycling, particularly among society ladies, and by 1897 young Bladder’s client list included Lady Sandys at Ombersley Court and Lady Cobham at Hagley Hall.
William Bladder (second right) and friends on a Rudge racing quadruplet in 1897 (Image: Newsquest)
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At which point his partnership with Bowcott ended and William began trading alone as WJ Bladder from the Sidbury premises.
He was also swift to react to the arrival of the motor age and, in light of the Honourable Evelyn Ellis’ motor car ascent of the Worcestershire Beacon in 1897, he bought his first car. Becoming the first person in Worcester to own one.
At the turn of the century Bladder started manufacturing Worcester Road motorcycles and added motorcycle and motor car agencies to his still-growing cycle business.
To make way for this expansion the Sidbury premises had to be extended with new workshops and separate showrooms for cycles and cars.
A remarkable line-up of early motor cars outside Bladder’s showrooms in 1908 (Image: Newsquest)
Bladder’s showroom in Sidbury, Worcester in 1908 (Image: Newsquest)
By 1910 William’s son Albert became involved and developed into a motorcycle ace, winning gold awards at many major events across the country.
A young Albert Bladder with his 1912 Rudge motorcycle (Image: Newsquest)
By the 1930s Bladder’s held at least a dozen motorcycle agencies as well as the long-established Humber car franchise.
In the mid-1930s two young men joined the firm and were to see it through to the end.
Ben Martin became manager under William Bladder while Jack Dallow took charge of the workshops and servicing.
Business partners Jack Dallow and Ben Martin in 1985. They both retired the following year after 52 years with the company (Image: Newsquest)
After William died in 1951 and son Albert 10 years later, Ben and Jack effectively ran the company with Ethel Bladder, Albert’s widow, as figurehead.
One of their first jobs was to oversee the move to new premises nearby after the original Victorian building was lost during the widening of Sidbury in the early 1960s.
On Ethel’s death in 1976 the two men took over the firm and ran it until they both retired in 1986, having worked together for 52 years.
Bladders, the business that had mobilised so many Worcester people, had finally run out of road.
William James Bladder onboard a Victorian three-wheeler (Image: Newsquest)
William Bladder’s Humberette outside the Hadley Bowling Green near Worcester (Image: Newsquest)