I wonder who remembers the old cylindrical grain silo south of Shenstone – now long gone?
Here’s another top find on YouTube – this one by Clive Roberts, top local history wonk and author of ‘Snippets of Local History around Shire Oak and Walsall Wood’.
This film shows Norton Motorcycles – then at Shenstone, just on Lynn Lane – in an article on top gear from the 1980s. Note the worthy, serious tone of the piece, and the great film of Lynn Lane, Wallheath Lane and Stonnall. This is when Top Gear was a real programme, and not yet reduced to puerile middle aged blokes acting like idiots.
Norton, of course, went through troubled times but still remain a great British manufacturer, although now they’re in Warwickshire. Sad that the rotary engine concept never really took off.
I’m told that if you watch closely, you may well spot Brian Crighton, who used to own the Honda shop in Silver Court, Brownhills, back in the 70s and early 80s (I’m unable to confirm this, as I haven’t a clue what he looked like. Sorry, folks).
Cheers to Clive, and don’t forget, copies of his book are still available, but selling out fast, so bag one while you can.
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Brian Crighton is the chap in the dark jacket working on the bike. Norton motorcycles are now built and based at Donington Park.
Well, I didn’t know that Brian Crighton had owned the Honda shop at Silver Court. Crighton was an extremely important member of the Norton team at Shenstone and instrumental in the considerable success of the JPS Norton rotary racers in the late Eighties/early Nineties, especially when ridden by Steve Spray and Trevor Nation. Crighton split with Norton in, I think, 1990, and continued with his own Roton race project (Crighton/Norton), that then morphed into the Crighton Norton when he teamed up with Colin Seeley. The whole thing faltered, I think as much due to a lack of funding as anything else, by the mid-nineties. Not sure what Brian Crighton is up to now, but he’s a very considerable engineering talent.
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Yes, Brian Crighton is definitely in the film. I was his first wife and partner in the Honda Shop, Brownhills. He lives in the Bristol area now, still developing bikes, I understand.
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