The Silich Collection of Historical and Art Medals (Part II)

ENGLAND, Cyclists’ Touring Club, Sir Alfred Bird Memorial Prize, 1926, a silver award medal by R.G. Jennings for A.H. Darby, bust of Alfred Bird left, legend in panel below, rev. male cyclist riding to right, trees, hills and sea in background, tablet below, named (W.M. Robinson, 1929), hallmarked ahd Birmingham 1926, 89mm, 251.75g. Obverse rim knock at 7 o’clock, otherwise better than very fine, very rare and a significant award to a pioneer of off-road cycling £100-£150

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Silich Collection of Historical and Art Medals.

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Bt A.C. Eimer June 2011.

Walter McGregor Robinson (1877-1956), a prime mover in the cycling boom which followed World War I, was known to thousands of readers of Cycling as ‘Wayfarer’ or simply as ‘Robbie’. Originally from Anfield, Liverpool, he worked for the Liverpool and London and Globe Insurance Co for over 45 years, moving to Birmingham in 1925 and retiring in 1937. He was wounded in the trenches during the Great War but refused to let his leg injury hamper his riding, whether it be in Cheshire, North Wales or further afield.

Sir Alfred Frederick Bird, 1st Bt (1849-1922), Tudor Grange, Solihull; Conservative MP for Wolverhampton West, 1910-22; chemist and food manufacturer, proprietor of Alfred Bird & Sons, inventor of baking powder and the powdered custard that bears his name. A keen amateur cyclist from the age of 20, who set a record for the Land’s End to John O’Groats run, he became a director of Rudge Whitworth and was a founder member of the Automobile Club of Great Britain and Ireland (later the RAC) in 1897; in 1904 he is recorded as owning no less than five cars, including a 24hp Mors. While attempting to cross Piccadilly at Hyde Park Corner on 7 February 1922, he was run over and died from his injuries. His son, Sir Robert Bland Bird (1876-1960), endowed a prize fund in his father’s memory to be given, with a medal, to ‘the inventor or producer of the greatest improvement in cycle design, construction, or equipment during any year’