A beginning

As you labour up the incline on the A128 Tilbury to Brentwood road, pedalling northwards, and away from the 'Half way house' you pass a picturesque church on your left atop a rise that is part of that natural ridge that runs parallel to the A127 arterial road. As you gain the summit of this ridge you approach the junction with the Billericay road which heads off eastwards to the right.

At this junction sits a roadsign, now a survivor of a bygone age, manufactured in cast iron with a familiar black and white sectioned upright post. The pierced roundel or 'halo' atop the post is inscribed Essex County Council. The signpost is one of many probably manufactured in the 1920s by a local Essex company, the Maldon Ironworks at Fullbridge. This particular 'halo' may well be the only surviving Maldon Ironworks halo as many other top knots were manufactured by the Stanton company in Derbyshire.

In close proximity to this signpost in a sheltered position off the main road and separated from it by some grass and shrubbery lies The Green Man public house, on a site that it has occupied for many years. The decade in which our signpost was being cast over in Fullbridge was a transitional period when unpleasant memories of the great war of 1914-18 were still reasonably fresh but dampened by the frivolity of the 'flapper' years.

The last year of that decade, 1929 saw modern air travel represented by the feat of the Graf Zeppelin airship circumnavigating the globe. On the political scene the Soviet Union under Stalin expelled Leon Trotsky into exile and the UK general election resulted in a 'hung' Parliament with Ramsey Macdonald as Premier of a National Government - this was in a year when women over 21 had the vote for the first time. Overshadowing all of these events in the latter half of the year the 'Wall Street crash', the collapse of the US stock market, heralded the start of the great depression of the 1930s.

It's possible that on a fateful day in September of that same significant year 1929, our signpost was gazed upon by some of the five enthusiastic cyclists who gathered together at the Green Man pub. Their purpose was to mull over the formation of a club to cement their comradeship and affection for their sport and pastime. The records show them as F.F.Ainley, F.D.Arnold, A.C.Aldridge, K.T.Roberts, and D.W.Wright This five-man nucleus had by 22nd November been influential enough to attract another six to an inaugural meeting at the White house café stop, Theydon Bois, and on that Sunday L.J.Bayless, L.Beck, B.O.Cannon, H.W.Donelly, F.Griffiths, and B.W.Carr joined the proposed, but as yet, unofficial organisation. 

After the Theydon Bois proposals were carried unanimously, a private residence, 'Wayside cottage' in Orsett became the location of the decisive official final commitment in forming the Hainault Roads Club. With Ben Carr as Honorary President and introductory subscriptions set at 5 shillings [25p] the club was up and running. A badge of simple design in the colours of deep claret with white lettering was agreed upon and with a regard for future sporting events, entry fees for competition were set at a very modest one shilling each [5p].

Thus 1929 drew to a close; this, a year in which Alexander Fleming wrote his first paper describing Penicillin, among other notable events rounding off the end of the decade. Now Hainault Roads Club cyclists were about to enter the 1930s as a fledgling group full of optimism, not fully realising the far-reaching fruits of their endeavours.