Revealing the least known but arguably best 1960s 20" wheel shopper

General view of Royal Enfield Revelation LHD Mk1
From 1966 advertising

In the mid 1960s, in response to the unexpected success of the Moulton bicycle, most UK cycle manufacturers launched unsprung unisex small-wheelers. Although Raleigh and a few others initially adopted 16" diameter wheels, it was the 20" wheel open-frame 'shopper' that was to be most successful commercially. Dawes, with its Newpin/Kingpin range was perhaps the first major maker to adopt the 20" wheel, using both the British 20 x 1 3/8" (ISO 451) and the French 500A (ISO 440) formats. The Raleigh 20 range was ultimately the best seller. But perhaps the best of the 20" wheel open frame machines was the least well known - the Royal Enfield Revelation.

Royal Enfield came into being in the 1890s. The Eadie Manufacturing Company of Redditch, Worcestershire [about 12 miles south of central Birmingham] obtained a contract for supplying precision rifle parts to the Royal Small Arms factory in Enfield, Middlesex. Eadie's product range included bicycles. They renamed these 'Royal Enfield' to capitalise on the firearms association and adopted the slogan 'Built Like A Gun.' An international rally to celebrate a hundred years of Enfield cycles was held at Redditch in August 1992.

The Royal Enfield Revelation was the last machine designed and built at Redditch. The designer was the late Vic Bott, who was born c.1900 and lived until the 1990s. He joined Royal Enfield in 1920 and remained with them until the final shutdown in 1968. In 1946 he was presented with the Long Service Certificate shown below.

Thanks to Anne Bradford, author of 'The Royal Enfield Story,' we have Vic's reminiscences of the Revelation's genesis. To these have been added dates [in square brackets thus] supplied by Malcolm Barrett, Royal Enfield marque enthusiast of the Veteran-Cycle Club:

'When Mr Davenport, Mr Cassey and Mr Roberts arrived from E & H P Smith to take over the running of the company [1962], I had a surprise because I knew Leo Davenport. I had met him way back in the early days of Royal Enfield, not long after the First World War, when he was a representative for Lodge Plugs and riding in the TT for AJS - his father was a manager there. We heard that E & H P Smith were amalgamating with Royal Enfield and we thought that we would be the senior partners but it soon became clear that E & H P Smith were in charge. Leo Davenport took over Vic Mountford's splendid office and Vic was moved to a more humble abode down the corridor.'

'I was due for retirement but when the time came, E & H P Smith offered us an increase in salary and so I decided to continue to work. A couple of years later [1964], Leo Davenport sent for me. He said that he wanted to put a cycle on the market with a 20" wheel and asked me if I could design it. He wanted to know how soon I could have a prototype ready. Jokingly, I said, "Two weeks!" and he jumped at that. I knew I had landed myself with a problem. It usually took years to develop a new bicycle. It was clear that I couldn't go through the customary design channels so what I did, was that I laid an enormous piece of paper on the floor, drew a profile of the bike to size and gave it to the Design Department to build. Within a week, a girl was trying out the cycle by riding it to Stratford. [Stratford-upon-Avon, about 11 miles away.] After that, of course, all kinds of tests had to be made to make sure that the bike was safe but within twelve months [1965] it was on sale in the shops. The bicycle was called "The Revelation".'

Dave Wilson worked in the toolroom and tooled up the unusual gussets that reinforce the junctions between the top tube and the head and seat tubes. He recalls seeing rows and rows of Revelations in the despatch department before he left the company early in 1965.

It is unclear how many Revelations were made: Vic Bott told Anne Bradford that they sold 'thousands' but Arthur Beckingham, the works foreman (and allegedly 'last to leave the factory' when it closed) told Tony Hadland in 1991 that they made only between 30 and 100, which seems improbably low. The lowest and highest serial numbers traced (137430-151727) are 14,297 apart. (Incidentally, the highest numbered machine, bought via eBay in 2009 by Andrew Porter, has a hub gear dated June 1966.) However, it is unclear whether Royal Enfield used a single numbering sequence for all their models or a separate series for the Revelation. Certainly, in more than 40 years of keen interest in small-wheeled cycles, Tony Hadland has probably seen no more than a dozen of these machines.

Arthur Beckingham was born c.1920, joined Enfield at the age of 14 and, apart from military service and illness, spent the whole of his working life with the company. He told Tony that Enfield had previously prototyped a small-wheeler with a single main beam of about 2" diameter. However, it seems this was not mass-produced and no other reference to this earlier prototype has been found.

The Revelation was claimed by its makers to have 'the same wheelbase as the normal cycle' and to be '20% lighter than the normal machine.' The recommended prices, c.1966, including purchase tax, were: £24 11s 2d (£24.56) for the single-speed version, £27 4s 6d (£27.23) for the version with Sturmey-Archer AW 3-speed, and £30 5s 4d (£30.27) for the version with the 3-speed and a Sturmey-Archer GH6 Dynohub lighting set. This latter version competed for sales head-to-head with Raleigh's RSW16 and was virtually the same price.

All Revelations were supplied with a Moulton-style holdall for the well integrated but removable rear carrier. A frame-fixed front carrier, which again showed strong Moulton influence, was an optional extra: this had a recommended retail price £1 10s 4d (£1.52) including purchase tax. The unisex frame covered the range 18" to 23" and was catalogued as being available in 'flamboyant burgundy' or 'flamboyant blue.' It was also supplied in green, although no catalogue reference to this colour has yet been found. Tyres were all-white Dunlops in the British 20 x 1 3/8" (ISO 451) format.

The bicycle came with a short white plastic pump, tools, reflector on the rear mudguard, propstand and 'top run' ('hockey stick') chain-guard. Components were typical of British 1960s light roadsters, mostly in steel: see the exploded drawing and parts list below, which come from the spare parts leaflet.

Above: Exploded view of Royal Enfield Revelation LHD Mk1
Below: Parts list

The full model name was the 'Revelation LHD Mark 1.' LHD stood for Leo H Davenport, a fact confirmed to Malcolm Barrett by Rex Wearing, formerly company accountant for E & H P Smith and who worked closely with Davenport.

In 1967, the Enfield Cycle Company ceased trading, the Redditch workforce being made redundant on 31st January. The Royal Enfield bicycle brand name was sold and the model name Revelation was subsequently applied to a less interesting small-wheeler sold elsewhere as a Vindec. (Vindec was a brand name used by Brown Brothers.)

Our slideshow of Revelation pictures shows the designer, various surviving machines, advertising material and photographs of the machine being built at Redditch. We hope you enjoy it. If you have further information about this bicycle, please contact Tony Hadland. (Contact details are on our home page.)

Below are two technical drawings by Vic Bott of what appears to be a prototype child's small-wheeler. These, and the certificate above, were kindly provided to Malcom Barrett by a nephew of Vic Bott.

Last updated 23rd December 2007. Tony Hadland thanks John Ivins, John Pinkerton, Anne Bradford, Barry Smith, David Vann, Arthur Beckingham and particularly Malcolm Barrett for information contributed to this article.

Herbert Kuner read the above article and wrote:

Now see our slideshow of pictures relating to the Royal Enfield Revelation.