How Royal Enfield workers talked

Slang words and phrases always fascinate me.

 The Three Lions Pub in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, advertises itself as an authentic British pub. 

The decor certainly makes an effort, including a clever framed sign, "I Want to Be British, Then I Could Say..." And then it lists and defines some pretty familiar slang expressions. 

You will recognize most of them. 

But see if you recognize these additional Britishisms below (definitions are at the end of this item). 

I came across them (and had to look them up on the Internet) while reading outtakes from Anne Bradford's book "Royal Enfield, The Story of the Company and the People Who Made It Great, 1851-1969." 

Bradford's book is composed of conversational contributions from the people who worked in Royal Enfield's UK factories up to 1969. Their language is sprinkled with delightful terms of that place and time.

Do you know what they mean?

"My foreman was Harry Hay, he was a proper toff." — Wilf Kinchin

"Those of us who were not on tour used to doss down on the factory floor by the old cost office." — Wilf Kinchin

"In those prewar days nearly everybody had an allotment and a 'pig on the wall.'" — Edna Kinchin

"Apprentices were not, as a general matter, treated as navvies." — Mac McGowan

"I used to collect up the orders for the canteen from the men and get their Tizer." — Mervyn Panting

"We finished stocking after two days and spent the rest of the week doing crosswords and playing noughts and crosses." — Mervyn Panting

"I've never known a palaver like it!" — Raymond Jones

"Being a stroppy youngster..." — Paul Savage

"They went into twinsets and straight skirts and that was it." — Sally Hawthorne

"He was as fair as he could be in those days  —  a foreman had to be the gaffer." — Wilf Kinchin

"We went in two charabancs." — Harry Hughes

"He was a tubby man, a bit shandy." — Louise Challice

"Albert was off sick, he was probably swinging the lead." — John Latter

"If you wanted you could have a ha'porth of milk in your tea." — Bert Wedgebury

"The Tannoy had been installed during the war to warn the workers if any enemy planes were coming over." — Eddie Wright

DEFINITIONS

Proper toff — Stylishly dressed upper class man.

Doss down — Bed down in a convenient place.

Pig on the wall — A joking phrase about a simpleton lifting a pig so it could look over a wall to see a passing parade, but in context it seems more likely the meaning here is that the family had a dressed and smoked pig in the larder.

Navvies — Common laborers.

Tizer — Citrus flavored orange soft drink.

Noughts and crosses  — Tic-tac-toe.

Palaver — A fuss.

Stroppy youngster — A difficult or contrary child.

Twinsets —  A matching pair of women's sweaters, a pullover and a cardigan, intended to be worn together.

Gaffer — Manager. Context here is that the foreman had to take charge.

Charabancs — Horse drawn or open topped coaches.

Shandy — Redheaded.

Swinging the lead — Dodging work. A sailor tasked with measuring the depth of the water would swing a lead weight ahead on a knotted rope and then, when the ship passed directly over the lead, now on the bottom, announce its depth. Pulling up the weight was hard work, so the sailor would swing the rope as long as he could get away with before letting it fly.

Ha'porth — A halfpenny's worth; in other words, not very much.

Tannoy — The first public address system of loud speakers for buildings.

Royal Enfield remembers which way is up

A simple Royal Enfield motorcycle can teach lessons.

 I suppose you could say my old Royal Enfield motorcycle keeps me "grounded."

It might be better to say that my old Royal Enfield motorcycle keeps me "humble."

My mistake would be in ever thinking that I am, in any way, smarter than the men and women who designed and created this physical wonder of metal and petroleum products that, operated as intended, turns noise and heat into mobility.

And, yet, I forget this basic rule: The Royal Enfield motorcycle may be a simple, single-cylinder machine, but it knows which way is up. And it insists on it.

A Royal Enfield most recently brought me down to earth when I encountered an eBay advertisement out of Texas for a 1957 Indian Fire Arrow, a 250cc motorcycle built by Royal and marketed in the U.S. by Indian dealers.

It's an obviously rare and, to me, historically interesting motorcycle. The seller admitted not knowing much about it. He wrote:

"Southwest desert motorcycle. Frame and gas tank were stripped and repainted years ago. Has been in indoor storage for 35 years. Basket case motorcycle I don’t know anything about these. Includes everything pictured and a clear New Mexico title."

Among "everything pictured" was a photograph of the frame number. Here was a chance to get some real information!

The frame number.

I copied the photo of the frame number onto my computer, and rotated it to make it easier to read left-to-right. Then I wrote an email to Graham Scarth, of the Royal Enfield Owners Club, who keeps track of Royal Enfield numbers.

Rotating, zooming in and brightening the photo makes it easier.
And wrong.

"Looks like it might be 36001 to me," I wrote to Graham. He caught my error at once.

"Hi David," he replied.  "The frame number reads from top to bottom and is 10096."

Well, that's what I get. I was too lazy to read the number vertically, so I had rotated the photo, turning the numerals not only sideways, but upside down!

What I had taken for a distorted "3" was a distorted "6." What I had taken for a "6" was a "9."

It is easy to forget that, although everything is now on electronic screens, we still live in a real, physical world, in which there is still such a thing as "right side up."

Luckily, I have Royal Enfields to remind me.

Find the motorcycle in this picture

Motorcycles can make us feel both powerful and small.

 "Why we ride." 

It's a phrase motorcyclists keep trying to complete. 

"Why we ride" has many explanations. Riders probably will not agree on all of them. 

Why do we ride? For the mountains, the prairies, the straights, the curves, the company, the solitude, the joy, the relief, the excitement, the thrill, the relaxation, the destinations. 

All of those, plus a lot more. 

It's safe to say, though, that when I pick up my quarterly copy of "Blue Ridge Motorcycling," the emphasis will not be on speed. 

"I ride to escape computer screens," editor-in-chief Michael E. Gouge writes in his Notes From the Road column in the Summer, 2026 edition, recently arrived in my mailbox.

"The summer weather adds to my enjoyment of today's road trip," he explains.

"I glance down at the (route) numbers I wrote on masking tape attached to the gauge cluster. I have the usual navigation gadgets like most long-distance riders, but they tend to annoy and distract me...

"I keep thinking how great it feels to be back on the bike heading out for a three-day adventure, exploring backroads I've never ridden. The sky shines so bright it hurts my eyes."

Well, alright, we now know what kind of coverage to expect as we page through this magazine.

The Summer edition contains at least two articles by writer Michael Erwin, who also favors taking time to appreciate the scenery.

"On a clear day, you can look a very long way and still not see anything that needs improving," he writes. Well, at least you can from the Blue Ridge.

And he proves it by stopping his ride at all four of the scenic overlooks on his route through the mountains.

Here are some more words from him to ponder:

"There is a modern disease among riders, and perhaps among Americans generally, that causes us to hurry through beautiful places so we can say later we covered them. Route 150 encourages better manners...

"Motorcycles are full of useful contradictions, and one of them is this: They make you feel both powerful and small...

"These are not dramatic side trips. They are modest, civilizing pauses that make a day ride feel generous rather than efficient. The nature center tells you what you are seeing. The lake gives you a place to sit still long enough to believe it...

"Fuel up before you go. Carry water. Do not assume lunch will appear at the next bend in gravy form. This is not deprivation. It is simply the old rule of mountain travel. The place does not organize itself around your appetite...

"Sit down long enough for ice tea to sweat on the table and you notice how people talk, how they nod to one another, how the place wears its wear and tear...

"There was a time when I judged a road mostly by how quickly it could be ridden. That is one of the less useful enthusiasms of youth. A scenic highway deserves better than conquest. It deserves attention. Speed can heighten sensation, but it can also erase memory...

"The motor is not frantic, and I am not heroic. The day becomes less about performance than fluency...

"The best motorcycle roads are not always the fastest, hardest or most famous. Sometimes the best ones are the roads that help you notice your own life again."

The legendary fire that destroyed the original Royal Enfield factory

Fire fighters couldn't save the blazing factory.

 Half a century before Royal Enfield motorcycles were made in India, they were produced in the English industrial midlands, in the town of Redditch, an ancient village that by the 1870s had become the center of the needle and fishing tackle industry. 

Incredibly, it's claimed that Redditch and surrounding districts made 90 percent of the world's needles by the 1870s. (I was amazed when my wife found a circa-1935 packet of Redditch needles in a sewing kit left by the elderly previous owners of our house!) 

From precision engineering of pins and needles grew new technologies, first of bicycles, and then of motorcars and motorcycles.

There's a plaque on the wall of a building on Hewell Road, in Redditch, marking the location of the immense factory that once stood around it, turning out Royal Enfield bicycles and motorcycles by the thousands.

You can see a photo of that building on Jorge Pullin's blog, My Royal Enfields. (Jorge has done a series of articles about Royal Enfield factories in Britain.)

But the Hewell Road factory wasn't the birth place of Royal Enfield. The bicycle and motorcycle company grew out of a building then just outside Redditch, in a building where sewing pins had been made.

Until last week, the site of that original Royal Enfield factory was unmarked. The location is at 196 Enfield Road, in the leafy Redditch district of Hunt End. (Of course the road wasn't originally called "Enfield Road" before the Enfield Cycle Co. located there; it had been called Hunt End Lane, a name since reapplied to a new road in a nearby subdivision.)

Royal Enfield historian Gordon May relates history of the Hunt End Works before unveiling of the new plaque. Project Origin, a replica of the first Royal Enfield motorcycle, is at left.

The plaque in place.

The new plaque was placed June 21 on the remains of a brick wall said to have surrounded the original factory. The wall is all that's left now. 

That's because the factory burned beyond saving in a dramatic fire on March 8, 1969.

The first factory was built, sometime after 1851, as a needle factory named "Givry Works." The Red Lion pub was on Enfield Road nearby, and may have been associated with the factory: workers likely got part of their pay in tokens for use in the pub. (The pub still stands on Enfield Road.)

The Red Lion pub saw Royal Enfield come and go next door.

Expanded over time, the Givry Works at Hunt End was producing bicycles by 1888. Those bicycles eventually began being branded as Royal Enfields.

This is where the first Royal Enfield motorcycle would have been assembled, in 1901.

By the Spring of 1904 this factory in Hunt End had added a purpose built-facility, between the original Givry Works and the Red Lion pub, specifically for production of motorcycles and motor cars.

The Hunt End Works, circa 1904, with new addition in the foreground.

Despite economic ups and downs, the Enfield Cycle Co. then managed to approve construction of the different, much grander factory, on Hewell Road in Redditch proper.

Royal Enfield would move out of the Hunt End factory in 1907, repurchase it in 1912, and finally vacate it for good in 1920.

The Hunt End Works would go on to serve other businesses, eventually becoming a storage facility for Dunlop Tyres.

The Hunt End Works in 1935, when it housed Batteries Limited. 
Note Red Lion pub at extreme left. (Historic England Photo)

And this sets up the story of former Enfield employee Les "Kipper" Gibbs, who was, by 1969, a Dunlop employee.

In Anne Bradford's book "Royal Enfield, The Story of the Company and the People Who Made It Great," Gibbs told how he was the last worker out of the Dunlop warehouse the Saturday of the fire.

He found it ironic that a former Royal Enfield man was the last one out of the first Royal Enfield factory before it was gone forever.

Whoever told it, the tale gets more colorful yet. According to the RedditchVirtualMuseum:

"One of the caretakers liked a hot lunch so at midday he would take an old tyre up to the top floor, spread it out, put his little stove in the centre and heat his lunch. Unfortunately, one day he went to sleep. When the fire brigade arrived they discovered that all the water pipes in Redditch were (what they described as) Victorian and very narrow, and totally impossible to carry enough water to put out a fire. They had to get water from Redditch."

The Redditch Indicator covered the fire.

The Redditch Indicator newspaper captured the blaze in a full-page story the next day, Sunday, March 9, 1969, with photographs. The Redditch Library reproduced the newspaper page in a Facebook post in 2021.

The type is too small to read the Redditch Indicator article in the Facebook post, but an account from the Sunday Birmingham Mercury is online at the British Newspaper Archive, and is readable. Some excerpts:

"At Redditch, in the biggest fire of the day nearly 20,000 car tyres went up in flames at the Dunlop Tyre Company's storage depot. Fifty firemen from all parts of Worcestershire and reinforcements from Warwickshire fought the huge blaze for hours before getting it under control.

"The depot is one of the biggest of Dunlop's 50 storage depots. A huge pall of smoke rose high over Redditch and flames leaping 60 feet into the air could be seen in Birmingham, 16 miles away.

"A Dunlop spokesman said: 'A large number of Mini car tyres are stored at this depot and it may result in temporary shortage of some sizes of tyres for perhaps a week or a fortnight...'

"The fire in the depot at Enfield Road, Hunt End, was discovered just after six o'clock last night. One half of the building was alight when firemen arrived.

Fire fighters arrived to find the Hunt End Works ablaze.

"The man who gave the alarm, Mr. Samuel Brookes, is the owner of a timber yard next door to the store.

"He said: 'I saw black smoke coming from the roof. After I told the fire brigade I saw the roof rapidly disintegrate as flames shot 60 feet into the air. It was fantastic...'

"Last man to leave the store was the gateman Mr. Edgar Vale who locked up at 12:45 p.m. The night man was not due to report until 7 p.m...

"As fireman fought the blaze people crowded into the street, and traffic jammed the surrounding roads.

"Housewives took cups of tea to the firemen and police were called in to deal with the crowds.

"After a series of muffled explosions from the building, residents in houses near the depot were warned by the police that they might have to be evacuated. But firemen prevented flames threatening their homes."

Homes line one side of Enfield Road, across from factory.

The factory site would be cleared, and the modern Hunt End Industrial Estate occupies the space today, behind a tree line, its entrance being not on Enfield Road but off Dunlop Road, to the north.

Yet, in an odd way, a related bit of the Givry Works remains on Enfield Road.

Author Anne Bradford lived at 66 Enfield Road, less than a mile away from the Givry site, and always said that her home was a "replica" of the original Givry Works. In fact, she said this was what inspired her to write about Royal Enfield history.

The Givry Works needle mill as it appeared in 1869.

From left, 66, 64 and 62 Enfield Road as they appeared in 2020.

The resemblance is apparent, if you compare 66, 64 and 62 Enfield Road on Google Streetview to the 1869 illustration of the Givry Works. The side-by-side fronts of the main buildings appear very similar, although not identical.

An explanation for this is in RedditchVirtualMuseum:

"In the 1830s, all the land in the Crabbs Cross area was owned by Farmer Eades. Then he sold a small piece of ground to William Welch to build a needle mill. Welch had a relative who was so taken with the needle mill that he asked Farmer Eades for permission to build an identical mill a bit further along the road. Consequently two identical mills were built, the oldest was Ashberry House, near the top end of Enfield Road (number 66), and the second was Givry Works, halfway along."