Re. Boscarn's posts: I suspect you're right about this frame being built fairly early, by reference to the lug-work, in which you can see signs of the development of that area towards more elaboration. I forgot that I'd given some photos to Ecobeard to post on the site, and I'm really delighted to see them up there.
If you look at the lug-work on my frame and Ecobeard's, you'll see the development of a more slender style. In the photo of 'the man himself' looking through the frame of his own machine (on Ecobeard's Flikr set), you can see the same slim style of lug-work. However, you'll notice that he hasn't got any pump brackets on the top-tube on his bike, and he's used screw-on brackets to secure a pump to the seat tube. He cared a lot more about his customers' and "the lads'" bikes than he did about his own. He always had his own frame enamelled in Red Flam, because he was red/green colour-blind, but that was one colour he seemed to be able to identify immediately.
He closed the shop on 31 December 1970, when he was 60 years old, because of the threat of the ring-road forcing a Compulsory Purchase. He built my frame (and everything that went onto it) after my GCE 'O' Level exams, so 1961/2. My earlier frame was also a Minster, of course, but as I was of small build it was only an 19" frame and by that time I'd outgrown it. Incidentally, I had to BUY that bike! It cost me £52, which I paid back at £1 per week from my 'wage' from the paper-round, and my other cycling-related expenses were met from working in the shop (either at Lord Mayor's Walk or the shop my mother ran in Burton Stone Lane) on Saturdays, so that I could go out with him on Sundays, and he could half-wheel me all the way to Whitby and back. Only once did he not push me in that way, and that was when my freewheel failed somewhere up near Middleham (North of Ripon) and he had to change the wheel around to give me fixed wheel operation, and when I started flagging, he'd put a hand on my back and push me that way!
If you can find a frame number, that might help date it. Mine is 15075 and (as stated) dates from 1961/2. I honestly don't know whether he used a sequence of numbers or created them randomly: I suspect the former, knowing he kept a record of every frame he built, but that's not amongst his effects. [I do, however, have a record of the takings and operating costs for the shop from its opening in 1936.]
Certainly the frame is not old enough to have been an "Elite". That was the name he gave to his first frames, that being a pun on E (Elsegood) and Lite (Light), but I don't think that idea lasted long because of the war, when there was no material for such trivia (?) as bicycles except for the armed forces, Post Office and essential services (eg. Police). When he was demobbed and started to get the business back on its feet when my mother had been operating it throughout his absence during the war years, the fact that the shop was immediately behind York Minster was its inspiration.
If you look at the photo for The York Evening Press where he's outside our house and waving his pump, I think that coincided with the 50th Anniversary of York Rally, of which he and Ron Kitching were the two remaining founders, and that would be 1997 (from memory), when he would be 86 coming up 87. He and my mother moved to Hartrigg Oaks Retirement Village in 1998, and took up riding a bright yellow mountain bike, as his eyesight was deteriorating and ANYBODY could see that machine a mile off!
This info. may not help as regards the date of your frame, but it may add a bit of colour.
Re. Boscarn's posts: I suspect you're right about this frame being built fairly early, by reference to the lug-work, in which you can see signs of the development of that area towards more elaboration. I forgot that I'd given some photos to Ecobeard to post on the site, and I'm really delighted to see them up there.
If you look at the lug-work on my frame and Ecobeard's, you'll see the development of a more slender style. In the photo of 'the man himself' looking through the frame of his own machine (on Ecobeard's Flikr set), you can see the same slim style of lug-work. However, you'll notice that he hasn't got any pump brackets on the top-tube on his bike, and he's used screw-on brackets to secure a pump to the seat tube. He cared a lot more about his customers' and "the lads'" bikes than he did about his own. He always had his own frame enamelled in Red Flam, because he was red/green colour-blind, but that was one colour he seemed to be able to identify immediately.
He closed the shop on 31 December 1970, when he was 60 years old, because of the threat of the ring-road forcing a Compulsory Purchase. He built my frame (and everything that went onto it) after my GCE 'O' Level exams, so 1961/2. My earlier frame was also a Minster, of course, but as I was of small build it was only an 19" frame and by that time I'd outgrown it. Incidentally, I had to BUY that bike! It cost me £52, which I paid back at £1 per week from my 'wage' from the paper-round, and my other cycling-related expenses were met from working in the shop (either at Lord Mayor's Walk or the shop my mother ran in Burton Stone Lane) on Saturdays, so that I could go out with him on Sundays, and he could half-wheel me all the way to Whitby and back. Only once did he not push me in that way, and that was when my freewheel failed somewhere up near Middleham (North of Ripon) and he had to change the wheel around to give me fixed wheel operation, and when I started flagging, he'd put a hand on my back and push me that way!
If you can find a frame number, that might help date it. Mine is 15075 and (as stated) dates from 1961/2. I honestly don't know whether he used a sequence of numbers or created them randomly: I suspect the former, knowing he kept a record of every frame he built, but that's not amongst his effects. [I do, however, have a record of the takings and operating costs for the shop from its opening in 1936.]
Certainly the frame is not old enough to have been an "Elite". That was the name he gave to his first frames, that being a pun on E (Elsegood) and Lite (Light), but I don't think that idea lasted long because of the war, when there was no material for such trivia (?) as bicycles except for the armed forces, Post Office and essential services (eg. Police). When he was demobbed and started to get the business back on its feet when my mother had been operating it throughout his absence during the war years, the fact that the shop was immediately behind York Minster was its inspiration.
If you look at the photo for The York Evening Press where he's outside our house and waving his pump, I think that coincided with the 50th Anniversary of York Rally, of which he and Ron Kitching were the two remaining founders, and that would be 1997 (from memory), when he would be 86 coming up 87. He and my mother moved to Hartrigg Oaks Retirement Village in 1998, and took up riding a bright yellow mountain bike, as his eyesight was deteriorating and ANYBODY could see that machine a mile off!
This info. may not help as regards the date of your frame, but it may add a bit of colour.
Alan Elsegood