Catalogue description Noel Pope Collection

This collection includes the correspondence, both business and personal of Noel Pope.

Pope, Noel B, d 1971, motor cycle racer

Open to bona fide researchers. By appointment only.

Received by the museum as a gift from Mr. Gordon Hadfield (May 2002). Mr. Hadfield acquired the letters from the late Arthur Wheeler, to whom he was mechanic and who raced with Noel Pope at Brooklands in the pre-war period.

• Sport

Noel B. Pope had a successful career as a motor-cycle racer at Brooklands during the 1930's. He raced Broughs and is remembered for holding the ultimate track record for solo and sidecar laps on a supercharged Brough Superior, 106.6mph with a sidecar in 1937 and 124.51mph on a solo machine in 1939. He also raced in the Isle of Man T.T. Races with some success in the 1930s on Velocette and Norton motorcycles in both the Junior and the Senior races. The son of an artist, he was himself talented as a sculptor and painter, and his deeds are recorded in his autobiography 'Full Chat.' In 1949 he made an attempt on the two-wheeled land speed record on the Bonneville Salt Lake Flats, Utah, but failed when he suffered a major accident, crashing at 150mph. He owned a motorcycle manufacturing company in Kingston Hill called Commerfords. He died in 1971, aged 61.