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Bellevue Garage

18 & 19 Bellevue Road and 1 & 3 (?) and 2 & 4 (?) Althorp Road

Above: Doreen Evans and her brothers, Kenneth and Denis [which is which?], Bellevue Garage, corner of Althorp Rd and Bellevue Rd, with Wandsworth Common behind. One source gives the date as 1935, before a rally to Eastbourne.

Below: Doreen Evans photographed by Basssano, same year.

[NB Bellevue Garage's cars can often be identified by the white stripes down the side.]

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OS map c.1950 showing location of Bellevue Garage, on both sides of Althorp Road, near Bellevue and the Common.

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The site of the workshop/garage in Althorp Rd, as seen in 2019

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Inside Bellevue Garage: "Doreen Evans and her brothers, Doreen sitting atop her R-Type" - Link.

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Grace's Guide to British Industrial History: Denis Evans

Notice he was living at 10a Ravenslea Rd.

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EVANS, Denis G., Dir. & Man. Bellevue Garage & Service Stations, Ltd., Wandsworth Common, S.W. B. 18 July, 1910, Wimbledon, Surrey. Ed.: Lexdon House, Seaford; Badingham College, Fetcham Park, Surrey. Car.: British School of Motoring, Chelsea; motor racing at Brooklands for 2 years. Int.: golf, high-speed tuning of racing cars. Pr. A.: 10A, Ravenslea Road, Wandsworth Common, S.W. Tel: Battersea 2757.

[Source: Link.]

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Wikipedia: Wilkie Wilkinson

Walter Ernest "Wilkie" Wilkinson was a British mechanic and a founder member of the BRMC (British Racing Mechanics Club).

He was born in North London on 7 August 1903, the fifth of eight children born to a printer, and entered motor racing in 1929 as a riding mechanic accompanying George Eyston and Guilio Ramponi in the Italian OM team. In 1931 he moved to Bellevue Garage located in Wandsworth which was run by Kenneth Evans and his family. It was at Bellevue Garage that Billy Cotton brought his Riley to be 'breathed on.' Wilkie prepared Cotton's ERA for the 1938 Donington Grand Prix taking place at Donington Park in which Cotton finished 7th.

1936 was a particularly busy year for Wilkinson as he, Walter Hassan, and ten others founded the BRMC. In 1937 he joined the BRDC as a driver member. During World War II he headed Rotol, a division of Rolls Royce, distributing aircraft propellers.

The war finished and Wilkie teamed up with Reg Parnell at Highlands Garage, Derby. During their partnership they toured Europe enjoying much success. In 1951 David Murray, then an Edinburgh accountant, persuaded Wilkie to become partners with him in a garage in Merchiston Mews. The word soon spread that the 'Ace Tuner' had taken up residence and work began to flow in. Through this partnership, Ecurie Ecosse was formed. The team purchased a Cooper Bristol in order to compete in the 1952 season. The 1953 campaign brought about more consistent results including a 2nd place at Spa-Francorchamps with the C-type Jaguars.

Wilkie tuned and prepared the D-type Jags that won the 1956 and 1957 Le Mans races. This peak of success wasn't reached again with Ecurie Ecosse and so Wilkie moved on to Bourne and BRM working with the likes of Graham Hill and the Jackie Stewart Wilkie retired from BRM in 1972 to carry out other projects he wished to pursue.

He died in 2001.

[Wikipedia: Wilkie Wilkinson.]

Kenneth Evans, from Paul Parker: Klemantaski: Master Motorsports Photographer

Keith Evans, Klemantaski: Master Motorsports Photographer

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JCC International Trophy Brooklands May 6, 1939 Evans finished 3rd in the International Trophy with his ea-Pluvolan Alfa Romeo. It rained heavily during the race, and here Evans motorboats in the sort of conditions that today would induce mass Panic in officialdom.

Kenneth Evans (1912-1985), brother Denis, and sister Doreen were the nucleus of Bellevue Garage, at Wandsworth Common, South London which specialised in MGs. Kenneth was never actually an employee, instead he worked for the family firm of chartered surveyors. They were keen competitors and Brooklands and Donington regulars during the 1930s.

Kenneth was the star of the trio, and in 1937 he bought the Alfa Romeo P3 with which Nuvolari had won the 1935 German GP. He entered it for the German GP and finished 9th, albeit three laps behind. At Brooklands the International Trophy attracted a large entry that included 11 ERAS, assorted Maseratis, Alta, 2 Alfa P3s, the Bugatti powered /311W, et al.

After racing at the final Brooklands meeting on August 7, 1939, Kenneth and "Wilkie" Wilkinson took the Alfa to the Swiss GP on August 20, 1939, finishing 11th and than endured a mad dash across Europe to catch a boat back to England before the war broke out.

During World War II Bellevue Garage became an ambulance depot and also manufactured aircraft components and soon after closed down. It was sited at the comer of Bellevue Road and Althorp Road, Wandsworth, London.

[Source: Link.]

[ADD SOURCE]

[NB this is the south side of the road - evidently the garage was on both sides of Althorp.

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Origins

"Bellevue Garage ... was originally established by Bertie Graham Evans, a senior partner in the estaate agent business Edwin Evans & Sons, at numbers 4 & 6 Althorp Road. It was through their property associations that they bought some adjacent houses, 18 & 19 Bellevue Road, that were converted into a racing workshop complete with a Heenan & Froude dynamometer.

As a lad living very near there I used to cycle past to school - I hasten to add not in the Bellevue years but much later - but knew of its historic MG significance and little knowing that years later I would meet Kenneth Evans and be entertained in his London flat to be told of the Bellevue exploits.

I do have one or two Bellevue papers inc. their sheet outlining how to convert your N type to full TT spec. Drop me an e-mail if you would like a copy - Bob"

To which "Toni" responded:

I would be very interested in hearing anything else about the EVANS family and Bellvue also any old pictures. I have the Internet site on the racing scene but looking for more on Bellevue garage. We are descended from a brother of Bertie Graham EVANS.

[Extracts from a discussion on Triple-M Register Forum: Link (2008) (slightly edited). It would be good to try to contact both "Bob" and "Toni".]

According to a detailed correspondence in 2008?, the Bellevue Garage's double gates were still in place in 2008. When was Nobilis built?

Frank O'Boyle, Irish racing-driver and possible member of the IRA, and the Bellevue Garage

Back in the late 1930s Frank O'Boyle must have been the leading racing driver in the Irish Free State, his Alta Voiturette competing against the likes of Bira, Mays, de Graffenreid and Villoresi. O'Boyle's car was maintained by the Evans family's Bellevue Garage in London but Frank never once accompanied the machine when it was sent to and fro across the Irish sea; that task usually falling to Bellevue's chief mechanic, the legendary Wilkie Wilkinson.

The reasons for O'Boyle's reluctance to leave Ireland have been hinted at, some trouble with the English authorities that may have occasioned a spell in jail. Here's some more detail. O'Boyle was born around the end of the 1890s but by the summer of 1920, it seems, he was already the owner of a garage in County Tyrone. In September of that year he took part in a payroll ambush in which a driver, William McDowell was shot dead. The raiders getting away with the not inconsiderable sum of £1300. O'Boyle and two companions were soon arrested and after a jury trial failed to reach a verdict they were sentenced to life imprisonment by a military court martial.

One night in May 1927 O'Boyle, together with his companions from the payroll robbery, overpowered two prison guards at Belfast's Crumlin Road jail, making their escape in a waiting motor car which was driven at great speed through the early morning Belfast streets. By 1929 Frank O'Boyle had been re-arrested by the authorities in the Free State for extradition back to the North. Dublin's High Court disagreed and decided that it was unconstitutional to return a man who had been sentenced by a military tribunal, O'Boyle was free - as long, of course, as he did not set foot on British soil.

What became of O'Boyle I don't know, he must have been well-respected by the Irish motor racing crowd, a Frank O'Boyle Trophy race was held at the Curragh after the war, Stirling Moss even won it in 1951.

The Alta was at the Bellevue Garage when war was declared in 1939 and could not be returned to Ireland. It was eventually sold back to the company for £250. Was O'Boyle a member of the IRA? He certainly claimed he was a political prisoner, although the British courts insisted he was a common criminal.

To a certain extent it was a 'forced sale'. According to Wilkie Wilkinson, O'Boyle had ruined the engine by running it on ordinary petrol rather than 'dope', so it had been returned to Bellevue Motors for repairs. It was supposed to be back in Ireland in time for the Phoenix Park races on September 9th 1939, for which O'Boyle was entered. Because of the outbreak of war, the races went ahead in different form, but O'Boyle's car never arrived from London. Wilkinson later converted it from a supercharged 1500cc to an unsupercharged 2 litre and O'Boyle eventually sold it back to its builders. I assume that by 1946 O'Boyle had decided to give up racing.

In later years, the car became known as the Norris Special. Here it is at the Goodwood Revival in 2010.

[Autosport Forums: Discussion about pre-WWII Irish driver Frank O'Boyle, including information about his relationship with the Bellevue Garage.]

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Original shed doors of Bellevue Garage still at Brooklands

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[Unknown source]

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"We Win!", advert in Motor Sport Magazine, June 1935

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[Source: Link.]

[Motor Sport Magazine, ADD INFO & LINK]

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Horton Books: W.E. (Wilkie) Wilkinson with Chris Jones, Wilkie - The Motor Racing Legend, 1987, Nelson & Saunders

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[Source: Link.]

Substantial article in Spanish, with numerous excellent photographs - including some of Bellevue Garage not previously seen.

[Source: Link.]

John Bullock, Fast Women: The Drivers Who Changed the Face of Motor Racing (2002)

Chapter 12: THE REMARKABLE EVANS FAMILY

[pp 102-103 missing]

[104]

from the time the circuit was opened in 1907. They never missed an Easter Bank Holiday meeting and a particular highlight for the Evans children was being taken to have tea with I G Parry Thomas at his workshop in the Brooklands Village and being allowed to sit in his famous racing cars. Parry Thomas was very fond of young people and had endowed a cot at the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children. He also named his world speed record car 'Babs' after his friend Archie Scott Brown's younger daughter.

On race days at Brooklands the Evans family picnicked on the Members' Hill and then watched the racing from the Members' Bridge. In between races Doreen and her brothers always rushed down to the paddock to are the cars and try to spot the famous drivers and get their autographs.

Denis, who was the eldest by two years, acquired a 2-line Bugatti, which he drove in hill climbs, speed trials and club events, usually with his brother Kenneth as passenger. He also owned a two-seater Chrysler and a 2.3-litre Alfa Romeo, formerly raced by Earl Howe at Le Mans. The model was the forerunner of the famous 1,750ce blown Zagato version, which proved so popular in later years.

It became the custom in the family that the children taught one another to drive as soon as they were old enough to own their own cars. Denis taught Kenneth, then he taught Doreen as soon as she reached her seventeenth birthday. Until then she'd had to be content with being a passenger in her brother's cars when they were competing, but she now had one of her own and was able to stars her own racing career with quite spectacular results for one so young.

When Kenneth left Brighton College and went up to Oxford towards the end of 1930 he bought a 1,500cc unsupercharged Alfa Romeo, which he entered in speed and regularity trials, and

[105]

also drove in Brooklands club events with the wings and headlights removed It was the first of a series of Alfas he owned and raced over the yews, and he also purchased 'Buddy' Featherstonhaugh's 1,750cc supercharged Zagato model to use as a road car.

During the second year that he was at Oxford his brother persuaded him that they should take their motor racing more seriously and look for a more suitable car. They knew Hugh Hamilton, who worked for University Motors, and, as the new 750cc Mondhery MG Midget seemed to be the sort of car they were looking for, asked if he would demonstrate one to them. He agreed and drove the demonstration model so fast round the roads near the MG Company's Abingdon factory that the Evans brothers immediately decided that a Midget was the one for them and gave Hugh Hamilton a cheque.

Denis said afterwards, 'He nearly frightened as to death, the way he was driving that Midget, so for our good we decided to buy it and get the hell out of the place as quickly as we could!' Since Denis had started the Bellevue Garage in southwest London in 1931, the emphasis there had always been on tuning fast cars, so it was the obvious place to take the Midget, particularly as the brilliant W E 'Wilkie' Wilkinson. later to be closely associated with Jaguars, had left L C Rawlence and Company, the main importers of Italian OM sports cars, to go and work at the garage and look after and tune the Evans family's racing cars.

London-born Walter Ernest 'Wilkie' Wilkinson was a tuning genius, who went on to have a unique career in every aspect of motor racing from riding mechanic to Grand Prix driver. One of his customers at the Bellevue Garage at Wandsworth was Billy Cotton, the famous band leader who was a fanatically keen racing driver. During the war, when there wasn't my motor racing,

[106]

Wilkie tuned aeroplane engines, but he never lost his enthusiasm for motor racing and was 97 when he died in August 2001.

The frst time Kenneth took the Montlhery Midget to Brooklands after it had been tuned by Wilkie, he was told to do a few laps of the Mountain Circuit under the watchful eye of Percy Bradley, the clerk of the course, to see whether he was capable of racing the Midget on the tricky cimuit without being a danger to himself and the other competitors. It was a BARC rule that applied at the time to all novice drivers, but soon after Kenneth set off on his first lap it started to rain quite hard. He approached the celebrated fork on the course at what he judged to be a safe speed, but his car spun on the wet surface and continued to gyrate madly for some considerable distance, fortunately without leaving the road or crashing. As he drove back to the paddock, where the clerk of the course was waiting for him, Kenneth felt sure that his racing career would be over before it had really got started.

Percy Bradley gave young Kenneth a steely look, then smiled and said, 'Well, my boy! Let that be a lesson to you to drive more carefully in the wet.' Then he walked away and the incident was never mentioned again. Kenneth told his family that it was the action of a very kind and understanding man.

The Midget marked the start of a long and successful association the Evans family had with MGs and, as soon as Doreen had obtained her driving licence, she and her brothers all bought 12 Mfrs, to compete with as a team. mostly in trials and notice speed events. The new cars certainly looked the part with their low lines, cutaway doors, fold-flat windscreens, spring-spoked steering wheels, remote-control gear levers, centre-lock wire wheels and rear-mounted slab petrol tanks with quick-action filler caps.

Doreen and her brothers drove them successfully as a team in

[107]

events and speed trials all over Britain, but when she decided to try circuit racing her father bought her a new MG Magna, powered by a version of the successful six-cylinder Wolseley Hornet engine, which went like a scalded cat with Doreen at the wheel. The Magna was tuned by Wilkie and gave Doreen the circuit-racing experience she needed. It also enabled her to catch the eye of Cecil Kimber of the MG Company, who from then on gave her and her brothers considerable support with their racing programme. Kimber was confident that the prestige gained by his cars in races one year would be recouped in sales during the next, which was the reason why, throughout the prewar years, so many MGs were raced by private owners at Brooklands and elsewhere.

It was a policy that certainly paid dividends, and, when the N-type MG Magnette was announced in 1934, Doreen and her brothers immediately ordered three of them in chasis form, with specially prepared, high-compression racing engines, ready to be fined with the Evans family's own design of lightweight body. Gotten and her brothers then ran the cam as a team, taking on the official MG works team whenever possible, and they proved fast enough for them to do so with a considerable amount of success.

The cars were always carefully prepared by Wilkie Wilkinson, who was certainly proving a genius at tuning racing engines and seemed to be able to get more power from them than anyone else. He worked to the concept that racing cars were buil.° go fast and after he had tuned them it was up to the drivers to go out and win. As a result, none of the Evans family considered that driving well-prepared cars at speed on a circuit was doing anything dangerous. Their father Bertie always managed the pits with their mother acting as his very capable assistant.

All the careful preparation and attention to detail was undoubtedly the main reason why Dorothy and her brothers had

[pp 108-10 missing]

[Source: Link.]