Town's motorcycle maker long gone but still loved

Although the Norman brand disappeared from Kent in the 1960s, it still resonates with some of its fans.

The motorcycle and bicycle manufacturer once employed hundreds of people in Ashford but closed more than 60 years ago.

"I'm still surprised frequently by just how keen some of the motorcycle enthusiasts are about them, even after all these years," Dover Transport Museum chair Brian Flood said.

The museum recently opened an exhibition of Norman machines, which Flood said was "in effect, now the national collection".

Flood added: "It was an extremely important part of the economic infrastructure of Ashford and Kent as a whole, but there are so few people who even remember it now."

At its peak, the motorcycle works was making 12 machines a day on average, plus cycles and mopeds, with products exported internationally.

"They were in fact, as I understand it, the second biggest employers in Ashford after the railway works," Flood said.

He said he put the enduring affection for Norman down to the firm's "experimental and development work, which was undertaken at the factory".

"Norman pushed the capability of two-stroke machines as much as anybody ever did," Flood added.

The company also developed a racing pedigree in the 1950s.

It loaned bikes to famed motorcycle road racer Derek Minter, who featured in their brochures, and entered competitions including the Scottish Six Day Trials.

According to the Norman Cycles Club, a strong performance in the 1959 Thruxton 500 endurance race led to a £10,000 boost for the firm's order book.

"Motorcycle enthusiasts do seem very fond of the Norman mark," Flood said.

The company came from humble roots in a garden shed, as brothers Charles and Fred Norman started the business shortly after World War One as a frame-making and enamelling business.

"In 1921, they started making cycles and cycle frames and very quickly moved to larger premises," Flood said.

The business developed rapidly and the manufacturer built another Ashford factory in 1935, according to the Norman Cycles Club.

Flood said that Norman "really started on motorcycles just before and during World War Two", including making small motorcycles for paratroopers.

The Norman brothers sold the company to Tube Investments in the 1950s.

"They were bought out because they were successful and were a good acquisition," Flood said, but the Norman brand would soon disappear.

The Norman Cycles Club attributes the rise of cheap cars to declining UK motorcycle sales.

It led the new owners of Norman to consolidate their motorcycle assets to one factory – the Raleigh works in Nottingham.

The Ashford factory closed in the early 1960s, and the Norman brand was discontinued shortly after.

Dover Transport Museum began building its collection about a decade ago due to its significance in the county, which eventually required an extension to its building.

Flood told the BBC that the organisation was happy to "keep that memory alive because the machines that they made are highly regarded".

"Their history is just so interesting," he added.

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