Forgotten hero should be remembered

I remember the late athletics correspondent Ron Pickering describing some obscure competitor as “not being a household name, even in his own house”.

The same may – in terms of Coventry – be said of John Kemp Starley.

There will be the engineers and historians who know all about John Kemp Starley, but, sadly, few others realise the significance of this adopted Coventrian and how, quite literally, he helped shape the modern world.

Starley came to Coventry in 1872 to work for his uncle James Starley, an inventor, and built Ariel cycles. In 1877 he teamed up with a local cyclist William Sutton to form Starley & Sutton, a company which looked to improve the design of cycles, which were still in the age of the penny farthing. By 1883 their products bore the Rover name and the following year Kemp made his breakthrough.

He designed the Safety Cycle which quite simply changed the modern cycle and introduced design fundamentals still shared by today’s bikes. It had a diamond-shaped frame, a chain-drive rear wheel, a changeable sprocket to allow gears to be varied, direct steering and equal (well, near equal) sized 26 inch wheels.

Starley was an immense figure in the industry and after his death aged 46, 20,000 people attended his funeral. His invention had transformed the bicycle forever, genuinely changed the lives of millions of people and was the catalyst of major social change.

So why is he the forgotten man of our industrial heritage? There is a rather forlorn statue to his uncle on the edge of Greyfriars Green, but nothing, as far as I know, to mark his life.

There is a campaign (http://www.jkstarley-bicycle.com) to create an artwork which commemorates Starley and to build a modern-day replica of the Safety Cycle which could be used to promote the city at various events.

That alone is scant recognition of his achievements and contribution, and surely he is an historical asset we should be sweating for the good of the city and the region.

It galls me every time I see mention of the Manchester Veladrome and hear of the economic benefit it brings to that city. Simply that should have been built here. City of the cycle, middle of the country, massive boost to the regional economy.

But that does mean all is lost. Coventry has a hugely rich tradition of pioneering engineers and Starley, arguably, is at the top of the pile.

We have the Whittle Arch, surely we should have the Starley Statue?