Alfred Robert Grindlay CBE, JP (1 February 1876 – 14 April 1965) was an English inventor, industrialist and official during the 19th and 20th centuries. He co-founded Grindlay Peerless, the motorcycle engineering company and was Mayor of Coventry during WWII and the Coventry Blitz.
Early life and family
Grindlay was born in Coventry, England, in 1876, the fifth child of nine and second son of William Vaughan Grindlay (1843–1891), into a line of established engineers and horological master craftsmen. He was orphaned while still a teenager, when first his mother, Mary Ann, died in December 1890, and then his father only a year later in December 1891. Upon leaving school, Grindlay joined a local cycle firm and began learning the skills he would employ later in his career.
During his youth he was an able football player and regular midfielder for Foleshill Great Heath Football Club. He captained the side during their most successful period, including the 1898–99 season when he was one of the top goal scorers and the club won the Midland Daily Telegraph Association Football Challenge Cup, Foleshill Nursing Association Cup, and the Nuneaton Cottage Hospital Cup.
At the age of 20, Grindlay married Emma Chaplin in St Paul's Church, Coventry on 7 September 1896, and started his family in 1899, aged 23, when the first of his two sons, Reginald Robert Grindlay, was born.
By 1901, Grindlay was working at Riley Cycle Company, one of the major firms in Coventry at that time. He progressed steadily within the company, until 1910, when while working as a foreman at Riley Cycle Company, he applied for a patent (24,683) regarding "improved means for carrying spare wheels" for motorcars. That same year Grindlay left Riley Cycle Company and took over the Coventry Motor & Sundries business, establishing Grindlay Sidecars, which became known for its "extremely high quality" machines.
In 1918, he established Grindlay Company or Grindlay (Coventry) Ltd, which focused on coachwork for cars and later the manufacture of the Grindlay Spring-Wheel Sidecar which he himself designed.
War effort
Grindlay contributed to the allied war effort both directly, through volunteer policing and emergency services civil defence work, and indirectly, by turning over his various factories for the production of war materials during WWI and WWII.
World War I
At the beginning of WWI Grindlay combined forces with Thomas Edward Musson (b.1875) founding Musson & Grindlay, specialising in sidecar production, and oversaw Musson & Grindlay and Coventry Motor & Sundries providing key materials for the armament and munitions industry in Coventry throughout the war. Some 5 years after the end of WWI, he parted ways with Musson in 1923 and established Grindlay Peerless.
During the war, Grindlay was part of the Motor Patrol section of the Special Constabulary of Coventry, where he was able to utilise his extensive motoring experience.
World War II
Throughout WWII, Grindlay was Commandant of the Coventry Auxiliary Fire Service (AFS) in charge of all associated civil fire-fighting procedures, training, and emergency response operations. He led the development of the AFS and was in charge of the service until its eventual amalgamation with the National Fire Service. Moreover, in 1941 he was elected Mayor of Coventry.
Grindlay further expanded his manufacturing operations in 1936 when he formed Coventry Engineering Company. Specialising in machine parts and jigs, tool fixtures and gauges, early work involved assisting with the production of aircraft guns as part of the arms build up ahead of the war. Support for the war effort expanded to include the development of pitch propellers, barrage balloons, aircraft fuselages and control gear.
Motor industry
Formed in 1923, Grindlay Peerless, which operated out of Melbourne Works on Shakleton Road in Spon End, Coventry, entered into the wider motorcycle market in the early 1920s, and began making high-powered racing machines. Like the Grindlay Sidecars before them, they employed numerous technological advances and innovative engineering, which included utilising early aircraft design features.
CWG 'Bill' Lacey became the first man to exceed a 100 miles in an hour on British soil in August 1928 aboard his modified 498cc Grindlay Peerless. The bike covered 103.3 miles in the hour at Brooklands racing circuit in Surrey to secure a Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme (FIM) world record.
In 1929, Bill Lacey broke the record again on his Grindlay Peerless, by covering 105.87 miles in the hour at Autodrome de Linasc-Montlhéry, Montlhéry, in France.