15/09/2002
FEATURE BY MIKE LAWRENCE
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At the 2002 Goodwood Revival Meeting was an elderly gentleman who was 'iron-badged' - he had access everywhere. His name is John Brierley and he played his part in motor racing history though he has never driven a racing car. I am proud to claim a small part in getting John welcomed as an honoured guest at Goodwood.
The only thing that Stirling Moss recalls of the day which ended his career, was knocking off the silencer from his Lotus Elite as he left The Fleece in East Street, Chichester, on his way to Goodwood. The landlord of The Fleece, John Brierley, got a jack and helped Stirling to put the silencer back on.
A little over a year later, Stirling was back behind the wheel of a racing car once more, at Goodwood, and the only outsider invited was John Brierley. One can think of drivers of the time who might have had many reasons for inviting the landlord of a pub along, but Stirling was virtually teetotal.
John's story is a sidelight of motor racing history, although his photographs will certainly live on. He was born in Yorkshire in 1915 and there was little exceptional about his life until 1942 when he found himself a P.O.W. building the bridges - there were two - on the River Kwai.
John made an art of turning any old watch into a Rolex, even an Ingersoll or a Timex, and the Japanese guards would do anything for a Rolex. They might even stop beating prisoners around the head with rifle butts. Prisoners were 'paid' in a 'scrip' for what was essentially slave labour, beyond the reach of the Red Cross/Crescent and any of the manifold Geneva Conventions. John put the currency in danger by creating his own 'scrip', using half a potato to make his stamp.
He suffered many diseases and it was while he was in the hut for the sick that he spent his time trying to keep his brain intact by designing post-war motorcycles in his imagination. His drawings were done with pencil stubs on scraps of paper, and had to be hidden, but those he managed to preserve are exquisite. The editor of The Motor Cycle certainly thought so because he ran an article on John and his designs early in 1946.
Before the war John had been employed in his uncle's meat business, while really wanting to be in engineering, but with the accolade of a major feature in a top magazine, he was able to get taken on as a mechanic with a motorcycle dealer in Chichester, epicentre of the universe.
Life settled down again and then, just outside Chichester, a disused airfield, the former RAF Westhampnett, became the Goodwood circuit and one day a chap called Ken Carter arrived at the 'bike shop. Ken had a Cooper-JAP, one of the first, and needed help tuning it, then he needed to find a place to store the car near to a circuit, and since John could oblige on both counts he was drawn into motor racing.
John Brierley was in the swim at the right time because if you went to almost any race meeting you bumped into everyone in the sport. When he took over as landlord of a country pub near Goodwood, the Hare and Hounds at Stoughton, Ken Carter and other racers came to stay. There were the likes of Stirling Moss, Alan Brown, Peter Collins and Les Leston, all sharing basic facilities because, as John recalls, "We did not even have electricity, we had oil lamps, but the drivers from London loved that.
"Since there wasn't a bobby for miles around, they could test their cars up the road with nobody minding. Then there were all the pranks like the time Stirling and Ken Gregory brought down a couple of chorus girls and the other guys sprinkled cayenne pepper in their pyjamas. You could hear them taking cold baths at three in the morning."
Stirling recalls that Ken Carter set up the ruse and it was not three in the morning, it was four. He says, "You can tell it was the 1940s, boy, we were wearing pyjamas."
Before long John was invited to take over The Fleece in Chichester - don't go looking, it's now shops - and since John was reckoned to be one of the boys, a bit of a scamp, game for anything, the motor racing crowd followed him there.
John says, "I'd had a taste of being an insider, being Ken Carter's mechanic, and I wanted to continue like that, so I took up photography." Easy to say, that, but John was 35 when he 'took up photography', he was only ever an amateur, but he took many of the best motor racing shots of the period.
"There was the time when Aston Martin was going to conduct a secret test of its DBR4 Formula One car before it was public. Stirling was due to drive it and he tipped me off. I disguised myself as a tramp and wandered round the back of the circuit. John Wyer was furious when the scoop was splashed in The Sunday Times."
In April 1957 Autosport published a photograph of Ron Flockhart in the BRM P25 lifting a wheel as it went through St. Mary's. What was obvious was that it was not just a wheel which was lifting, but the whole front of the frame was twisting. John's picture created a stir like none other.
At the time there were few photographers in motor racing and there was very little variation in their shots because the same four or five would stand under the same tree. At Goodwood they'd shoot the start, move to the outside of the chicane (ever seen a photograph taken from the inside?) then move to the inside of Woodcote and then back again.
There was actually very little else they could do at a race meeting, but John was about the only person taking pictures of testing. That was possible only because photography was a side-line, he lived five minutes from the circuit most used for testing and, as a publican, he could take time out during the day.
The BRM P25 was considered among drivers to be so dangerous that BRM almost had to organise a press gang to find anyone to race the beast. Of course, BRM knew better than any driver even though, in fact, the principals of the project were not of the top drawer. John's photographs proved that the beast was dangerous.
A fortnight after the BRM picture appeared, Autosport had a cartoon showing a whole batch of photographers snapping a BRM three-wheeler and, another fortnight on, the cover picture showed Colin Chapman in the car as part of BRM's response to the undeniable evidence. It was one of a number of cover pictures that John provided.
John's photograph of the BRM changed motor racing history, and there are not many pictures you can say that about.
John keeps some inscribed photographs and one of the most poignant is of Stirling a few laps before his near fatal crash. John says, "They (the Rob Walker team or, to be specific, the chief mechanic, Alf Francis) fitted a V8 into a frame which was not designed to take one and they had endless trouble with the installation, not least gear selection problems and a sticking throttle." It is a fact that Stirling was more than a lap down because he'd been into the pits with gear selection problems.
When Colin Chapman looked at the lash-up which Alf Francis had made of the back end of the Lotus, he laughed. At the time there were several mechanics who fancied themselves as engineers but, as engineers, they were decent mechanics. Alf Francis could strip down an engine and rebuild it, but he had no idea of how to stress a spaceframe.
When this was put to him, Sir Stirling was diplomatic, he said, "A lot of secretaries and PAs watch how a business is run and think that they can do it as well. They invariably fail."
Alf Francis failed, he reduced the rear of Stirling's Lotus to the torsional rigidity of a Swiss roll. Stirling crashed because the back end of his Lotus was flexing so much that his car popped out of gear.
John Brierley gave up The Fleece in 1966, the year that Goodwood closed, though that was coincidence. When he moved he threw out boxes full of photographs and negatives because, in 1966, nobody was interested in old motor racing pictures. There was then no 'classic car' business or magazine. Hey, there Jaguar D-types were going for a few hundred pounds. John Surtees had turned down an offer to buy two ex-works Ferrari 250 GTOs at $2,000 apiece - Surtees could not see why anyone would want two obsolete cars which, in any case, he did not rate very highly.
Having thrown out a priceless treasure, as one did back then, John Brierley then ran a car hire business and, for a time, Stirling was a partner in it.
During the summer months, with all the hire cars booked, he spent a lot of his time a-twiddling of his thumbs. Hire cars go out in the morning and return in the evening. At the suggestion of his son, John took up making 'O' Gauge model railway engines to use up his spare energy. Before long he was winning medals at the Model Engineers' Exhibition and, in 1981, took the first gold medal to be awarded in his category.
John's current tally is two golds, eight silvers and three bronze medals. He is one of the world's best and you can have one if you are rich enough. John was nearly 60 when he took up making models, but then he was in his mid-thirties when he took up photography and that was only a hobby as well.
John Brierley's few remaining photographs of Goodwood, not many more than a couple of hundred survive, are now landmarks as the circuit goes through a metamorphosis. John Brierley lives near Brighton in comfortable circumstances, but it is doubtful if any of his neighbours know just what a remarkable man he is.
To check out Mike's previous articles for pitpass... click here