John Somerville adding Max's 2014 jacket - and a photo - to his collection

WORLD'S BEST PHOTO COLLECTION ONLINE

NEWS Saturday 21st November 2015, 8:24pm

by Mike Hunter

  Edinburgh Monarchs

Many people know that the world’s best collection of Speedway Photographs is held in Scotland by John Somerville, and his photos have already adorned many publications including those of the Retro publications Backtrack and Classic Speedway.

Now John has created a website with some of his most historic photos, available to view or buy prints from. The website www.skidmarks1928.com is live. The photos have a light watermark to discourage pinching, and there is a search facility if you don’t want to spend hours looking through the full range of shots.

Armadale season ticket holder John has been encouraged by his sons to do this though he says “My sons Martin and Scott encouraged me to set up the website though I’d rather finish the scanning than make any money from them.”

And finishing the scanning is not going to be easy given the number of photos he has, by acquiring the collections of some of the biggest names in Speedway history. He tells us “Mike Patrick reckoned there was over a million photos in his collection. Wright Wood’s is 50-odd thousand, Alf Weedon’s I have no idea. I need technology to improve! Scanning is just so slow. I don’t think it will ever become automatic.

“On a normal day I’ll be up at 7:30 in the morning, and scan till 10:30 in the evening. But my output is pretty dreadful, probably 50 or 60 a day.”

That alone shows just what an enthusiast John is, and his quest to bring together as many as possible of the sport’s photographic treasures is far from over. How did he start?

“There’s a collector named Mike Kemp from Norwich, and what happened was that Wright Wood’s grandson contacted Mike to say he was planning to sell his grandad’s negatives. Mike said he didn’t want to buy them but he knew someone who might, and that was me! So that’s how it got started.

“It turned out it was two collections in one. Trevor James from Manchester told me I had bought two collections! This was because Wright Wood had bought the C F Wallace glass plates, and there are about 1200 of those in the collection.

“There had been about 5000 of them but unfortunately he put them on a shelf and the shelf broke! There are 1200 left.

“Nick Barber named some of the snappers who had graced speedway over the years but I wasn’t familiar with the names. I had been a fan in the sixties but missed a lot of years through playing in a band.

“I think the second big collection which came my way might have been Trevor Meeks, John Chaplin put me on to that. I met him one snowy April day at Scotch Corner which was about half way for both of us. Trevor stayed in Lincolnshire and he said to me that the chap down the road from him had Jack Young’s race jacket from West Ham!

“I managed to buy that race jacket and it’s now in Ian Paterson’s museum alongside the Edinburgh one which I think was donated by Harry Darling.

“I can’t remember the order but the next photo collection I bought might have been Alf Weedon’s. I knew that some of Alf’s early stuff was missing but I still did a deal with him over the phone and arranged to collect them. However Alf then changed his mind and passed them on to Tony McDonald who has Retro Speedway. Later I bought them from Tony who has the right to use them in his magazines as long as they run.

“I spoke to ex-West Ham rider Colin Clarke and he told me that Alf had said to him he had thrown some of his early negatives out.

“I also bought a collection from Peter Morrish about ten years ago, and he had photos, programmes, badges and magazines, the lot, including a bound volume of 1928 Speedway News.

“All Peter’s negatives were gone but the photos were actually a compilation from a number of previous photographers.

“A lot of smaller collections came along, including Ivan Stephenson from Newcastle. Graham Platten from Berwick was another, a very nice bloke, and Doug Booth. I bought Eddie Garvey’s recently.

“Of course the next big one was Mike Patrick. He had started in 1970 and did forty years. In 1970 he did the Internationale at Wimbledon, it might have been the only meeting he did that year.

“Wright Wood’s collection runs from 1928 to 1978, fifty years, so that’s a good span. I’ve probably got a full history of Belle Vue Speedway through a number of collections.

“Wright Wood’s collection is well organised, I could pick out a particular meeting quickly. Mike Patrick’s was the same, but Alf Weedon’s were just all chucked in boxes.

“Recently I bought Ken Carpenter’s collection, the article on Canterbury this week in Speedway Star are the first photos taken from that collection.”