PRESS & MEDIA
THERE’S MORE GOING ON HERE THAN BICYCLES.
Ellis Briggs has been making bicycles in Shipley since 1936. Today we’re also trying to answer a harder question: who will know how to make and repair them in another fifty years?
We welcome journalists, filmmakers, photographers, researchers and broadcasters interested in craft, manufacturing, skills, apprenticeships, repair and the future of making.
STORIES FROM A WORKING WORKSHOP
Ellis Briggs is not a recreated heritage workshop. It is a working bicycle workshop where old skills are still used, taught and developed every day.
WE NEED MORE FRAMEBUILDERS
Traditional bicycle framebuilding depends on judgement that is learned through practice. If those skills are not passed on, they disappear. Teaching and apprenticeship are therefore part of the future of the workshop, not simply an addition to it.
KEEP THE BIKE
For generations, riders bought a good frame and made it their own. They rode it, repaired it, changed it and kept it. Ellis Briggs still works on that principle. A bicycle does not need to become disposable simply because its paint, components or purpose change.
A WORKSHOP SINCE 1936
Ellis Briggs has been making bicycles in Shipley since 1936. The workshop provides a direct connection between British cycling history and the continuing practice of making and repairing bicycles today.
WORKING-CLASS CRAFTSMANSHIP
Our roots are not in luxury craft. They are in skilled working-class manufacture: making useful things well, maintaining them and expecting them to earn their keep for years.
WHAT’S HAPPENING NOW
PASSING ON FRAMEBUILDING SKILLS
Teaching, apprenticeship and practical learning at the bench are becoming an increasingly important part of the workshop.
ENDANGERED CRAFT
Traditional framebuilding survives because people continue to practise it. Ellis Briggs is involved in the wider conversation about endangered craft skills and how they are transmitted.
REPAIR, LONGEVITY & OWNERSHIP
A well-made bicycle can be repaired, repainted, altered and adapted as its rider’s life changes. Longevity is as much about continued ownership as durability.
FILM IN THE WORKSHOP
The workshop is a visually rich working environment, not a reconstructed set. Frames are built and repaired here using processes that are often difficult to understand until they are seen at close quarters.
We welcome filming and photography where it can be accommodated around workshop activity. Processes can include brazing, filing, frame alignment, repair, lug preparation, inspection and teaching at the bench.
For documentary, broadcast or photographic access, please get in touch before visiting so we can discuss what you need.
ABOUT ELLIS BRIGGS
Ellis Briggs has been making bicycles in Shipley, West Yorkshire, since 1936. Today the workshop continues to build steel bicycle frames while repairing and renovating bicycles from across Britain.
The workshop’s history provides an unusually long view of British cycling, manufacturing and changing patterns of ownership. Historic order books and surviving bicycles sit alongside current framebuilding, repair and teaching.
ABOUT PAUL GIBSON
Paul Gibson is the current framebuilder at Ellis Briggs. His work combines practical framebuilding and repair with teaching, writing and speaking about craft, judgement, skills and the future of making.
He is particularly interested in the knowledge that craftspeople acquire through practice, how that knowledge is passed between generations, and what is lost when practical skills disappear.
WRITING & IDEAS
Paul writes about craft, making, judgement, apprenticeship and the relationship between people and the things they own. His writing develops ideas that begin at the workbench and connects them with wider questions about work, skill and industrial culture.
Writing & workshop notes
What We Lost When We Stopped Making Things
Lessons from one of Britain’s last bicycle framebuilders
What is craft, really?
What if the difference isn’t in the object, but in how it comes into being?
On Finlay Growing Up and Leaving School
Workshops, practical intelligence and the disappearing pathways into work
TALKS & SPEAKING
FRAMEBUILDING IS WHERE I START. IT ISN’T ALWAYS WHERE I FINISH.
Paul speaks about framebuilding as a way into much wider questions about craft, judgement, work, apprenticeship, industrial knowledge and the value of making things well.
Talks can be adapted for museums, heritage organisations, colleges, universities, industry events, cycling organisations and public audiences.
SUBJECTS I SPEAK ABOUT
THE WORKMANSHIP OF RISK
Why judgement matters when the quality of the result depends on the maker during the act of making.
WHY REPAIR MATTERS
Repair as knowledge, responsibility and an alternative relationship with material things.
WHO MAKES THE NEXT FRAMEBUILDER?
How practical knowledge survives and what apprenticeship is actually for.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE STOP MAKING THINGS?
What happens to accumulated judgement when industries and craft communities disappear.
INVITE PAUL TO SPEAK
For talks, panels, lectures, interviews or public events, get in touch with the workshop.
Selected media
Selected interviews, features and conversations about Ellis Briggs, framebuilding and the future of craft.
Family donate dad's 1980s bike to Bradford museum exhibition
Neil Crabtree toured Germany on the Ellis Briggs bike and rode it to the shops in his 80s.
Inside the bespoke Yorkshire bike shop still in gear after 84 years
Ellis Briggs Cycles have been making bicycles for more than 80 years and their craftsmanship is still in big demand, as John Hayes discovers. Pictures by Bruce Rollinson.
'It could die off': Frame-builder sets out to make the craft more accessible to Gen-Z via online learning
Paul Gibson of longstanding UK bike maker Ellis Briggs has created a hub to help preserve the skills involved
VISITORS TO THE WORKSHOP
The workshop has welcomed journalists, filmmakers, craftspeople and public figures interested in British manufacturing, cycling and endangered craft skills.
Chris Boardman at Ellis Briggs
HRH The Princess Royal visiting the workshop
These visits form part of a much wider story about the workshop’s place in British cycling and craft. They are context, rather than the story itself.
FROM THE ARCHIVE
NINETY YEARS OF EVIDENCE
Ellis Briggs retains material that connects the present workshop with generations of riders and makers: historic order books, photographs, surviving frames and bicycles that have remained in use for decades.
For journalists and researchers, the archive can help put contemporary questions about durability, repair, manufacturing and ownership into historical context.
THE WORKSHOP IN USE
NOT A SHOWROOM. A WORKING PLACE.
The Ellis Briggs workshop is still used for the thing it was built around: making and repairing bicycles. Customers, students and visitors encounter the work where it actually happens.
That makes the workshop particularly useful for visual storytelling. Tools, frames, repair work and teaching are not props. They are part of the ordinary working day.
IMAGES & MEDIA RESOURCES
High-resolution images and background information are available for editorial use. Please contact us if you need something specific.
- Ellis Briggs workshop photography
- Paul Gibson portraits
- Framebuilding and brazing
- Repair and renovation work
- Teaching and practical framebuilding
- Historic Ellis Briggs material
- Finished bicycles and frames
- Background information on Ellis Briggs
Please credit Ellis Briggs and the photographer where a photographer credit is supplied.
WORKING TO A DEADLINE?
For interviews, filming, photography, research, talks or media enquiries, contact Paul Gibson at Ellis Briggs.
Tell us what you are working on, what you need and when you need it. We will do our best to help.