The Award Winning

Charles Jarrott Run 2011

At the Classic and Sports Car Magazine's Annual Awards held at the Hilton Metropole Hotel in November 2011, in conjunction with the annual Classic Car Show at the NEC, DDBUK won the Award for the Best Rally/Event of the Year with our "Charles Jarrott Commemoration Run", beating off competition from many other car clubs including some of the largest in the UK.

The brainchild of organiser Nick Pellett, the event re-enacted the road run leading up to the very First Motor Race in Britain, organised by Jarrott in 1897 just one year after the Emancipation Run from London to Brighton.

Harry Lawson's Motor Car Club, of which Jarrott was organising Secretary at the time,  held this very first anniversary of the Emancipation Run by driving the new fangled motors across London from the Metropole Hotel, Whitehall Place to Sheen House, Richmond Park, where the races were held on the Club's cycle track with contestants, including Jarrott and "Biddy" Bidlake racing  De Dion Bouton engined Tricycles and Bicycles.

In 1897 the parade was led throughout by a De Dion Bouton et Trepardoux steam car. In 2011 DDBUK's Run re-enacted this, many in period costume and driving some 30 De Dion Bouton motor cars and tricycles, the largest gathering of Victorian, Veteran and Edwardian De Dion Bouton vehicles seen on British roads since the period. The actual site of the original track was located. Significantly the Club was hosted at the formal start by the newly opened Corinthia Hotel in Whitehall Place, formerly the original Metropole which had hosted the Motor Car Club in 1896 and 1897.

Jarrott is now recognised as a colossus of his time. He went on to become the first manager of De Dion Bouton in London, the first English motor racing driver of note, and amongst many other notable achievements advised Hugh Locke King on the layout of the Brooklands motor racing circuit in 1907, subsequently racing there. His "Ten Years of Motors and Motor Racing" published in 1906 is essential reading for all lovers of the early motoring period and the colourful history and British Heritage it represents. The Run helped bring these distant events back to life for a new generation of enthusiasts of Motors and Motor Racing.

Images from this event can be found by following this link

Charles Jarrott on the De Dion Bouton Tricycle he competed on in London's Victorian Race Tracks and on the Paris-Bordeaux Race at the birth of Motor Racing in the late 1890's.