Graham Brown’s tribute to the man who founded Hednesford Hills Raceway, and National Hot Rod racing.

William John (Bill) Morris Remembered

1914 – 2008

There can be no argument. We have just lost the most important figure, quite literally the father figure, in the history of Hot Rod racing. No Bill Morris, no National Hot Rods. By extension, that means no 2.0 Hot Rods, no Stock Rods, no Lightning Rods, no anything rods. What’s more, no Bill Morris, no Hednesford.

Having battled for the last few years with pneumonia and diabetes, Bill passed away peacefully in his sleep at Lake View Care Home, in Great Wyrley, on October 9, aged 94, leaving daughter June, son Martin (the first ever hot rod driver, and later Hednesford co-promoter), grandchildren Lawrence, Yvette, Hayley and Heidi and great-grandchildren Max, Harley and Milla.

Although the mortality of ourselves and others is something none of us can exactly ignore forever, there are some people who one comes to assume will be around forever. Bill was one of those. Nevertheless, a few years back I decided that an interview with Bill was not only long overdue, but that I didn’t actually have forever to get around to doing it.

Not having seen him for many years I was quite surprised, upon ‘phoning him, that he not only remembered who I was but enthusiastically agreed to my going to his house armed with a tape recorder. Thus did some of the questions I always wanted to ask get answered over cups of tea in Bill’s kitchen. Even then, at the age of 86, Bill’s mind was as sharp as a tack, despite that kitchen looking like somebody was stockpiling pharmaceutical supplies against the outbreak of a third world war!

For various reasons, that interview never got written. But it did enable us to hear now about some oval racing history in the words of the man who made it.

Born just a few months before the outbreak of World War I, he would certainly have seen a lot of changes in his 94 years on the planet. It is perhaps fitting, Bill having been born in Duddeston, not a million miles from Bordesley Green, that today there is an oval which is pretty much in his birthplace - Birmingham Wheels. That said, it is almost certainly no kind of coincidence that the track is where it is, one of the circuit’s boundaries being a fence that used to be shared with part of Meadway Spares.

The story of Bill’s early life is fairly well known. Leaving school at the grand old age of 13, he became a driver’s mate on lorries before going on to start his own garage business in Birmingham before the onset of WWII. At about that time - the mid-1930’s - he also met and married his wife Edna. Of course, by the outbreak of the second major conflict of the twentieth century, he was old enough to be involved and joined the RAF. Having qualified as a pilot, he later went to Canada to work as an instructor.

Following his return to the UK, he started the garage business - Meadway Motor Company - that would eventually become Meadway Spares. I believe he once told me he was originally dealing in Army surplus vehicles and parts, but Meadway’s soon became known for specialising in breaking scrap cars. This was no common or garden scrap yard however, with the dismantling, labeling and storage of the parts being organized in a methodical manner that might have been the model for all decently run modern salvage yards.

Then came the event that would ultimately change Bill’s life. Not long after its inception in the UK, the new sport of stock car racing arrived in the midlands in 1954. Bill attended a few meetings at Coventry, he and a couple of his employees, one of whom was his brother Derek, quickly becoming hooked on the idea of driving themselves.

“Way back in 1954 I was running a garage and petrol station in Birmingham”, Bill explained. “And I’d got three or four people working for me. They were of the same sort of age and enthusiasm for racing as I was, because we had previously been to a stock car meeting, one of the very early ones, at Brandon, Coventry. Anyway, we liked what we saw and laughed our way to the bank, if you like! We laughed our way into deciding to build some racing cars ourselves. We decided on two cars, and there was three of us, myself and two very good mechanics. We got what rules and regulations there were at that time, from the powers-that-be, to build them with.

“One of the first cars was an American Chrysler Airflow. The other was a Ford V8, maybe a Model 40 or a Model A, one of those. We decided to try to boost the Meadway Motor Company, so we called them ‘Tatter Meadway’ and ‘Wrecker Meadway’. But with only two cars and three drivers, and them enjoying it so much, I thought I’d let them have their own cars and had another one built for me. We didn’t get anywhere for months, because we were novices at it, although we made a name for ourselves, and we did it to advertise Meadway’s as much as anything. I didn’t win any medals, or many races!”

With the others racing the cars under their nicknames Bill drove a Ford Coupe, called ‘The Shark’ and entered under his own name at Coventry, Perry Barr and Leicester. And very soon the team all switched to using Ford’s as a result of American influence.

The whole business of oval racing obviously had a profound effect on Mr Morris, and it wasn’t long before he decided to go to America and see ‘the real thing’. Like many people even today, it may be that Bill had no idea that the bastardised version of stock cars that we got in ’54 – with contact permitted and encouraged – had come not out of the USA, but actually from France.

However, when he saw the American team that raced here in 1955, he realised there must be more to oval racing than just wrecking cars deliberately.

“After we saw that American tour at Perry Barr and Brandon, we said we must involve ourselves with this type of racing, because we were outclassed by the type of vehicles they’d brought over here. They’d run rings round us. They were based up at Great Barr somewhere, and I can remember going to see them up there in a hotel car park. I marvelled at their cars and the way they’d been built, with all these different gadgets on them to produce speed. We decided we must do something to compete with them, but of course we were way behind because they’d had so many years start.”

Not so long after that, Bill went to Daytona, met and befriended NASCAR’s Bill France, and came back with a whole different viewpoint on what oval track racing should be about.

But his first involvement on the organisational side came when Tamworth Stadium re-opened in 1960, Bill stepping forward to provide the start car until the track was forced to close by re-development in ‘61. I started this piece by saying “No Bill Morris, no National Hot Rods”, but I have even heard it said that without Bill, there would have been no BriSCA F2!

Although I had never seen it mentioned (in print) anywhere else that Bill might have been involved in the formation of F2, or Junior Stock cars, he was unequivocal on the subject.

“I didn’t race at Tamworth, but I used to provide and drive the pace car. And I put my son Martin into the racing, because I was one of the instigators of starting Junior Stock Car racing and I wanted him to make a name for himself and enjoy the racing.”

It is obvious that during Bill’s involvement at Fazeley, even by then, he’d effectively ‘outgrown’ the 1950’s stock car bash ‘n’ crash and was looking for alternatives. Given the way in which he went on to put his unique stamp on everything he touched, pushing through the creation of Hednesford against the odds and the development of non-contact oval racing against maybe even bigger odds, how likely is it that he would not have had a hand in what went on at Tamworth? Particularly with regard to such a revolutionary change as introducing an alternative to the only stock car formula the UK had ever known.  I believe the case is pretty much proved. Tamworth promoter Sid Farndon may be the man who is in the history books forever as the inventor of F2 (perhaps with a nudge from Ron Amas) but I bet WJM had more to do with it than we’ll ever know.

And speaking of ‘alternatives’, in 1960 many of the stock car fraternity became, for some strange reason, interested in the new craze of go-karting that was sweeping the country. Bill was one such, becoming a dealer for Aero Karts and racing them himself. On at least one occasion at Shenington he even managed to persuade his wife Edna to have a go!

Despite its short revival then, Tamworth left it’s mark forever on the UK oval scene before becoming a housing estate. At that point Bill was approached by many of the drivers, who saw him as an entrepreneur with a big interest in racing, begging him to find them somewhere else to race. Having seen and driven in the earlier chaotic meetings in a disused reservoir bowl at Hednesford Hills on Cannock Chase, he already knew that the right location existed. The Scott House Reservoir, to give it its proper title, was dug out in the late 1800’s but, by a happy accident for the racing fraternity, subsidence due to mine workings had caused it to spring a catastrophic leak. By 1912 it had been declared a dead duck and abandoned.

“I had previously raced a couple of times at Hednesford Hills – it wasn’t called a raceway then. That was run by Claude Roe, he started it off, but although he had the money, he hadn’t got the experience to do the job properly.

“We raced on a makeshift shale track in the bottom of the reservoir that was rather circular in shape with very little in the way of safety fences, and the crowds just stood around the sides. That meant it had commanding views, and it went on for a few meetings. It caused a lot of press publicity and what have you. But I’m afraid that, because of the type of cars and his organisation, the thrill and excitement of this type of racing wore off. The cars weren’t very fast and the novelty of seeing cars spun and turned over seemed to wane. Once people had seen it once or twice, they didn’t bother to come again.

“I’d realised what a shambles Claude Roe was making of it, and thought, I can do a better job than that I’m sure. Eventually, the crowds waned that much that he shut it down.”

So, with Tamworth gone and Bill looking for a handy replacement, all he had to do was convince Cannock Council, who had by then acquired the land from the Water Board, to let him have it.

“I started to negotiate with the council. And because I’d already produced Meadway Spares, I managed to impress one or two people at the council meeting that I could do a better job than Mr Roe. And they gave me an opportunity to prove my point. I basically conned my way in with the council that I could do it differently and better! So, with a lot of enthusiasm, I got stuck into re-modelling Hednesford Raceway along the lines of what I’d previously seen at Daytona and places like that.”

Building work started in the winter of 1961/62, and was completed sufficiently to allow use of the track by the summer of ’62. Although it is often said that the present day Hednesford opened in 1963, it isn’t so. Such was Bill’s drive for perfection he actually held two full scale ‘rehearsal’ meetings, initially using such things as karts and motorcycles, sometimes with sidecar racing. The first such event took place on Whit Monday June 11th ’62. The second – utilising F1 stock cars – took place less than a week later on June 16th, with the official opening on Saturday July 21st, which featured Karts, Junior (F2) Stock cars and a form of motorcycle scrambling which today we’d probably call stadium-cross.

However, it was to be Easter Monday April 15th 1963 that the modern day story of Hednesford got underway properly. Although this event comprised Junior stock cars and motorcycle outfits, Bill was already plotting the formula he’d really envisaged when building his track – hot rods. It was for this vision, his vision of NASCAR for Britain, that he constructed a circuit – certainly once it had an asphalt surface – which even today is pretty much unrivalled in the UK for speed on a small oval.

“Well, everyone else had speedway tracks, whereas ours was purpose built for the type of sport that I wanted to do, and that was hot rod racing. I wanted to follow the Americans with stock looking cars. But in addition to the slab-sided cars like the 100E’s and Morris Minors, we did allow some of what we called Modified Hot Rods. Doug Warner was the number one example of these. Doug had previously been with me to the ‘States and we both had the same sort of ideas, except that I was for the slab-sided cars and he was more for the modifieds.

“I decided that I couldn’t use the words “stock cars”, because people were already using that name, and I had to come up with some other ideas. So I decided that for saloon cars that have been ‘hotted up’ purely for racing, we could use the words ‘Hot Rod Racing’. Although the hot rods in America were dragsters, the term seemed to fit the bill here.”

Bill then had to set about convincing the oval racing establishment that cars which didn’t deliberately make contact would make for better entertainment.

It was an uphill struggle, with Meadway’s having to build many of the early cars themselves, and then entice people to buy them. But, once Spedeworth boss Les Eaton saw the new formula and was taken with it, the Hot Rods – barring a few more false starts - were truly on their way. Not that the forward thinking of both Morris and Eaton set them on a smooth course, far from it.

“We invited him (Les Eaton) up to our NAHRC (National Association of Hot Rod Clubs - an early version of the NHRPA) meetings – not to the Raceway – but to the meetings we were having at Meadway Spares. This was because we were looking for other places to race these cars in addition to our own track. And we eventually agreed with Les that we would put a couple of meetings on at Wimbledon. But of course, he wanted to steer the boat, and it got to the point where he wanted to take over the whole idea. I was being a bit stubborn at the time, and we came to a parting, that’s what it amounted to. So, we missed out on racing at Wimbledon and he went his own way, and the meetings (around a table) that we had, ceased.

“But I kept it going with the National Association. When I first thought of the Association, it was set up so that each area would have its own club, and the NAHRC would govern the whole lot of them. But Les wouldn’t have anything to do with the National Association and wanted to go his own way.”

Eventually a working relationship was established, with Spedeworth’s and Hednesford’s cars mixing at various events. Most notably of course, this meant the National championship in the late 1960’s. By the onset of the 1970’s, and with the huge upsurge in interest in the formula that was being generated by the large numbers of new drivers registering with Spedeworth, there was talk of a world championship to go with those already established for the various major stock car classes.

By 1971, rumour had turned to certainty, with Spedeworth programmes, and their house magazine Wheelspin, proclaiming that there would be a world championship next year (’72) and that it would be held at Hednesford. So…why wasn’t it?

“That was another time we came to disagree. Because he (Les Eaton) had got a lot of drivers under his banner, a lot more than I had in actual fact, he decided he would go it alone as the instigator (of the world championship), and drown Bill Morris in the background.” (Bill chuckles at this point, as if to show that any rancour he might have felt about this has long since evaporated). “That’s how it appeared to me at that time.”

In due course the world championship came to be the event which every driver aspires to winning. But it will never usurp the position of being the original championship that Bill established at Hednesford, the oldest title in hot rodding, the granddaddy of ‘em all. The National.

For over 20 years, Bill steered his Raceway through good times and bad, and maintained a guiding hand on his more wayward child, the formula of hot rod racing. In the late 1970’s and with their working relationship once more on an even keel, he got together with Les Eaton to co-promote meetings at Northampton, events which led almost directly to the founding of the NHRPA.

One of the new Association’s first acts was to inaugurate the highly successful - if relatively short-lived - Grand Prix Series, and there seems to be little doubt whose brainchild that was. Much of the promotional paperwork and posters were produced by Hednesford’s offices and the series winner was even presented with the magnificent Bill Morris Trophy. I had often wondered if Bill had any preferences about who ought to win it, which set me thinking; who did Bill reckon was the greatest ‘rod driver he ever saw?

“It’s got to be Barry Lee. Or Mick Collard. But Barry Lee, he was the man that stood out in my mind. He was the kingpin.”

It seems strange, after so much enthusiasm and effort had been directed at every detail of racing for so long that, in 1983, Bill suddenly took the decision to walk away from it all. I asked him why this was. There followed a very long pause, stretching out to nearly a full minute before Bill responded.

“To tell you the truth, I can’t remember. I know I eased down from my prominence. Do you know, I can’t put a clean cut line there about when the interest waned for me? I think I’d realised that I wasn’t getting the publicity that I wanted for the whole thing. Then there was the other company that I had started building up, Cannock Auto Spares. That was becoming more important and I was putting my efforts into that rather than the hot rod racing. I think I gradually backed out of it that way.”

Philip Bond, the man who’d worked so closely with Bill for so many years and would ultimately take on the mantle of co-promoter (with Martin Morris as Incarace) had a slightly different take on the question.

“At that time, there was no actual lease on Hednesford, and he couldn’t come to terms on one with the council”, Philip explained.

“So I think Bill really walked away because of the council’s interference. Previously, they’d seemed to be all for him and the raceway, but they suddenly seemed to have a change of heart, and I don’t think Bill could understand their altered attitude, and felt quite let down by them.

“To begin with, he didn’t want to cut all ties. We’d almost reached an agreement where he would sell one third of the promotion to me, one third to Martin, and retain one third. But Martin and his dad were both firey people and didn’t get on awfully well. We all disagreed about what direction the racing should go in, so this deal never got done and Martin and I ended up taking over the whole thing, half and half.”

Certainly, Bill seemed to suddenly vanish off the scene and the unthinkable had happened. The man who founded hot rods and the original track to race them on, was no longer promoting the formula or the Raceway. Indeed, was no longer even going to watch.

“I haven’t been to the stadium”, Bill stated, flatly.

“Oh, I’ve been in the stadium when it’s been empty, doing business with Philip Bond, supplying him materials for the safety fence and what have you, and for the new building that he built over the pit area – which I thought was very very good, the way that’s been done. But I haven’t been to any meetings. Of course, I got all enthusiastic about building Cannock Motor Village – I’ve sold all that now – and then there was the houses, building Meadway Close and so on. And then there was the reclaimed building materials business at Cannock, I’ve sold that lot now too. So I’ve still been wheeling and dealing, but I’m 86 now and that’s the end of it.

“The last race I saw……I’m sure it was up at Hednesford. But I don’t bother to go up there now because for some reason or other things have altered and I just don’t want to know. The interest has gone now I’m afraid, all gone.”

It was rather a sad comment with which to conclude the taped portion of our discussion, but for sure, people do go through phases in life, some lasting longer than others. Bill’s racing phase certainly lasted a very long time and left an indelible mark on the oval racing scene.

There were so many facets to Bill Morris’s character, and here, we have mainly concentrated on the racing one of course. But there were his beloved dogs, who went everywhere with him, and his famous ‘survival kit’, which ensured that he could always make a cup of tea wherever he ended up.

There are a couple of little personal stories that I’d like to share with you concerning Bill. Years ago, the public weren’t admitted to the pits at Hednesford, and you needed a pass to get in there. These were not handed out willy-nilly and, if you were a journalist, you might get a season pass, but the holy grail was a pass with the red over-typed words “& PITS” added to the bottom. I was lucky enough to get one of these, and they used to arrive like clockwork before the start of every season.

One day, the pass turned up without the ‘and pits’ bit on it. Wondering if something had changed, I rang the Hednesford office to enquire. Usually, you would get a secretary answer any calls, as Bill was rarely there and didn’t answer the phones when he was. For some odd reason, that day, it was he who came on the line. I explained my reason for calling, and boy, was he angry! He raved on about his staff for a bit, before apologising profusely and promising to send the correct pass, which he - or someone he hadn’t fired - duly did.

When I asked him later why he’d been so annoyed about what was, after all, merely a minor clerical oversight, he said: “We can hardly ever get anyone from the press interested in coming to the meetings to write much about us, even the local papers. You’ve been giving us free publicity for years. How are you going to carry on doing that if we don’t give you the tools for the job?”

I tell this tale only because it was typical of Bill’s way of doing things at that time. Interested in everything, passionate about everything to do with running a meeting, and no detail too small to be worried about.

Some years later, at a world final meeting, I’d been doing ‘the job’ as usual, and had somehow managed to spend too long in the pits gassing to people. Suddenly, the roar of ‘rod engines alerted me to the fact that the meeting final had started, and me nowhere near being able to see the track. I was sprinting across the car park towards the nearest (turnstile) entrance, when I heard a shout, coming from somewhere up in the air. It was Bill, sat on top of a giant American motor home (long before such things were common in the UK), calling to me.

“You’re going to miss the race! Come on up here!”

I clambered up the ladder at the back and sat down next to Bill, who’d managed to get the camper parked in such a way as to be able to see over the stadium fence and straight down onto the track. It seemed strange to be sat on a deck chair on the roof of a camper next to the man who’d thought up the formula we were watching, while thousands of people milled about below us. They were totally oblivious to the hot rod inventor, quietly sipping his drink, and just enjoying the racing like everyone else.

Thankfully, Bill did end up going to at least a couple more meetings at ‘his track’ prior to his death. He was there to cut the ribbon and declare the Hednesford track officially re-opened following its re-surfacing some years back, and also for the 40th Anniversary event on August 10th 2003. This was probably the last meeting Bill attended.

Bill’s funeral was held on Monday 20 October 2008 at Streetly Crematorium. Not all that far, as the crow flies, from where he’d been born and bred, run his businesses, and the Raceway itself. As well as the many, many people who’ve been involved with Hednesford, Bill, and the racing down the years, the hot rod drivers were fittingly represented by, among others, former National champions Gordon Bland and Tom Laffey, the latter having made the trip from Ireland specially to attend.

RIP Bill, and thanks for everything.

Graham Brown

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