A LEGEND of the British and international cycling world has died.

Jack Taylor, who was 96 and from Norton, Stockton, began making lightweight bike frames in his mother’s shed as a teenager in the 1930s and founded a business making cycles after the war.

Such were their quality that the bikes were soon being sold around the world, especially the USA, and ownership of a Jack Taylor cycle is still highly prized, even though the company closed in 1990.

Mr Taylor’s widow, Peggy, 93, said Jack, a keen jazz enthusiast who met Louis Armstrong twice, was 11 when he first told his grandfather he wanted a bike.

“His grandfather said, ‘well if want a bike you’ll have to get a job.' He got a job at an industrial chemist and when he was 13 he finally got his bike. We’ve still got the receipt,” she said.

Soon the young Mr Taylor, a member of the famous Stockton Wheelers cycle club, wanted a lightweight bike and built a shed of his own at his mother's house on Greta Road, fitted it out and started making cycles for himself and his friends.

He tried to join up in the Second World War, but was in a reserved occupation as a pattern maker at a foundry and was ordered to stay. He bought land from Stockton Council on Church Road in 1942 and after the war started up the Jack Taylor Cycles business with his two brothers, Ken and Norman.

Mrs Taylor explained that her husband, who she was married to for 57 years, was also a racing cyclist who competed in the Tour of Britain several times.

He and Mrs Taylor built their own house and created a large, tree-lined garden in the 1950s. He was a very keen historian of steam and the railways and the great engineers, especially Brunel. The keen photographer, who had friends around the world, was visited in his workshop by Prince Charles in 1987. He once made a tandem for the Shah of Iran and his bikes were even desired in Communist Russia.

Speaking surrounded by pictures of her husband, Mrs Taylor said: “Jack was an ambitious man and a very clever man. (But) he had no ego, no airs, no graces. He always had a lovely smile, always pleasant with a happy disposition. Everybody loved him for his honesty and generosity in word and deed. His popularity spread around the world.

“I miss Jack terribly and it's very hard to fill the void in my life. In times of adversity he would say, ‘come on Peg, you can do it.’ This is different. You cannot mend a broken heart.”

Mr Taylor’s funeral will be held at 10.30am on Thursday, November 13 at Stockton Parish Church.