Allin Cycles

South London frame-builder and bike polo specialist.

- Kevin Raymond

No one is exactly sure when Archibald Henry Allin opened his first bike shop on Whitehorse Road in Croydon, but it followed a short-lived collaboration with legendary frame builder and former Olympian Freddie Grubb, just after the First World War.

Under the Allin name, it was never a big business but Arch, as he was known, and his sons Archie and Charles aka ‘Ching’ kept at it through the lean times of the 1930s, selling gramophones on the side to pay the bills over winter. Both Archie and Ching were keen time triallists and successful bicycle polo players, and built many polo bikes under the Allin name.