The Ace Cafe: Then And Now

The book opens with the first beginnings of bike racing in the London area — at High Beech — in 1928 and continues with the pre-war history of the North Circular as one of Britain’s new ‘arterial’ roads, and the establishment of the Ace ‘road-house’ at Stonebridge Park in 1939. Then, Barry ‘Noddy’ Cheese, one of the Ace’s original ‘ton-up’ boys, paints a graphic picture for us of the excitement of life at the cafe in the 1950-1960s. The controversial Dixon of Dock Green TV episode is covered as is the making of the classic film The Leather Boys and the book goes on to describe events leading up to the closure and subsequent isolation of the Ace with the construction of the new bypass in the 1990s. The story is brought up to date with the resurrection of the cafe’s fortunes under Mark Wilsmore and the fantastic reopening celebrations in September 2001.