Lyndon Yorke and Ray Frensham are members of the Eccentric Club and both share the same fascination for the Victorian era. Neither of them thinks they have an oddball personality: they just carry on living their lives, as they would like it to be.
Fond of looking at the moving parts of every 19-century engine, Buckinghamshire born Lyndon Yorke took his curiosity a bit further to build his own. He is the wacky inventor of about 12 one-off folly machines.
The first device on his record is the man-paddle helicopter, which was a disaster. It couldn’t lift off the ground because Lyndon didn’t know enough about engineering: “I got the mechanism to work but there was so much vibration that it fell to pieces, ” he said.
Trial and error made him a master, as through various experiments he came up with the following wacky inventions:
- The Tritanic, a coal fired electric-mechanical twin paddle wheel steamboat.
- The Tritania, an amphibious electric wickerwork bathchair river machine.
- A wickerwork car.
- A nine-piece life-sized mechanical orchestra which was built from copper tubing and windscreen wipers.
- A propeller-driven vintage bicycle.
Ray Frensham
Some of these machines were built for the Henley Summer Festival by the river Thames. Lyndon received a special invitation because his appearance navigating his river machines kept the audience diverted.
For his creations and unique personality Lyndon Yorke was awarded the prize of Britain’s most eccentric person in 2001.
Ray Frensham has a background in music business, and was once a screenwriter lecturer, but today he is best know as a modern-day Victorian man.
Wearing a bow tie and looking through his monocle are his trademarks. He stresses it’s not a matter of personification but the way he wants to carry on living: “It feels natural to me and I don’t care about what others say or think about me anymore.”
Mr Frensham lives outside London, but comes to town quite frequently to pick up his tailor-made suits or to attend the Eccentric Club meetings. You may bump into him on the tube or on the path from Green Park to Piccadilly, his favourite places in the city.
Have your say - info@offbeatlondon.co.uk
Lyndon Yorke and Ray Frensham are two of a kind. Wacky inventor, Yorke built the world’s first wickerwork car whereas Frensham is a modern-day living Victorian man.
by Murielle Gonzalez Oisel
published on: 13 April, 2010
Meet the eccentrics
i
