Renowned framebuilder Mark Reilly dies aged 53 (+ video)

“I bought a frame building book and a set of tubes from Roberts cycles and the rest is history. I just practised and practised and was very lucky indeed to work with the late, great Ron Cooper who taught an incredible amount.”

Besides Cooper and Roberts, Reilly named famed Italian framebuilders Ernesto Colnago and Irio Tommasini as among his inspirations, and said that if he weren’t working with bicycles, “I’d hope to be an F1 designer.”

Reilly Cycle Works has told us that the company will continue its operations. In the meantime. the thoughts of all of us at road.cc are with his family, friends and colleagues at this time.

The video below shows the process taking one of the bikes that bears Reilly's name from the drawing board to the road.

Reilly Cycleworks from gavin peacock on Vimeo.

Long-time road.cc blogger Jo Burt, the artist and illustrator behind the much-loved Mint Sauce mountain-biking sheep cartoons, knew Reilly well, having been a regular customer over the years, with both based in Brighton. Here's his tribute.

It’s terrible having a frame builder that lives in the same town as you. Mark has designed and built several frames for me over quite a few years, the single speed town bike that’s been in almost daily use for nearly two decades, the magenta road bike, the deliberately twitchy MTB, the single speed cyclo-cross bike, the “like a cyclo-cross bike but with bigger tyres before Gravel was even a thing” bike that was ridden to the Bespoked bike show in Bristol the day after it was built, the bike-fit that took a lifetime of his experience and three minutes of my time to create the most like-a-glove bicycle I’ve ever owned …

Mark knew about bikes, he’d been dong them all his life, he knew what worked and what didn’t and when it came to chatting about dimensions and geometry he was very diplomatic about any ideas you might have but you’d always listen to him in the end, because he knew. He also had an eye, that eye that craftsmen have after years of hands-on experience and he couldn’t help himself when it came to making a beautiful machine. It was also a pleasure, a privilege and a learning experience to hear his views about bikes especially when at a framebuilding show where he could spot genuine craftsmanship versus a nice paint job covering a multitude of sins at 50 paces.  

While I will miss meeting Mark on the odd occasion and cheerfully talking bollocks about bicycles it is through his bikes that he will be remembered by me and countless others. It may be a cliche but he will live on in the miles and adventures his bikes go on and I’m pumping up the tyres on his orange one now.