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In 1979 five young men; Keith Heppell, Martin Long, Mark Boldry, Chris Terry and Ian Read went on a Treasure Hunt with the MG Car Club from Beverley. They enjoyed it so much that they held a meeting in the Gold Cup at High Catton with a view to forming a club at Stamford Bridge. A subsequent meeting at the Corn Mill was well attended by local MG owners and resulted in the formation of York and East Yorkshire Area MG Owners Club with Keith as Area Secretary.

The club grew rapidly recruiting members from Hull, Market Weighton, Scarborough, Stamford Bridge and York. In 1980/1981 we had a lot of cars at the MGOC National Event at Donnington Park, heading south all three lanes of the M1 were packed with MGs!

In 1982, after a change of venue to Bishop Wilton numbers declined and despite changing the name to Yorkshire Sports Car Drivers Club membership didn’t pick up. We moved back to Stamford Bridge in 1983, meeting in the Three Cups, but more members left to form the Jorvik MGOC meeting in York. This left only four of us at the monthly meetings. John and Sue Bricklebank joined us – and then there were six!    

In 1996 ‘Enjoying MG’ announced that the York and East Yorkshire MGOC was defunct and asked for a volunteer to take on the job of Area Secretary. We decided to pick up the baton and told the MGOC that we were still operating and had been since 1979 and also that Tony Fewster would take over as Area Secretary.

The club was effectively relaunched and shortly afterwards Ian and Barry, from the Jorvik MGOC, attended one of our meetings to outline their plans to organise a MG and Classic Car charity run and asking for our support. We readily agreed and the JORVIK RUN became a regular event in our programme. We also staged a mixed programme of events and the club grew steadily in numbers.

In May 1996 the Three Cups closed for renovation so we moved to The Swordsman, also in Stamford Bridge, where we stayed until 2001. However, after being flooded out three times in eighteen months, we relocated to our present home at the Duke of York, Gate Helmsley. We were now based in Ryedale and consequently the club was renamed York & Ryedale MGOC.

In 2005 Jorvik & York MGOC joined us to form Ryedale & York MGOC. Alwyn Kershaw was elected Area Secretary, Tony Fewster as President and Derek Orchard as Treasurer. Alwyn rejuvenated the Jorvik Run and put a lot of time and effort in strengthening the club. He was taken ill in October 2007 and sadly passed away in February of 2008.

At the 2009 AGM all the officials were re-elected. Peter Head took on the role of Club Chairman, David Bulmer as Area Secretary, and Tony Fewster as President and Derek Orchard as Treasurer.

Tony Fewster