William Nicholls of Mitcham by Keith Mott

[sapper756]

William Nicholls of Mitcham.

William Nicholls made a good 1981 racing season great when he won 1st SMT Combine Le Mans with a wonderful 3,842 birds competing. His winner was his good Sion / Sheppard blue chequer cock, ‘Sez U’ and he had previously won many firsts racing inland.

William has always been interest in pigeons before starting racing in 1975 with young birds. On starting he joined the Streatham SRFC and obtained some Sion stock birds from Less Stagg of Sunbury. William told me, Bill Eldridge introduced him to the Streatham club, otherwise he learnt about pigeon racing through reading books and keeping his eyes and ears open. Since starting up in 1975 he had won: thirty two firsts, twenty seconds, twenty four thirds in the very strong Streatham and Mitcham clubs. In 1981 his racing team was made up with the Les Stagg Sion pigeons and Busschaerts direct from Belgium and from Ron Hallam.

The Nicholls pigeons were raced on natural, but William had a go at widowhood in his own way, without a lot of trouble. He said it was a nice sight to see the widowhood cocks trap on race day. The birds were fed on a first class mixture and were paired up in February. His racing loft was a converted furniture lorry, which still stood on its tyres and wheels, and he had a Kidby loft in which he kept his 20 pairs of stock birds. William kept his 20 pairs of racer and his 80 youngsters in the furniture lorry. He maintained the most important factor in good loft design was good airflow and he said, that good training was most important too, with his old birds getting a 40 miles toss three times a week and the youngsters getting a 30 miler five times a week.

He line bred and liked a half-brother / half-sister mating, but was against having latebreds, having found them to be useless. William was dead against deep litter, saying it was unhealthy and preferring the scraper. He had no interest in the eyesign theory and was only interest in winning bloodline in the stock loft. At that time William thought his team were set up about right, with the Sions winning from Blandford (80 miles) through to Bergerac (450 miles) and the Busschaerts doing the sprinting.

Text & Photos by Keith Mott (January 2026)