IN the 1920s and 1930s a small group of archers across the world had something unusual in common.

All used excellent bows and arrows fashioned not deep in a forest but in a terraced house by a Swindon GWR boilersmith.

In February of 1937 an Adver reporter visited the Ferndale Road home of WF Bullock.

What he found evidently put him in a poetic frame of mind.

He wrote: “And so the drawing of the slender bow and the flight of the whispering arrow still hold their fascination in an age that is wont to consign the glory and the cunning of old time arts and sporting pursuits to the dust-heap of forgotten things.

“In Swindon there is a boilersmith-bowyer who is in touch with many of the leading archers of the world, and who is doing much to help forward a national revival of the ancient sport of kings and yeomen.

“He has a modest little backyard workshop in which he fashions traditional English and modern American longbows that, in point of line, technique and appearance, are fit to grace a Royal armoury.

“He explained that his father had been in the habit of making crude bows and that he still took an interest in the pastime.

“Thus encouraged the son, too, at the age of 12, had assumed something of the role of a juvenile Robin Hood, fashioning bows and arrows for all his schoolmates.

“Then, during the war, he went to India with the 4th Wilts and found many opportunities of accompanying natives on hunting expeditions, shooting jungle fowl and the like, with arrows.

“Since the war he has devoted practically the whole of his spare time to the manufacture of bows, arrows and the other necessary equipment.”

Mr Bullock imported raw materials from all over the world and had a similarly international clientele.

We said: “Examples of his work have found their way to various parts of the country, and there is a steady local demand.

“He is in communication with many of the crack archers of the world, letters reaching him from Vienna, Oregon, Ohio, Iowa, Mississippi, Cuba and elsewhere.”

The only surviving examples of Mr Bullock’s work we’ve been able to trace are a handful of arrows in the collection of the Manchester Museum, University of Manchester.

We are very grateful to that institution for permission to use one of its images.