Beryl Burton’s daughter is standing outside the house on Mount Parade in Harrogate where her parents lived.

A plaque was unveiled there this week recognising her mum's achievements. 

So how does Denise Burton-Cole feel when her mother is honoured this way, and sometimes described as the town’s greatest ever sportsperson?

“I think she’s the world’s best-ever sportsperson,” she says. “For what she achieved over such a long period of time. It’s remarkable.”

Beryl paid the price for being ahead of her time. Women’s cycling didn’t become an Olympic sport until 1984 so she didn’t get the exposure or credit that lesser sports stars enjoyed.

But as the years have passed, her titanic achievements have become more and more appreciated. 

Beryl dominated British and international women’s cycling for a quarter of a century, winning seven world titles and more than 90 domestic championships between 1959 and 1986. She even beat the men’s 12-hour time trial record.

“She missed out and so did I,” says Denise, who was a cycling world championship bronze medallist in 1975. “That’s a bit sad because we both would have liked to have gone to the Olympics.”

Plaque unveiled

Last month marked the 30th anniversary of Beryl’s death on May 5, 1996, aged 58.

Beryl is often associated with Leeds, where she was born, and Knaresborough, whose cycling club she rode for during the latter stages of her career, and where a cycle path is named after her.

But she and husband Charlie lived happily in Harrogate for the last 20 years of her life.

Denise recalls:

By then Denise had moved out of her parents’ home but she remembers briefly staying on Mount Parade when she broke her pelvis and arm in a cycling accident. “Mum washed my hair in the kitchen because my arm was useless."

Members of Harrogate Nova, the town’s racing cycling club, spoke in awe of her achievements at the plaque unveiling.

Club co-chair Tom Denwood said he managed 262 miles in his only 12-hour time trial — 15.5 miles fewer than Beryl rode in 1967 — and he was on a modern bike.

'I could tell something special was happening'

Forrest Humphrey, who founded Harrogate Nova in 1971, was a marshal in Boroughbridge on that day in 1967 when Beryl blitzed the time trial record and is said to have offered a Liquorice Allsorts to the leading male rider as she passed him.

“I looked at my wristwatch and could tell something special was happening,” he recalls. “The conditions were perfect — lots of riders set personal bests that day.”

Beryl could be bloody-minded. She refused to shake hands on the podium with Denise when her daughter beat her in 1976.

“She was very tough,” says Denise. “She had to be, I suppose, to achieve what she achieved.”

Beryl's final ride

Beryl’s husband Charlie got the family into cycling, and was responsible for them moving to Harrogate in about 1976 when he accepted a job with cycling firm Ron Kitching. 

Beryl, an amateur sportswoman who was never paid, worked in a sandwich shop in Harrogate and picked raspberries at a farm in Flaxby.

The couple moved home several times in Harrogate and were living in Starbeck when Beryl went out on her final ride.

She collapsed on Skipton Road, near where the Co-op is now. Denise recalls hearing the news.

Charlie later moved to Ripon to be near Denise, who lives in Hutton Conyers. He died in 2023 aged 93.

Appropriately, Harrogate’s cycling mayor, Councillor Viv Poskitt, unveiled the plaque on Mount Parade on Wednesday. The current homeowner had no idea Beryl Burton once lived there until Harrogate Civic Society got in touch asking if he’d mind a plaque on the wall.

Denise, who still cycles, says:

Beryl’s was the 99th heritage plaque unveiled by Harrogate Civic Society. Whoever is chosen for the 100th has a hard act to follow and will, as many cyclists were, be trailing in her wake.