The business began soon after World War II when Charles (Charlie) Benjamin Roberts worked as a frame-builder for Holdsworth, Claud Butler, and Freddie Grubb.
[1] Production was limited to 100 steel frames per year, and each was made in a bespoke manner to the customer's dimensions, mass, and equipment specification requirements.
[citation needed] The range includes bicycles built specifically for competition (road race, track), recreational (tandems, tricycles, mountain bikes, touring), and more.
Other builders that Charlie Roberts worked for, all in South London, included Claud Butler, Freddie Grubb and Holdsworth.
Like many of his contemporaries in the cycle trade (including Freddie Grubb and Charlie Davey), Roberts was also a competitive racing cyclist.
The CR monogram in the crest, which remains the firm’s trademark, was inspired (and was designed by his youngest son Geoff Roberts) by the logo once used by local football club Crystal Palace.
Holdsworth (then owned by yet another ex-Holdsworthy staffer, Roy Thame) and Condor Cycles (Gray’s Inn Road, London).
Although working in GB's shed, Roberts frames still carried the original crest encircled by the same Trewsbury Road home address.
Outgrowing the shed at Geoffrey Butler’s, the Roberts workshop moved to East Dulwich but continued to use the Trewsbury Road address on head badges.
Business was evidently good because Charlie and his sons were joined in the workshop by Derek Bailey, an experienced builder from Holdsworthy.
Meanwhile, Charlie Roberts’ friend John Pratt had sold Geoffrey Butler’s and decided to open a new shop in Forest Hill, South London, called Phoenix Cycles.
One of the customers at the Penge shop was Maurice Burton, Britain’s first black professional cyclist, who won the UK junior sprint title in 1973 and represented England at the Commonwealth Games in 1974.
The 21st century, notably in London, was marked not only by a cycling boom but a retro fashion that saw hand-built steel frames prized highly.
The 1980s MTB initiative came from Jake Heilbron, the manager of West Point Cycles in Vancouver and co-founder of Canada’s Rocky Mountain Bikes and Kona Bicycle Company.
Heilbron was familiar with the heavyweight mountain bikes being used in California but wanted something lighter and sprightlier so he shipped a Californian style frame to Roberts, whom he knew through Cycle Imports of Maine, and asked them to make something similar.
As disc brakes became popular, steel frames fell out of fashion, but more recently in 2020 the design has been revisited and the DOGSBOLX 1Evo is once again in the range of bikes that Roberts Cycles (Geoff Roberts) produces in Sussex - The "1" is a reference to the 1x chainring that the bike employs and the "Evo" refers to the modern bolt-thru axle and disc brake configuration.
International tourist and writer Josie Dew chose to ride a Roberts,[3] giving the brand an unexpected boost.