First off, apologies for the lengthy response. I've sorted through a bunch of my resources and selected what I thought most interesting.

OK, to get started, here's a serial number dating chart that should get you started:



Here is a history briefing of the Elswick/Elswick Hopper company:

1880 Fred Hopper opens a Whitesmith’s shop in Brigg Road, Barton on Humber, England.
1896 Fred sells his business to an investment company A.B.C. Cycle Fittings Company Ltd.
1897 Fred sets up a new factory called the Hull and Barton Cycle Manufacturing Company.
1898 Fred and his partners buy back the original business F. Hopper & Co.
1910 Fred buys the patents, trademarks and goodwill of the bankrupt Elswick Cycle Company of Newcastle to market under the separate brands of Hopper and Elswick.
1913 The Elswick Hopper Cycle and Motor Company Ltd. is registered.
1925 Fred dies at the age of 66 and Fred Hopper Jr. takes over as Managing Director.
1930's Elswick Hopper struggles thru the First World War and the 30's depression.
1958 New management takes control and bring in an Italian design company to develop a new model range.
1960's Components are bought overseas for assembly at Barton, although frames were still built in house. 1970's Coventry Eagle moves in with Elswick-Hopper and the two operations continue side by side as competitors, with Coventry Eagle changing its name to Falcon in 1970.
1972 Elswick-Hopper and Falcon move part of their production out of Barton to a modern facility in Brigg.
1978 Elswick-Hopper acquires Falcon brand to build on its strength and so the Falcon brand emerges as the successor to the old Hopper companies. By mid 80's the production of Elswick-Hopper Cycles eventually ceases in Barton bringing to a close over 100 years of bicycle construction.

Source: http://bmxmuseum.com/bikes/elswick_cycles/

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Here's the content of a letter that also helps to outline some details of the history of Elswick:


A colleague at work referred me to your web page about Elswick cycles. As you conclude that article by saying that you doubt whether Elswick survived long into the 60's, I thought you might like to hear what happened to Elswick.
My involvement with Elswick was from 1984 to 1994 when I was C.E.O. of Elswick Hopper PLC, a British company quoted on the London Stock Exchange since 1936, and renamed Elswick PLC during the 80's. Elswick Cycles was owned by Elswick Hopper PLC, which in 1984 owned a number of businesses in engineering and distribution, the only thing all the businesses had in common was none of them made any money! Hence my arrival on the scene to sort things out.
The bicycle part of the group went back to the 1880's when Fred Hopper started his cycle company in Barton-On Humber. He merged it in the 1890's or early 1900's with the Elswick Cycle Company, which took its name from Elswick, a suburb of Newcastle-on-Tyne. The cycle businesses were merged in Barton-On-Humber, where they were a major manufacturer before the first world war, exporting all over the world. As the business expanded, Fred Hopper built more factory units on the main site in Barton and in the town, so that when I joined Elswick in 1984 it had a largely derelict site with lots of decaying buildings. The production had been moved to nearby Brigg, into a single more modern factory.
In the 70's (I think) the Falcon Cycle company was bought and for a while the two businesses were kept separate and ran as competitors. Eventually it was decided to merge them onto the Brigg site but to keep the two brands. This didn't work as the cycles were being sold through dealers with rival dealers in a town selling the rival brands, when they merged the dealers stopped buying both!
Consequently around the time I joined it was decided to concentrate on the Falcon brand which was well known in the UK for sports cycles, which were selling well, whereas Elswick was better known for tourers, which were in decline.
So that marked the end of sales of cycles under the Elswick name, though the company continued as Falcon Cycles. I bought the Holdsworth and Claud Butler names and these were used on the top of the range cycles, but the company wasn't successful after about 1987 as cheap imports were flooding the market from places like China. The local components industry had disappeared, so we had to import all the parts (we made the frames from Reynolds tubing) so we were caught trying to be a volume producer but too small at 120,000 cycles per annum.
Meanwhile I had been rebuilding the Elswick group as a printing and packaging business focussed on self adhesive labels and garment labels, and the time came to sell the cycles business, which went to a company called Casket who had a largely import brand, Townsend (if I remember correctly). They did quite well and Falcon gained from their much greater buying power, until they bought a German bicycle maker, ran into major problems and nearly went bust, and were sold to a company called Tandem PLC, who last I heard were being taken over a by a group of investors planning to sell off the cycles and concentrate on racecourses (horses). However at present there are still Falcon, Claud Butler and Holdsworth cycles being produced.
Elswick PLC was itself taken over in 1994 by a larger print and packaging group and has been swallowed up inside it.
And so the corporate wheels go round and round .......
Anyway that's a short potted history, hope it is of interest.
At Elswick PLC I used to have a really nice old poster, a woman in a long dress riding a bicycle under the caption "Ride in style on an effortless Elswick Price 20 Guineas"
Yours sincerely
David Cross

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OK, another reference:


Falcon is located in the historic market town of Brigg in North Lincolnshire and the company can trace its history and experience in Cycles back over 125 years. 

Falcon's story began in 1880 when Fred Hopper established a cycle repair business in a former blacksmith's shop in Barton-on-Humber, no more than 12 miles from Falcons current location. Bicycle repairs soon gave way to manufacture and the business flourished. By 1906 F. Hopper & Co. was employing over 400 people, and by 1912 the company had developed export markets in Japan, India, South Africa and Australia. Shortly afterwards the company acquired the Elswick Cycle Company located near Newcastle, and in 1913 its name was changed to Elswick Hopper Cycle and Motor Company. In 1974 Elswick Hopper purchased Wearwell Cycles, a company so long established that reference to it could be found in the Bicycle Yearbook of 1872. In 1978 the Falcon Cycle Company was also acquired, and for some time it was operated as a subsidiary company. 

In 1982 Elswick-Hopper Cycles and Falcon Cycles merged, and during the following year major changes took place in products, management and in the market. Initially the merged company was known as Elswick-Falcon Cycles, which was subsequently shortened to its present form. Falcon Cycles limited can thus trace its heritage back to four of the eldest established cycle manufacturers in Britain F. Hopper & Co., Elswick Cycles, Coventry Eagle Cycles and Wearwell Cycle Company. Following acquisition by Tandem Group plc in November 1995, the company has gone from strength to strength, with current annual sales in excess of 300,000 bicycles. 

Throughout its long history, Falcon has maintained its progressive approach, and its willingness to utilise developments in new materials and design. As a result, the company's range of cycles is proving increasingly popular throughout the. The company owns and uses a number of different brands including Falcon, British Eagle, Coventry Eagle, Townsend, Optima, Boss, Shogun, CBR and the flagship brand Claud Butler. 

From children’s bikes to mountain, touring, city, BMX, sports bikes and specialist lightweight racing thoroughbreds. Falcons creates all these and more, and into each go the care and craftsmanship you would expect from a company with over a century of experience and an enviable reputation for quality.
source: http://www.falconcycles.co.uk/CORP/aboutFalcon.html

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And another:


BICYCLES for the WORLD, 
The romantic story of F. Hopper and Co., Ltd., and Elswick Cycles, Ltd., 
makers of the famous Elswick and Hopper Bicycles 
by "Peter Pedlar" 
Cycling, Sept. 29, 1937
BARTON-UPON-HUMBER is a small township in north Lincolnshire. It is pleasantly situated amidst a quiet agricultural countryside in which time seems to stand still. But within the town itself flourishes one of the largest cycle manufacturing concerns in the country. I refer, of course, to Messrs. Elswick-Hopper, or as these two well-known names are still preserved as separate entities: - F. Hopper and Co., Ltd., and Elswick Cycles, Ltd.
**** Even at this time when the cycle trade is booming there are no more than seven or eight firms making more than 100,000 bicycles a year. Elswick-Hoppers are numbered with this group with an output of about 200,000.
**** A concern that started in a black-smith's shop in 1880 when the graceful "Big Wheel " was the bicycle of fashion and which developed in an out-of-the-way comer of England far from the sources of raw materials and fuel for power, must have a romantic history. Unfortunately the early story of the late Fred Hopper, who (I must correct myself) was a white smith and not a blacksmith, has been forgotten by the -present generation.
**** Let me remind you, however, that about half the bicycles made in this huge factory are sent abroad and that Barton is conveniently situated near the ports of Hull, Grimsby, Goole and Immingham, and some hint of the Founders commencement as an ex-porter of bicycles may be gathered.** In his small shop he became noted for the hand-made machines he forged and built. Cycling, gaining in popularity throughout Europe and America, was still a novelty in many other lands. Captains of ships from the Humber, discussing the new pastime with traders at the various ports of Call, would naturally tell of the enterprise of one Fred Hopper of Barton, a white smith skilled in the art of bicycle making, and thus inquiries would be set afoot and orders would follow.
**** Today it is no exaggeration to say that the most important department the Elswick,-Hopper concern is the timber yard and the shops attached thereto where packing cases are made for every market in the world. I propose to deal, therefore, with this fascinating part of the firm's activities first. That the machines themselves are of first-rate quality is evidenced by Elswick-Hopper's long-standing reputation and their present big output. Furthermore, I saw them made myself and I can con-firm that each finished bicycle that leaves Barton-on-Humber is a real built-job; the machines are not just put together but assembled into the finished articles by skilled bicycle makers. One machine, one man, is the rule from the parts to the complete bicycle ready to be ridden away.* I deliberately wrote above " each finished bicycle that leaves Barton-on-Humber," for I was interested to learn that about 1O.,000 Elswick and Hopper machines a year are shipped abroad in parts. And this explains the importance of the packing case and crate department..
**** To walk round the dispatch shed past the groups of cases large and small and the crates, both long and tall, all labeled to their destinations, is like taking a world cruise in miniature. I was told that no two countries marketing requirements are alike. Nearly whole machines with only the bars and pedals packed separately in open crates were for Switzerland, whilst shorter cases taking complete frames with one wheel in the fork ends and the other tied to the centre of the frame suited another market. For the Far East I saw what looked like a comparatively small "box " measuring 3 ft. 6 ins. by 2 ft. 9 ins. by 3 ft., in which there were 25 complete bicycle sets less wheels! Let me tell you how this case is put together. It starts as a floorboard with four corner uprights and no sides. To a carefully designed plan a frame, bars, chain wheel, cranks, pedals, brakework, saddle, mud guards, etc., are placed in position on the floorboard inside the four uprights. Four pieces of wood each about five inches wide and the length of a side are next nailed to the corner uprights and make a tight fit round the cycle frame which, with its parts, cannot now move. Packing is added and then another frame and its elements are positioned and four more boards are nailed round it fixing it firmly. The process continues until 25 sets of bicycle parts (less wheels which are cased separately) have been secured within a box that been made as it has filled.
***** Next I saw some quite small cases each containing the parts of three machines. They bore names of places I may or may not have heard of at school, but had certainly forgotten: names that reminded me of the "Arabian Nights." Why so small and unusually shaped? I asked. Because the last 500 or 600 miles of their journey will be by camel, was the surprising answer.
**** Wherever the bicycle is ridden on the face of this globe, Elswicks or Hoppers or both go there and at Barton there are men who know the trading regulations of every country, and carpenters and packers skilled in boxing bicycles for every market in the world.
**** And here is another unique feature of the Elswick-Hopper organization. The final viewing room for completed bicycles is also the dispatch department and it is the smallest shop in the whole place. There is no store or stockroom! Backed up to the open door of this viewing department, the floor of which is a few feet above the road level, is a motor truck. Immediately after examination the bicycles are wheeled straight onto this lorry which moves off so soon as a consignment is complete to the branch line station at Barton where the machines are at once handed over to the care of the railway company whilst the truck returns for another load. This vehicle and its driver do nothing else but travel backwards and forwards between the dispatch department and the station.
**** Each train leaving Barton for New Holland conveys the bicycles then on hand and at the latter place they are sorted according to the destination and dispatched by the different goods trains as they are made up or by passenger train if so consigned. With so many ports in the vicinity receiving goods from abroad for quick distribution and the important Grimsley fish trade near at hand, quick delivery – almost a special delivery – to all parts of the country is available to Barton’s industries.
**** Nearly every employee at the Elswick-Hopper works, and in the offices too, are Barton "bred and born." Work people are seldom imported but are trained from school. The Managing Director, Mr. A. Stow, is a local man who has literally gone right through the mill to achieve his present well deserved position.
**** It might be thought that life and labour progressed in this little Lincoln-shire town at an old-fashioned and leisurely gait and that what the Mid-lands were putting into bicycle design yesterday, Barton would learn of the day after to-morrow. The excellent and up-to-the-minute machines this firm is turning out belie any such thought. Indeed I was told that the cycle historians have written only the story of Coventry and the Midlands generally, and not the complete history of cycle making in this country. Mr. Hopper, they say, was making a rear-driven Safety before the Starley Rover of 1885 "set the fashion to the world." That be as it may, but this much is known, that he was electrically stoving his enameled parts in a plant of his own design and patent and with power made on the premises long before the trade generally had progressed beyond gas. And although hand brazing as well as liquid brazing is still in use at the Barton works, some of the "crude" early methods devised - for greater efficiency, good work and economy of labour and materials, have since be-come standard practice throughout the trade. And it should be emphasized that now, as then, " fine finish " is a characteristic of the Hopper products, a fact that is recognized everywhere that bicycle making is understood.
**** I have already pointed out how every machine is built and not merely put together. Even the parts sent abroad are assembled, adjusted for smooth running and examined before being dismantled for packing. In a gallery round the main assembly floor of the fitting shops, handlebars are equipped with brake work and these items go down by lift to form sets with the frames from the enameling plant and other parts. The builders, all men of middle age or older, are supplied with these complete sets and from a bin of parts an assembler builds a bicycle, filing here if necessary, adjusting there, until he passes to the inspection department the finished job ready for the road.
**** Careful viewing at every stage of manufacture is behind the slogan" Famous for Finish "; that each nut, screw and bolt is examined one by one after being chromium plated is an instance of this thoroughness.

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History and some brochures: http://oldbike.wordpress.com/1900-el...23-gents-bike/

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A couple of (maybe) relevant pictures: