 Continuing with engineering work that sustained the factory during the Second World War, Cotton did not re-enter the motorcycle market at the war's end, but struggled on into the 1950s, when F.W.Cotton decided to retire.The company was re-constituted in 1953 as E. Cotton (Motorcycles) Ltd., after Bill Cotton's first wife Elsie Ellen, and was owned and managed by Pat Onions and Monty Denley.