“The Rush Down Handcross Hill”:
The Transformation of
Cycling in England, 1890-1939
Thomas Bray
t.bray@warwick.ac.uk
University of Warwick
Some Key Assumptions in the History
of Cycling
• Cycling is a technology which has not changed much
over the last one hundred and fifty years, therefore
the meanings ascribed to it have not changed
• Cycling is a leisure pursuit occasionally used for
practical reasons, therefore it carries no great serious
meaning
• Cycling involves less technology than motoring, and
less history than walking, therefore it is not worth
studying as a technology or a practice
• Cycling was simply not popular enough to study
The Two Cycling Crazes
1895/1896
- Cycling as a fashionable
pursuit
- Primarily a middle-class
form of self-expression
- A strong cycling culture,
including fashion and print
media
- About 1.5 million regular
cyclists, roughly 5% of
population
- A short-lived craze
The interwar period
- Cycling as a popular pursuit
- Practiced by a much wider
cross-section of the
population
- A stronger cycling culture,
involving strong links to
other pursuits, such as
camping
- About 8 million regular
riders, roughly 20% of
population
- A much more enduring craze
A Rover safety bicycle
John Boyd Dunlop
Two different views of the
female cyclist
A sip of Punch
By Humphrey Spender, from his work in
Worktown (Bolton) for Mass Observation
Kuklos (William
Fitzwater Wray)
Although they could not argue that other groups should not
ride (as they had done in the 1890s), the middle-class, male
cycling correspondents and columnists who saw themselves
as the guardians of good cycling could argue that other
groups were cycling incorrectly (and they should instead
cycle more like middle-class men).
This involved discussion about:
- the right environments for cycling
- the proper methods for cycling
- the best reasons for cycling
- the kind of health that one should pursue
This did not just amount to an attack on others as cyclists, but
an attack on them as people and citizens.
The Meriden memorial in its
heyday…
…and today
An example of a column by Wayfarer (Walter
McGregor Robinson)
Wayfarer, gazing
at windmills…
The woman as consumer
Why should we care about the history of
cycling?
• An insight into interwar class culture
• Rethink the relationship between technology,
health, environment and leisure
• Considerations of proper and improper uses of
technology: who controls a popular leisure pursuit?
“It was one of the most realistic descriptions of a
ride I have ever heard, and I can feel now the chill
of the wind in my face, when he was describing the
rush down Handcross Hill with their legs bent over
the bars, and no possible chance of stopping if they
met anything, but, as he said, they never met
anything.”
E.J. Southcott, on a talk by Australian cyclist, Selwyn
Edge, in 1926