BEDFORD PARK BICYCLE CLUB
Jeremy Vine and Nicholas Woolner MBE with other founder members of the Bedford Park Bicycle Club
Peter Murray
Bicycle Club
BEDFORD PARK
Successfully Relaunched after 140 Years One of the oldest clubs in Chiswick has been re-launched, 140 years after its heyday. When Bedford Park was built in the 1880s as the first ‘garden suburb’, it was marketed as ‘the healthiest place in the world’. The Metropolitan District Railway was opening up the countryside around London, and the middle class could buy houses that were away from the grime of the city. Now congestion on the roads has made air pollution a problem once more, and we are being encouraged to take to cycling as a way of reclaiming residential neighbourhoods as ‘liveable’ places.
Over a hundred people turned up to the inaugural meeting which was introduced by Nigel Woolner MBE, President of the Bedford Park Society, quoting HG Wells’ famous comment: “when I see an adult on a bicycle I do not despair for the future of the human race”. Since the Covid outbreak, the Club is looking into organising bicycle collections for shopping or medicines for local vulnerable residents. Membership £10 per year, payable via the website.
Architect Peter Murray, a resident of Bedford Park, had the idea of re-launching the society when he came across photographs of local Victorian cyclists. At the end of the nineteenth century there was an explosion in the popularity of bicycling. By the end of the century there were more than 350 bicycle manufacturers in London. Bicycling was emancipating for Victorian and Edwardian women, as it afforded a measure of independence and was one of the early drivers of more practical clothing, such as knickerbockers instead of skirts, which then led to the acceptance of women wearing trousers.
Email: info@bedfordparkbicycleclub.org.uk | Twitter: @BedPkBicyclists Website: www.bedfordparkbicycleclub.org.uk f @outandaboutmagazines
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