Time machines

Sussex collector Colin Kirsch has turned his love of Victorian and Edwardian bicycles into an online treasure trove of remarkable antique machines

Words by Rob Kingston

Opposite page: a 1930 advertising poster for the Nottingham-based Triumph Cycle Company, founded in 1884

Stroll along the broad promenade between the chalk cliffs of Rottingdean and the English Channel, and you may be passed by a white-haired chap astride a distinctly retro bike. No great surprise there, you might think – after all, you’re just a shingle-skip away from Brighton, home to many a hipster with an eye for a vintage fashion accessory.

But Colin Kirsch is no dilettante on a 1970s Chopper. His mount of choice is a Swift Model C safety bicycle, built in 1890 by the Coventry Machinists Company. It features a diamond frame and rear-dropout chain adjustment, both novel features at the time. When new, it would have set you back £15 10 shillings. I know all this because Colin’s Swift is just one of the hundreds of vintage machines he has painstakingly catalogued and displayed in his remarkable Online Bicycle Museum.

“It all began because I was a vintage car and motorbike dealer,” he explains. In 2008 the recession hit his business hard, so Colin switched to something more affordable: bicycles. “When I started, nobody knew much about the sort of bicycles I was buying and selling. So I created a website for it, and over time I realised it was a museum.”

A visit to the website is something of a nostalgic experience, in the best possible way. There are no popups, ads or other Web 2.0 distractions, just a glance back to the days when the internet was populated by… perhaps “eccentrics” is unkind, but the type of people who love sharing information for information’s sake. As Colin puts it, the site is “modelled on a backstreet antique shop, with ephemeral bits and bobs waiting to be discovered in the nooks and crannies of cyberspace”.

Over more than 1,500 pages, he has collected a wealth of detail on just about every bicycle that has passed through his hands in the past 15 years. By any measure its scope is remarkable, let alone as a one-man project, assembled in that man’s spare time. “Insomnia is my saving grace,” Colin laughs, “otherwise there would be no time for any of this!”

The exhibits can be searched by age (from 1800 up to 1999) and are grouped thematically in guided tours. Examples include: “Velocipedes & Hobby Horses”, the early19th-century precursors to the modern bicycle, propelled balance-bike-style with a walking motion; and “The Bloomer Club”, which charts the development of ladies’ cycling – amid initially stiff opposition from society. (Victorian physicians gave dire warnings regarding the potential ill effects of such speed on the frail feminine physique, not to mention the sheer indelicacy of sitting astride a mechanical device in public.)

And it’s not just bicycles that are on display – you’ll also discover scans of contemporary magazine articles, advertisements and other artefacts that give social context to the development of cycling and the freedom it delivered. One of the most striking revelations is how rapidly the bicycle evolved into what is still recognisably its current form. Colin’s 1890 Swift looks not too dissimilar to a modern road bike. Rewind even a few years further back through the collection and you’re confronted with penny-farthings (or “ordinaries”), which even today’s most adventurous social media influencer might balk at.

One thing the Instagram crowd would certainly approve of, though, is Colin’s gorgeous photography. These extraordinary machines pose proudly beside the sea, in bluebell woods or propped against flint walls amid rolling downland. Loving close-ups pick out rare decals, design innovations and the patina of age in the Sussex sun. All of which makes the Online Bicycle Museum not only an educational delight, but also the perfect shop window for the dozens of bikes Colin has for sale. Might I suggest the 1907 Rudge-Whitworth No 20 Special Light Roadster? Just the ticket for a spin along the Brighton prom. onlinebicyclemuseum.co.uk.