When cycling craze hit Hastings more than 100 years ago

He writes: Last week’s Observer reported that a miniature new police station has just been unveiled in Harold Place, opposite Jempsons. A police inspector said it would be a ‘safe space for people to talk about any concerns’. This ‘engagement hub’ is not much bigger than a telephone box, so it should not get in the way of the many cyclists who illegally zoom through the pedestrianised town centre every day.

There have been complaints about the anti-social behaviour of cyclists for a while now. In January 1870, the editor of the Hastings News said ‘Complaints have reached us of the danger which passengers incur in our streets after dark from the velocipedes, which begin to abound here. These locomotives make so little noise and present so small a body to the sight that they almost run over anyone before they can be seen.’

Bicycles as we know them today were at an early stage of evolution back in 1870. The velocipede - what we would now call the penny-farthing, with different-sized wheels – was its fore-runner, being first produced in France in the late 1860s and then marketed abroad. They were hard to ride, being known as the ‘bone-shakers’, but over following years their design was improved and smooth paved roads began to replace uneven dirt highways.

In 1885 the first modern-style bikes were created. They were called ‘safety bicycles’, having same-size wheels, efficient brakes and chain-power. This opened the door for cycling to become a transport and leisure tool for men and women of all ages, long before the arrival of motorised traffic.

The Hastings and St Leonards Bicycle Club was formed at a meeting in the Swan Hotel in the High Street in October 1876. It soon attracted many members, not least because it had ‘A bicycle kept for the use of members learning to ride’. The annual subscription was five shillings (25p).

The town’s first bike shop opened in Middle Street in October 1882. It was named the Bicycle and Tricycle Depot, because ‘trikes’ were then temporarily fashionable. The depot bought, sold and exchanged new and second-hand machines, and taught novices how to ride a bike.

In 1887 the St Leonards Cycling Club was set up. Its first organised run, the nine miles to Ninfield, took place in May 1888 on an overcast day, with the road being reported as ‘exceedingly heavy’. The women-friendly new ‘safety bicycle’ became widely available in the late 1880s, and the St Leonards Club encouraged women to join by offering a half price subscription rate (five shillings for men, 2/6d for women).

Have you read? New £10 million hospice for Hastings and Rother

Have you read? Popular Hastings restaurant is broken into