Uncle, Grandpa and the Boys: Re-imagining Relationships and Masculinities within 1890s English Cycling Clubs

This thesis explores the distinctive intergenerational relationships which existed between middle-class male members of 1890s English cycling clubs. Drawing on Gary Alan Fine’s sociological research into small societal groups, it examines how clubs formed, maintained and protected shared group cultures which enabled their members to indulge common enthusiasms for cycling and desires for sociability with each other. By exploring these processes, it outlines how cycling clubs were sites in which clubmen of different ages re-modelled and re-worked intergenerational interactions that middle-class men typically experienced in home and work environments. The relations present within clubs, are recognised to have provided unique opportunities for members in different life stages to explore a variety of ways in which they could ‘do’ and ‘position’ their masculinity. These discussions are used to develop existing historical research into mid to late nineteenth-century middle-class sports clubs, provide new insights into the lives of middle-class men living through this period, and outline new ways in which historians can approach studies of voluntary sporting institutions.