Your next stop is the asphalted area to your right, near the tall palm tree. » Map
Once clay-covered, this tennis court represents a popular leisure activity of the late 1800s. While the benefits of exercise began to be recognized as the century waned, sports such as tennis were significant for other reasons as well.
Released from closely chaperoned meetings in stuffy drawing rooms, young couples of Victorian society used these new activities as a way to get to know each other before marriage. Roller-skating was an opportunity to hold hands, and bicycling a chance to be alone together.
The invention of the “safety bicycle” in the 1880s made cycling – which had previously been a male-dominated sport – accessible to middle and upper class women. Many women, recognizing that their long skirts could become dangerously tangled in a bike’s moving parts, began wearing an early form of ladies pants known as “bloomers.”
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