Carriages?
I was such a horse-obsessed child that, for the whole year
when I studied A level Art, my teacher had to ban me from including any in the work
I produced for her. At home, I drew horses doing all sorts of things, from enjoying
wild freedom on the hills or grazing in a field, to riding holidays or racing or
jumping. The only discipline that didn’t interest me at all was horses being
driven, in harness. That wasn’t just because of the intricacy of the harness
itself – though a set of “straps” as the gypsies call it, when thrown on a
bench, looks like nothing so much as a heap of leather spaghetti – no, it was
the fact that horses pulling carriages or agricultural machinery wore bridles
with blinkers. And the fact is that blinkers (winkers or blinders) conceal the
horse’s most attractive features, its beautiful, deep, liquid eyes. The child
artist that I was, therefore, chose to dismiss carriage horses entirely.
However, I developed an interest in driving horses quite by
chance, when the equestrian author Clive Richardson asked me to provide a few
line drawings for his book “Driving: the
Development and Use of Horsedrawn Vehicles”. When I expressed curiosity about the
material I was producing, and mentioned that my Fell mare had been trained to
harness before I got her, he was kind enough to lend me a set of harness and an
exercise cart so I could try the discipline for myself. And the rest, as they
say, is history. (See what I did there?)
Carriages for the historical novelist
For our purposes as historical writers, carriage driving
needs to be understood because it’s an important form of transport. In the eras
before steam and internal combustion we had an almost symbiotic relationship
with the horse – though also with the donkey, mule, ox and even the dog, who
were all pressed into use at our need. However, since Debbie has asked me to
deal with carriages, I am going to leave the other species out of this article!
You’ll need to be clear on a few phrases and their meanings.
Here’s a short list!
Traces – the long leather straps that join the horse’s collar
to the carriage he is pulling. Even mainstream edited novels can get that
wrong: Alexandra Ripley when writing “Scarlett” clearly thought that traces are
another name for reins for controlling the horses. They aren’t.
Collar – the roughly oval, leather-stuffed-with-rye-straw
thingy that goes round the horse’s neck. It pads his shoulders from the
pressure of the hames, long brassplated or silverplated arms to which the
traces are attached. The hames are fastened onto the collar at top and bottom
by hame
straps. The horse pushes into the collar and the hames take up the
strain, then the traces which are slotted onto the trace hooks (on a
carriage for a single horse) or looped over roller bolts (on a pairs carriage) tighten and pull the
carriage forward.
Whip – to encourage the horse/s to go forward, or sometimes
sideways if he is jumping away from a scary object and you don’t want him to. A
carriage whip is LONG. A holly stick (often also called the “stock”) is between
4 feet 6 inches and 5 feet long. The thong is made from 4, 5 or 6 finely
plaited strips of “white leather” (ironically it’s traditionally made from
horse hide). That is fastened to the stock using a tube of split goose quills
“whipped” with black linen thread, to give the whip a nice curve from whipstock
to thong. For the driver of a single or a pair of horses, the whip thong is
also 4 or 5 feet long with a 6 inch lash of whipcord on the end, so a driver
should be able to flick it forward to touch the horse some 10 feet ahead of his
own shoulder. A four in hand whip has a lash up to 10 feet long. Hence the
other meaning of “whip” – a driver good enough to be able to use a whip
efficiently without taking off his passengers’ hats! Also, a great way for you
or your servant to break the top of your whip is to put the carriage away
through a low stable doorway with the whip standing upright in the whipholder
beside the seat!
Tyre
– the metal rim of a carriage wheel, fitted as a red-hot hoop by the local
blacksmith and his boys, and immediately doused with water to cool it to a
tight fit without burning the wood. Old, poorly maintained wheels could
sometimes lose the tyre, which would then go bowling down the road ahead of the
carriage – and sometimes the wheel, deprived of its support, could collapse.
Some carriages from the mid-19th century onwards had rubber or
“caoutchouc” tyres which were solid (pneumatic tyres for carriages were a very
late invention and only really took off in modern times on metal competition
carriages). Coachbuilders described rubber tyres as “invaluable for invalids”
because they had a slight cushioning effect and were very much quieter than
iron on stony surfaces. Rubber tyres were held in a U shaped channel by two
lengths of wire, which on an old carriage might rust through and allow the tyre
to fly off – again, forwards, which wouldn’t help the driver controlling his
horse!
Carriage – this is a trick question! Strictly the “carriage” is
what we’d now call the “undercarriage” or chassis – the suspension of the
vehicle. “Carriage” also tended to be the overall term for a 4-wheeled private vehicle, such as a
phaeton, landau or brougham, while public 4 wheeled vehicles were “coaches”,
and from the mid-19thC included omnibuses and cabs or “growlers”. There were
many different styles of carriages, often with subtle differences due to
customer preferences, intended usage, and (of course!) fashion. A good starter
list of carriage names can be found on Wikipedia.
Carriage types and construction
Your historical characters, especially the menfolk, might
well be carriage experts, as men often try to be with cars today. They would
know the age of carriages in part by the type of suspension they have: the
oldest coaches have the body slung on leather straps from wooden or metal posts
– see the Gold
State Coach built in 1762. Even quite early coaches had glass in their
windows – Samuel Pepys’ coach needed a window replaced in December 1668 and it
cost him £2 (40 shillings).
Suspension
Spring suspension to relieve the jolts of metal tyres on
stony roads was introduced from about 1700 onwards, with the “whip spring” and
“cee spring”, both still using leather straps. The elliptic spring invented by
Obadiah Elliott in 1804 did away with the need for a leather strap, and by
increasing the number of springs to 4 for each axle and the number of metal
“leaves” in each spring, even heavy coaches could provide a modicum of comfort
for their passengers.
At the other end of the scale, 2-wheeled vehicles were the
cheapest to make and needed only one horse. Early gigs date from the late 18thC
and might have been little more than a plank with a seat and shafts set above
the wheels; in North America the “riding
chair” and in England
the “whisky” (nothing to do
with the drink but referring to its lightness and speed). Gigs had either
elliptical or semi-elliptical springs and seated two people side by side
without provision for a third party – so your young unmarried ladies had better
not ride in one beside a gentleman driver, because being unchaperoned, they
risked acquiring the label “fast”. On
low-class country vehicles which saw a lot of use down narrow roads with
scratchy hedgerows, it was quite usual not to paint the woodwork but to varnish
it because damage could easily be touched up with fresh varnish without being
noticeable, whereas paint needed to be colour matched by an expert.
Woodwork
English carriage-builders used oak for the spokes of the
wheels, elm for the wheel hubs, and ash for shafts and poles and vehicle bodies.
A gentleman’s carriage would be painted to a very high standard, with the grain
of the wood filled and rubbed smooth, covered with many layers of undercoat and
then several of the top coat of paint. Seating was durable and constructed like
indoor furniture, with horsehair stuffing held in place by cloth, sometimes
topped with felt, and then upholstered. The interior of a private carriage
might be very luxurious, trimmed in morocco leather, silk, and lace. Parts of
the exterior were also of hard leather, for instance dashboards to keep dirt
from flying up off the horses’ hooves, and mudguards above the wheels for the
same reason.
Maintenance
One of the reasons why a man who “keeps his carriage” was
considered to have plenty of money was that he needed servants to look after
his horses, to “put the horses to the carriage”, to drive (if he didn’t drive
himself) and “take them out of the carriage” afterwards. It was a big job to maintain
the equipment. Harness had to be wiped down and cleaned with saddle-soap and
then oiled or greased to keep it supple, while the buckles (whether brass or
silver plated) had to be polished and the buckle tongues kept greased –
otherwise metal salts or rust could corrode the leather and cause it to break
in use. Steel bits needed to be cleaned with sand to keep them bright.
Carriages had to be washed with generous amounts of water to remove the dirt of
the road, then dried and polished, and the cushions and floor mats needed to be
brushed. The coach-house in an English
climate had to have a fire kept going most days, to keep woodwork and harness
from deteriorating with rust, mould and damp.
And now a little something for your estate owners: farm horses
A conscientious estate owner would take an interest in the
horses his tenants used to manage his land. The phrases “works in chains” and
“is good in all gears” mean that the horse is trained for farm work.
Pairs of horses, who work either side of a pole, and plough
horses, pull by chains, in the case of ploughing, very long ones. A single
horse in a cart, however, draws the load by short chains. There’s one over the
big heavy saddle on his back, to hold up the shafts; two from his collar to the
shafts, to draw the load; and two from the breeching round his bum, to the
shafts, to prevent the cart running him over on downhill stretches and to let
him back it up to an unloading dock. The reins are more likely to be long
plough-cords than leather.
Wains, wagons and carts which are agricultural or used for
commercial heavy transport have heavy-duty everything – big, thick shafts,
heavy wheels with iron hooped tyres, iron banded hubs. The harness is also wide,
heavy leather, and it doesn’t have a shiny finish. The buckles are often iron
or steel rather than brass.
There’s no brasswork on cart shafts like there is on a
gentleman’s carriage. Brass is a relatively soft metal that will not take
stress. Those work-chains are dealing with weight, so the staples on each shaft
that carry a hook for the chains, are blacksmith-forged iron, 8 to 10 inches
long with sharpened, bent-back points hammered into the wood. No screws or
nails could be stronger. I have a cart shaft-staple that I found on our farm; I
don’t have a farm cart, but it’s still being used, because I hammered it into
the wall outside my stable. That’s where I tie up my pony while I put her
harness on before we go out for a sunny drive along our Cumbrian roads.
References
Richardson, C, 1985: Driving: the Development and Use of
Horse Drawn Vehicles. (Batsford.)
Walrond, S, 1974: The Encyclopedia of Driving. (Country
Life.)
Sue Millard looks after the web site of the North West
Driving Club, http://www.northwestdrivingclub.co.uk/, She is one of its honorary vice-presidents, having also been its secretary, treasurer, press officer and chairman at
various times over the past 30 years. Her historical novel, Coachman, is available alongside several
other genres from her Jackdaw E Books site, http://www.jackdawebooks.co.uk/
