The Harness Room at Chaumont

This room contains up to 18 sets of harness. The collection will date from the 1880’s and later. The interior of the harness room is luxurious. The parque floor and panelled walls are typical of a property of that status. Most tack rooms had wood panelling and often tiled floors in the Victorian period. The central seat with the whip holder is a lovely piece of design, but I doubt the grooms ever had much time to sit down.

There is a large tack room where water could be heated for the cleaning of tack and harness and that is just next door. Carriages would have been cleaned too and so at its peak this would have been bustling with activity, grooming horses and laying straw beds and cleaning and polishing harness and tack. The bits would have been stored in boxes but here they are displayed. Mostly driving bits and bits with keys on for breaking youngsters.