Coaching & Heavy Horses

This is a lovely painting of an incident which would have occurred so often. A man and his wife set off in their Post Chaise to catch the Stage Coach. No booking office where they are in the country and when they get to the appointed spot and the Stage

PLATE 1 These are four wonderful prints describing the road to Brighton by coach and horses. In the background of the first hand-coloured print we see a millanery shop owned by a Jane Fisher, she imports foreign products.  There is a post chaise company to the left of the picture.

The Art of Brewing We might a drink a lot of it, but we did not invent it. Beer dates back between 5000 & 4000 years to the Sumerian civilisation and may go back further. Alcohol and bread have pretty much sustained mankind for thousands of years and provided a

Jane Austin tells us in Pride and Prejudice, that they returned from Huntsford in Kent, by way of Bromley and from there they took the stage to Epsom where they changed horses at the Spread Eagle. Indeed Coaches left from Epsom to London hourly, and late in the evening there

People often ask me what is thee purpose of the feathers on a cart horse?  The feathers send the rain and mud off down the foot and keep the skin dry. Clipping them off is a sin and should never be done. If you have a cart horse or cob

A Brougham is a nineteenth century carriage (pronounced  ‘broom’ or ‘brohm’ and was a light four wheeled horse-drawn carriage called after Lord Brougham because he made the style popular.  It had an enclosed body with two doors, so more suited to inclement weather. It sat two and sometimes an extra

A Cabriolet is a light horse drawn vehicle with two wheel and is designed to be dawn by a single horse. The carriage has a single hood that can cover the two occupants, one of whom is the driver. The driver was known as a ”tiger’ and stood on the

The Gurney Cab, circa 1885, was so called after its inventor, Theodore J. Gurney who patented it in Boston, USA . The Driver sat in front of the cab passengers entered via the rear door. Four people could ride comfortably on the lengthwise seats. The body was made with sheet

THE ROYAL MAIL THE ERA OF COACHING 1780 TO 1840 A stage coach was a public vehicle which did regular runs between major towns, London to York and London to Bath, Bristol, Plymouth and Brighton, Lynn, Ely, Norwich, Manchester, Leeds, were becoming essential destinations for the business man and the

On the 19th December 1835, Edward Jenkins was driving his Gloucester to Carmarthen royal mail coach, along the turnpike between Senny Bridge and Landovery. The coach was lightly loaded and Jenkins had whipped up the horses to full gallop as they approached a left hand bend. The team of horses