The History of Coaches

by George Athelstane Thrupp

In the French Encyclopædia of 1772, by Diderot, there are elaborate descriptions of the art of Coachbuilding, the workshops and tools used, and plates of the different carriages in use. I have mentioned these two works, one by M. Diderot on his own account, and the other by M. Roubo for the French Academy, partly to shew the great care taken by our neighbours to instruct the people in the technical principles on which their manufactories should be conducted. It may be that having these superior models before their eyes, and being assured by the wise men of the day that thus carriages should be constructed, the French Coachbuilders were content with their achievements, and allowed other nations to advance more rapidly, during the remainder of the century, with daring innovations in lighter and easier vehicles.

But the teaching of the Academy would nevertheless tend to create a careful and thoughtful body of workmen, who, if they developed but slowly, would develop carefully, and turn out good work in their generation.

There is one vehicle which appears almost solely in this epoch, and had a marked effect in introducing our English post-chaise. This was the chaise de poste. [[Plate 25]].

From the engraving and description in the Encyclopædia it appears to have been a small chariot body, very little longer than a sedan chair, and like a sedan chair, it had the door in front; this door was hinged at the bottom, and fell forward on to a small dasher like a gentleman’s cabriolet; there was a window in each side. It was hung upon two very lofty wheels and long shafts for one horse, and the body was rather in front of the wheels, so that the weight on the horse’s back must have been considerable. It was suspended at first upon leather braces only, but later upon two upright or whip springs behind, and two elbow springs in front from the body to the cross-bar, which joined the shafts and carried the steps.

Count Gozzadini tells us that in 1672 Cabriolets, or gigs with hoods, were introduced from Paris into Florence—“an affair with a curved seat fixed on two long bending shafts, placed in front on the back of a horse and behind upon two wheels; to this was given the name of gig, and they so increased in number that in a few years there were nearly a thousand in the city of Florence.”

These vehicles, in which the shafts were really very long, appear to be the origin of the carriole of Norway, the calesso of Naples, and the volante of Cuba. In the Museum at South Kensington we have a specimen of one of these, adorned with much elegant carving. It has no hood. The seat is very small. Beneath the shafts are two long straps of leather and a windlass to tighten them; this apparatus was, no doubt, to regulate the spring of the vehicle to the road travelled over.

There was a small-sized vehicle in use called Cabriolet, the body only a shell, with a hood which would put up and down, composed of three iron hoopsticks, jointed in the middle to fall upwards; the setting joints are straight, the covering appears to have been cloth or canvas.

Although these French books appeared about 1770, they describe carriages that had been a long time in use.

In the meantime the English had been making a great many small chariots. Dean Swift, in 1770, speaks in his journal of driving down to Hampton Court and to several gentlemen’s country houses near London in a chariot and pair of horses, to dine with some great man, and returning after dinner to town. He mentions that he could not have done the same in the neighbourhood of Dublin on account of the absence of turnpike roads. He drove from Windsor to London, twenty-three miles, in two hours and forty minutes, and from Wycombe to London, twenty-seven miles, in five hours, and from Windsor to Bucklebury, near Newbury, twenty-six miles, in four hours.

In 1744 Lady Hervey wrote in her “Letters,” that light-bodied chariots were then advertised as fit for town or country. As a further illustration of this period, there is a chariot in the South Kensington Museum belonging to the Earl of Darnley’s family, which is supposed to have been built in 1750. I should think it is of rather earlier date, probably 1700. The body is small, and abounds in curves and sweeps like furniture of the date of Louis XIV. The glasses of the doors and of the front rise and fall in frames. There is a broad perch, with two iron handsomely-forged cranes (exactly like those in the diligence Anglaise, which, unfortunately, did not please M. Roubo). The body is slung upon leather buckle braces, with small elbow springs at the bottom of the body at the hinder part. There is a small hammer-cloth on which the coachman could sit (the origin of the name is supposed to be from its original use in covering the budget which held the hammer and other tools that were frequently carried with carriages, especially travelling carriages, as late as the year 1840); the footboard is framed to the carriage part. There is a splinter-bar, by which the horses would be attached, and the wheel-irons hook on to this bar, and are attached at the hinder part to the ends of the front axletree. The front wheels are 2 ft. 9 in. high, and the number of spokes eight. The hind wheels have twelve spokes, and are 5 ft. high. The whole is hung low. We can well suppose that this was not a heavy carriage after the horses.