Early Carriages and Roads

by Sir Walter Gilbey

For many years after Mr. McAdam’s methods had been applied to the main highways, the narrower and less used by-roads left much to be desired; and however good the roads it is obvious that lavishly adorned carriages would have been out of place for travel in all weathers. A single day’s journey through mud or dust would play havoc with ornamentation contrived of “foil stones, Bristol stones, sapped glass” and similar materials; what was required in the travelling carriage, such as that so well portrayed by the late Charles Cooper Henderson, was the combination of strength and lightness. Hence the best of the coach-builder’s art, the finest workmanship in the practical, as opposed to the decorative sense, was applied to the travelling carriage, which was constructed to secure the greatest comfort to the occupants, together with the greatest strength to withstand rapid travel over roads of all kinds with the least weight.

After the Picture by Chas. Cooper Henderson.

TRAVELLING POST, 1825-1835.

The picture by Cooper Henderson, from which the illustration is reproduced, refers to the period about 1825-35, and it will be observed that while the body of the carriage is hung lower than the posting carriage of seventy years earlier, the general plan is not greatly dissimilar.

VARIETIES OF CARRIAGE.

About 1790 the art of coach-building had arrived at a very high degree of perfection,[25] and carriages in great variety of shape were built. A feature common to all, or nearly all, was the height of the wheels. The highest were 5 feet 8 inches in diameter; these had 14 spokes, and the number of spokes were reduced in ratio with the size of the wheel, till the smallest, 3 feet 2 inches in diameter, had only 8 spokes. A good example of the coach of 1790 may be seen in the South Kensington Museum; it belonged to the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and, save for the greater size of the body, the flatness of its sides and greater length above than below, is not widely dissimilar from coaches of the present day.

[25] Treatise upon Carriages and Harness. W. Felton, London, 1794.

The Landau, invented at Landau in Germany, in 1757, was, about 1790, made to open in the middle of the roof or “hood,” and became very popular as combining the advantages of a closed coach with an open carriage; the chief objection to Landaus was the greasiness and smell of the blacking leather of which the hoods were constructed. The name of the phaeton first occurs in a patent granted in 1788. Phaetons of various shapes came into fashion later: all were built to be driven by the owner, and probably gained much in popular esteem from the fact that George IV., when Prince of Wales, used to drive a “Perch High Phaeton” in the Park and to race meetings. Some of these vehicles were extravagantly high, and it was the correct thing to drive four horses in them at the fastest trot. The “Perch High Phaeton” was shaped like a curricle and had a hood. “The centre of the body was hung exactly over the front axle-tree, the front wheels were 4 feet high, and the hind wheels 5 feet 8 inches” (Thrupp).