Early Carriages and Roads

by Sir Walter Gilbey

In old documents we find frequent mention of the impossibility of conveying heavy wares by road during the winter. For example, when Henry VIII. began to suppress the monasteries, in 1537, Richard Bellasis, entrusted with the task of dismantling Jervaulx Abbey, in Yorkshire, refers to the quantity of lead used for roofing purposes, which “cannot be conveyed away till next summer, for the ways in that countrie are so foule and deepe that no carriage (cart) can pass in winter.”

In the Eastern counties, and no doubt elsewhere in England, our ancestors used the water-courses and shallow stream beds as their roads. This is clear to anyone who is at pains to notice the lie and course of old bye-ways; and it is equally clear that a stream when low offered a much easier route to carts, laden or empty, than could be found elsewhere. The beds of the water courses as a general rule are fairly smooth, hard and gravelled, and invited the carter to follow them rather than to seek a way across the wastes. In process of use the banks and sides were cut down by the wheels or by the spade; and eventually the water was diverted into another channel and its old bed was converted into a road.

SAXON VEHICLES AND HORSE LITTERS.

Strutt states that the chariot of the Anglo-Saxons was used by distinguished persons for travel. If the illustrations from which he describes them give a fair idea of their proportions and general construction, they must have been singularly uncomfortable conveyances. The drawing is taken from an illuminated manuscript of the Book of Genesis in the Cotton Library (Claud. B. iv.), which Strutt refers to the ninth century, but which a later authority considers a production of the earlier part of the eleventh. The original drawing shows a figure in the hammock waggon, which figure represents Joseph on his way to meet Jacob on the latter’s arrival in Egypt; this figure has been erased in order to give a clear view of the conveyance, which no doubt correctly represents a travelling carriage of the artist’s own time, viz., A.D. 1100-1200.

HAMMOCK WAGGON.

Supposed to have been in use in England about

A.D. 1100-1200.

Horse litters, carried between two horses, one in front and one behind, were used in early times by ladies of rank, by sick persons, and also on occasion to carry the dead. Similar vehicles of a lighter description, carried by men, were also in use.

William of Malmesbury states that the body of William Rufus was brought from the spot where he was killed in the New Forest in a horse-litter (A.D. 1100). When King John fell ill at Swineshead Abbey, in 1216, he was carried in a horse-litter to Newark, where he died. For a man who was in good health to travel in such a conveyance was considered unbecoming and effeminate. In recording the death, in 1254, of Earl Ferrers, from injuries received in an accident to his conveyance, Matthew Paris deems it necessary to explain that the Earl suffered from gout, which compelled him to use a litter when moving from place to place. The accident was caused by the carelessness of the driver of the horses, who upset the conveyance while crossing a bridge.