Carriages & Coaches: Their History & Their Evolution

I am not a coachbuilder. Though such a pronouncement will seem entirely superfluous to any coachbuilder who reads the following pages, it is not perhaps a wholly unnecessary rem...

The ἁρμάμαξα was a large four-wheeled waggon, enclosed by curtains and provided with a καμάρα or roof. Four or more horses were required to draw it. It was so large that a perso...

As roadmakers, the Romans, if they can be said to have had successors at all, were succeeded by the monks. On the assumption that travellers were unfortunate people, as indeed t...

The roads had become no better. Even those most eager to welcome the new carriages must have been dismayed at the state of the country, not only in England, but in every Europea...

Here, perhaps, we may consider the introduction of the coach into England in rather greater detail. “It is a doubtful question,” remarks Taylor in his ill-natured way,” whether...

This, too, is borne out by the speech of Lady Eitherside already quoted. Many servants were needed for the carroch. Massinger speaks of one being drawn by six Flanders mares, an...

“By your awkward address, you’re that thing which should carry, With one footman behind, our lover Sir Harry. By your language, I judge, you think me a wench; He that makes love...

“When my Lord Protector’s coach,” wrote Misson, a Frenchman then on a visit to England, “came into the Park with Colonel Ingleby and my Lord’s three daughters, the coaches and h...

Long ago, Mr. Pepys had dreamt of owning a private coach. “Talking long in bed with my wife,” he writes on March 2nd, 1661-2, “about our frugal life for the time to come, propos...

But the ever-increasing traffic rendered necessary a much smaller vehicle than these monstrosities for general use, and this led, somewhere about 1670, to the introduction of th...

“These are to give notice to all Persons that have occasions for Coach Glasses, or Glasses for Sash Windows, that they may be furnished with all sorts, at half the prices they w...

“constructed principally of a dull black leather, thickly studded, by way of ornament, with black-headed nails tracing out the panels; in the upper tier of which were four oval...

The experiment took place “abreast between the new road just by Pancras to within a small distance of Bog-house Bar.” Apparently the only advantage which the new waggon possesse...

“At _Blagrave’s_ once upon a time, There stood a phaeton sublime: Unsully’d by the dusty road Its wheels with recent crimson glow’d; Its sides display’d a dazzling hue, Its harn...

“Dust shall not stick to the hoofs of Fersen: crack! crack! the Glass-coach rattles, and every soul breathes lighter. But is Fersen on the right road? Northeastward, to the Barr...

Mr. Stratton thinks that the Indians of North America had rude litters at an early date. The Incas of Peru certainly possessed magnificently decorated sedans or palanquins, in w...

We come now to the two-wheeled carriages. Of these the most fashionable was still the curricle, though Bridges Adams considered the shape of the body “certainly unsightly.” It i...

“The getting out of a cab is, perhaps, rather more complicated in its theory, and a shade more difficult in its execution. We have studied the subject a good deal, and we think...

It is curious to note, by the way, that for a short time such coaches were hardly made at all, and the Report on the carriages shown at the London Exhibition of 1862 speaks of t...

“The groom, or ‘tiger’ as he was then called, was a special London product: he was produced in no other city, British or foreign; all the genuine tigers hailed from London. His...

[47] It may be well to add here a note on the simpler springs which were in use at this time. These seem to have been of five distinct varieties—the straight or elbow spring, th...

London, 43, 57, 61, 69, 74, 86, 89, 90, 100, 102, 111, 120, 135, 136, 143-145, 149, 160, 176, 189, 192, 196, 216, 221, 236 n., 241 n., 242, 245, 246, 248, 250, 253, 255, 258, 26...