Lenham Pottery Models Harness History.

It is a sad fact that the crest in the craft of coach-building and harness-making was reached just as engineers got the internal combustion engine to work. Nowadays carriage-driving is regarded as a sport for the rich landed gentry and the heavy horse is rarely seen except at agricultural shows.

I researched how to make full-size harness in order to make authentic scale model harnesses which have been used on my china horses and vehicles now in museums (including the Science Museum in London). In doing so, I bought books on harness-making and the history of horses and vehicles. We also travelled to visit kind people who spread their treasured harnesses out for us to photograph, and took pictures of vehicles at shows. The drawings of vehicles in this and other pages come from the books published by the late John Thompson. We shall always be grateful to him for allowing us to use them.

While domesticating horses for riding and the carriage of goods, prehistoric nomads on the steppes of Central Asia soon found that the best system of control was through a bridle with a bit in the mouth of the horse. The Saxons in England certainly used bits very similar to the modern snaffle. Early draught harness was probably a breast harness which was fine for racing chariots but not much good for heavy carts and waggons because the band across the chest contricted the windpipe. Yokes, such as are still used on cattle (which have poor shoulders but high withers) were tried, but the padded collar came into use in medieval times with the draught taken by wooden hames.

The two horses in chain traces have wooden hames. The reason for a load-bearing cart saddle is also demonstrated by the weight the horse in the shafts is carrying on his back.

Three horse team.
This illustration shows the Scottish variation of the high wale collar, which was supposed to prevent the wet seeping down between collar and shoulders. Because harnesses, like farm vehicles, were made locally, there were wide wariations in design and the names of the parts were often dialect words. I have chosen what I regard as 'average' or the most common design and the usually accepted word to describe it.

Until the sixteenth century in Britain, most goods were carried by water on boats or barges, or loaded onto pack animals because the roads were so bad. In the seventeenth century, strings of stage-waggons used to travel together for mutual protection and assistance. And, just as with the waggon trains in America or Africa, the horses that began the journey were intended to carry on until their destination. They were not changed or rested. Most of the time they walked. Roads were the responsibility of the parishes they went through and repaired by an unpopular statute labour system - physical work instead of money taxes.

Parliament set up the first Turnpike Trust in 1706. The intention was that improving the main roads would become self-financing through the tolls levied, and although most trusts failed to repay the money invested, travellers benefited. From 1750 onwards, it became a commercial venture to run coaches for passengers and light goods from London to the other cities, and staging posts were set up. The mails were still carried by post boys, riding horses at the regulation five miles per hour, who could not always be relied upon to deliver their letters intact.

Stage Coach advertisement, 1706,London to York in four days. Stage Coach advertisement, 1779, London to Glasgow, four days.

The first Mail Coach ran on August 8th, 1784. The essence of the system devised by Mr John Palmer, MP for Bath, was that the mail bags were carried on improved coaches, with steel springs, protected by an armed guard, that the horses were regularly changed at each stage, and that the whole journey was timed from start to finish. It became a criminal offence to hinder the King's Mail. The toll-gate keepers were warned of the approach of a mail coach by a blast on the horn, known as the Yard of Tin. This system only reached perfection just as the railways began to provide even faster travelling than the swiftest team of four horses.

This is a photo of a winner at competition driving. The ponies - being light grey - show up the black harness and the rein arrangement, which is the same as the mail coach harness.

Postillion rider's harness.

Sometimes, on a road with a stiff hill, an extra horse would be provided, ridden by a man. Such a horse was known as a 'Cock Horse'. (Ride a Cock Horse to Banbury Cross/ To see a fine lady upon a white hoss.) This is the same harness that would be used by a postillion (where there is no driver). Artillery gun teams also have riders.

Waggonette with pair in pole harness.
Above is the Lenham Pottery Models Carriage Horse, a pair to the pole of a 1/8th scale waggonette, made by Barré Funnell. This equipage was really the summit of the coachbuilder's craft, but it would not have been possible to drive it at speed without good roads. For information on the people, see People Parts.

Bow Top Caravan. (Left) This photo was taken in 1955, when itinerant workers still travelled the roads of East Anglia for the fruit picking season. It shows a characteristic Bow Top Caravan, also known as the Open Lot for obvious reasons, with the equally characteristic Gypsy piebald mare with foal alongside.

The horse resembles the Lenham Pottery Models Vanner.

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