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We recently put up news of this year’s Industrial Archaeology Conference (Saturday 21 October, Devizes Town Hall, hosted by Wiltshire Museum). One of the speakers will be John Chandler (of ‘Endless Street’ fame, and writer of many local histories) who will talk about ‘Taking to the Road in Georgian Wiltshire’.
I was reminded of an interesting chapter all about road ‘carriers’, in another of John’s books*, and especially a Salisbury Museum favourite, local carrier, Mrs Ridout.
We also had Alan Crook’s revelation recently, that the green by Coombe Bissett church was the donkey meadow where Mrs Ridout kept her donkeys. I think of her every time I drive past it now.
John Chandler makes the point that the Victorian period was a ‘golden age’ for carriers like Mrs Ridout. The coming of the railways had the effect, to a degree, of increasing road traffic, rather than wiping it out. The railways opened up sources of things that were becoming necessary, for industry and so on, but also encouraged shopping for the masses. Demand means deliveries. But while the branch lines outnumbered the ones we have today, there were still areas without lines, especially in a county like Wiltshire. Thus the carriers came into their own, doing ‘local’ runs, delivering to and from towns and cities with railways and linking markets with stations.
They also carried passengers.
While the wagoners of earlier centuries did begin to disappear in the early nineteenth century, the carriers with carts became a common sight, in Salisbury’s Market Place, for example, carrying a mixed load of goods and people.
Mrs Ridout and the Coombe Express by Frank Brooks (1854 – 1937). Painting in The Salisbury Museum. Read about Mrs Ridout and her fellow Coombe Bissett carriers here.
When W. H. Hudson wrote A Shepherd’s Life, the story of a Wiltshire shepherd in the late nineteenth century, he included this description of Salisbury:
“Salisbury itself is an exceedingly important place — the most important in the world… For Salisbury is the capital of the Plain, the head and heart of all those villages, too many to count, scattered far and wide over the surrounding country… To set out betimes and overtake the early carriers’ carts on the road, each with its little cargo of packages and women with baskets and an old man or two, to recognise acquaintances among those who sit in front, and as I go on overtaking and passing carriers and the half-gipsy, little ‘general dealer’ in his dirty, ramshackle, little cart drawn by a rough fast-trotting pony, all of us intent on business and pleasure, bound for Salisbury — the great market and emporium and place of all delights for all the great Plain … the mere sight of it exhilarates like wine. The numbers — the people and the animals! The carriers’ carts drawn up in rows on rows — carriers from a hundred little villages on the Bourne, the Avon, the Wylye, the Nadder, the Ebble, and from all over the Plain, each bringing its little contingent.”
It wasn’t cheap to travel, other than via ‘Shanks’ Pony’**. A vicar of Figheldean complained in the late nineteenth century that it cost him £1 (a week’s wages for some) to get a decent haircut. This was 18 shillings to hire a trap (a small, two-wheeled horse-drawn vehicle for private use) to get him to Salisbury, 1/6d for lunch and 6d for the haircut! To be fair, it was probably a bit cheaper to sit on the sacks in a cart such as Mrs Ridout’s. But a labouring family might spend a lot on the fare, then four hours getting to Salisbury, and four hours back. And lose a day’s wages.
Thus, residents in villages such as Figheldean relied on carriers to go to Salisbury on their behalf. The carrier would be given a list and the money which he (or she!) gave to the shops. They brought the goods to the van which he then delivered.
The great wagons had had their day, though some kept in collections today were still in use on farms as late as the 1950s.
A Wiltshire Bow Wagon, beginning to die out when the railways came c1850. It needed a quarter of an acre in which to turn it!*** Many such wagons were pulled by oxen, or at least four horses. Read more about wagons here, from the Reading Museum of Rural Life and it might be worth revisiting some blog items from a while ago, all about wagons.
*’The Day Returns: Excursions in Wiltshire’s History’ 1998
**For younger readers (if we have any!) this means transport on your own legs, ie walking…
***About 40 metres x 25 metres…?