What’s a ‘horse-lorry’? It was simply another phrase for a horse-drawn wagon or cart, but one that was often used in connection with the railway companies but was also used extensively elsewhere as prior to the 1920s – and in some instances well beyond that date – most companies relied on horse-drawn transport to move their goods, obtain fuel and deliver their products.
Looking first at the motive power for horse-lorries, the ubiquitous ‘cart horse’ was generally purchased as a five-year old after early years on a farm, for a working horse takes around this time to ‘fully’ develop. Many breeds figured in hauling wagons, but the heavy Clydesdales, Shires and Suffolk punch were common. Railways often imported Irish and Continental breeds in substantial numbers for use in the goods yards. The slighter built Bays were often used for the horse drawn omnibuses, but these were the first to be replaced by motor vehicles. The amount of work that the horses did varied enormously. Horses used by small local firms – such as grocers and the like – probably did the least work, while ones that hauled coal drays and other heavy goods were worked harder.
The working life of railway horses depended largely on the type of work they did, with the heavy city dray horse being worked heavily and so were usually sold off after a short life of 5 years. A 70-hour week with a daily maximum of 14 hours was routine and a coal horse would be expected to deliver an average 30 tons per week. Rather fewer horses were employed on shunting work in goods yards, but Gloucestershire was an exception to this because of the number of horses used in the city docks. A comparison of different working lives can be judged from these two fine studies of horse-drawn vehicles. This first is a delivery wagon belonging to J. M. Baglin’s The College Grocery Stores in Cheltenham (GA Ref.No: GPS/78/236) – it would be impossible to overload a wagon like this with items sold by a grocer! However, compare this to quantity of wheat being loaded onto this wagon (GA Ref.No: GPS320/60) and it’s easy to see why some horses lasted longer than others!
Before leaving the subject of horsepower, it is worthy of note that several variations on how horses were attached to wagons also existed. The most common, especially for driving around urban environments was a ‘pair’, with two horses harnessed side by side (three horses in line abreast was a ‘troika’). Also popular was the ‘tandem hitch’ (one horse harnessed in front of another) or a ‘randem’ (three horses in line ahead). The main drawback was that they took up a longer distance than a side-by-side pair and could be much more difficult to manoeuvre. More unusual was the ‘unicorn hitch’ (which comprised of a pair of horses harnessed side by side, with a single horse harnessed in front of them) and the ‘pickaxe hitch’ (with a pair of horse by the front wheels and three lead animals abreast). One other consideration was that heavy loads often had an additional team behind the wagon to slow the vehicle down steep hills. Finally, all the horses were usually matched when drawing wagons, so they would be of similar age, temperament and size.
There were numerous types of horse-lorries. They included carts (two-wheeled) and wagons (four-wheeled) and they all existed with different types of bodies or upperworks. Looking at carts, most were built as box or plank-sided carts, which simply meant that they had sides. A few carts were built as flat-bed (aka dray) carts, but these were rarer. The various types of carts included farm tip cart or dung carts (where the box body could be raised to tip a load out), milk floats, water carts and governess carts. The latter were generally intended to carry people and were also known as tubs or jingles. This photograph shows Nurse Wolfe in Gotherington on her donkey cart c1895 (GA Ref.No: D4057/26) – a typical governess cart.
The rather poor-quality picture here (GA Ref.No: GPS/8/48) was taken in Aldsworth around 1900 and shows a water cart. The need for potable water being delivered around villages was vital in rural communities where mains piped water was rare until well into the 20th century. Water carts generally had large barrel-type tanks laid lengthways or transversely and were fitted with taps or hand-pumps to draw out water. We know little about this trade, but some water carts were run by local wheelwrights and local carriers.
This photograph of Bishops Cleeve (GA Ref.No: GPS/46/1) is believed to have been taken around 1894 and shows a simple box cart. As well as the driver, it has what looks like an upright wooden cask onboard, either a barrel or more probably a churn. If it is a churn, then it probably held milk, but the cart isn’t a purpose-built milk-cart as these had a drop-down step at the back to allow the milk man to hand out milk more easily, which isn’t visible here, so this cart was probably carrying something else.
Wagons were less numerous than carts, simply because they were more expensive to build, more expensive to buy and were heavier, which therefore meant more horsepower was required to work them. The advantage was that they could carry more of a load. In terms of construction, wagons comprised an underframe and body and these could come in many different variations. The most common types were the bow wagon, the box wagon, the dray or flat-bed and the timber-carriage. Another variation was the ‘lock’ – the amount of turn that the fore-wheels could achieve. A quarter-lock wagon had wheels that could only turn as far as the sides of the wagon and therefore they had a large turning circle. When motor tractors began to become common, vast numbers of these wagons were abandoned and left to rot on farms as they were not suitable for working with tractors, which had tighter turning circles. Half-lock wagons had a waisted body that allowed the fore-wheel to turn into the wheel arch, therefore giving a smaller turning circle. Three-quarter lock wagons had smaller fore-wheels that were able to fit underneath the body of the wagon and so produced very tight turning circles, but this was limited by the coupling pole (which linked the fore and back wheels). Full-lock wagons could move their wheels to 90 degrees to the body, but this required a (horizontal) fifth wheel that held the fore-wheel axle and so wasn’t very common.
In Gloucestershire, the most common wagon was the bow wagon, a type that reached its zenith in Gloucestershire and surrounding counties, being described by William Marshall in his 1796 book the ‘Rural Economy of Gloucestershire’ as ‘the best farm wagon I have seen in the kingdom’. This fabulous photograph (GA Ref.No: GPS/86/10) shows a Wiltshire/West Berkshire quarter-lock bow wagon – amusingly outside the Waggon & Horses Inn at Cirencester. The ‘bow’ here comes from the longitudinal ‘out raves’ that curve from the front over the rear wheels and extend out from the wagon’s sides allowing a greater load to be carried. This type of wagon would have been able to have ‘ladders’ attached at the front and back to allow loads of hay and straw to be carried at harvest time.
Taken in Dymock around 1900 (GA Ref.No: GPS/125/109) this horse-drawn wagon is very interesting as it a three-quarter lock box-wagon and in Gloucestershire, these were far less common than the bow-wagons. The wagon body’s sides here are simple straight planks, although it also has flat out-raves attached.
This photograph (GA Ref.No: GPS/69/27) shows the delivery wagon of W. Hall of Kings Stanley around 1900. It is a three-quarter lock wagon but the canvas sides are hiding the body and so it could possible be a box wagon or a flat-bed dray. Ironically the wagon was used to carry petrol, the very thing that would lead to the demise of horse-lorries!
Our last wagon is a more specialist and probably unusual wagon and the photograph comes from the wonderful the Stanley Gardiner collection. It shows a horse drawn fish & chip van in the Cirencester area sometime in the 1920s (GA Ref.No: D9746/1/7/51). There appear to be showman stalls in the background, so it is probably Cirencester carnival. The van is a three-quarter lock box wagon, and the horse has been detached and is presumably happily munching on oats out of shot while tarpaulin sides rest on the roof. Cooking is clearly underway as smoke can be seen emanating from the metal chimney at the rear of the van. It is likely that the friers used a coal-fired range, the main drawback being that it took about an hour for the fire to fully heat the oil, and then it had to be continually stoked to retain a level temperature. Given the apparent small size of the wagon it must have been quite hot inside!
Gloucestershire has a fine wagon heritage – it may have been the home of the bow wagon and the county’s bow wagons certainly helped spread the design elsewhere – and boasts not one but two historic links to the horse-lorry – the Lloyd-Baker Rural Life Collection at Northleach Gaol working (a collection of wagons of national importance but sadly neglected) and also one of the last wagon repair companies; the Gloucester Wheel and Carriage Co of Uley.
Written by John Putley, Community Heritage Officer
Gloucestershire Archives 
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