How were horses loaded?

[Compound2632]

As to horse fares, as opposed to horse fairs, rather frustratingly my 1903 Midland Railway timetable book reprint doesn't give horse rates but quotes everything else travelling by horsebox in units of the horse rate! So the horse rate, like the basic first and third class rates per mile, must have been so well-known as not to be worth mentioning. However, there was a minimum charge of 5/- per horse and 7/6 per horsebox, the latter applying even to the reduced fares charged to hunting gentlemen travelling with their horses out and back on the same day. Elephants in horseboxes were charged according to the number of stalls occupied but in cattle trucks or covered carriage trucks, 9d or 1/- per mile respectively.

 

On 22 December 1883, the Duke of Devonshire despatched four private carriages in covered carriage trucks, nineteen horses, and three dogs from Rowsley to Cark (via Carnforth) in preparation for spending Christmas at Holker Hall (his Lake District holiday cottage). The horses were the most expensive part of the £43/14/6 bill, at 33/- each. Carnforth was at milepost 259 from St Pancras and Rowsley at 149 but what was the route used for charging, or actually taken - via Ambergate and Leeds, or via Manchester and the L&Y? If the chargeable distance was 132 miles, that would be 3d per mile per horse, i.e. twice the first class passenger rate.

Edited April 12, 2021 by Compound2632
Typo corrected

[Oldddudders]

Horses do not like having a hollow feel or sound to what they are standing or walking upon. So getting them to go up a simple ramp can be a trial, unconnected with their willingness to stand in the box or van to which the ramp leads. Trying to tug them can be pointless as they have 4-leg drive, but a rope held across their back-end and pulled can be more productive. 

[Andy Hayter]

1 hour ago, phil_sutters said:

When I said fares I meant fares - charges for carrying horses.

Apologies Phil.  I assumed it was a typo - never assume, it makes and ASS out of U and ME

[Nearholmer]

1 hour ago, fezza said:

There was a horse landing siding on the WCML at Nuneaton (Down side) until the recent modernisation in the 2000s. In later years it was used for engineering trains 

 

Besides horse racing places, there seem to have been horse landings at a selection of to me apparently random places - the first time I came across one was at Llandudno Junction, in the early 1970s, which was obvious because it still had its own neat LNWR-type sign, rather like that at a "halt", proclaiming it to be "Horse Landing Platform".

 

Thinking about it, neither Nuneaton or Llandudno Junction are places that I'd instantly associated with horses. Was it something to do with them having no other platform with direct access to the street?

[Compound2632]

14 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Thinking about it, neither Nuneaton or Llandudno Junction are places that I'd instantly associated with horses. Was it something to do with them having no other platform with direct access to the street?

 

I'm fairly sure that a horsebox would usually be shunted off the train into the horse dock for loading or unloading. Attempting to en- or de-train a horse at a passenger platform when the engine might blow off at any moment sounds unwise.

 

I see no reason why Nuneaton should generate less horse traffic than any other country town. Looking through the RCH Handbook of Railway Stations (I have a reprint of the 1904 edition) I think one is hard pressed to find an example of a passenger station that was not equipped for handling 'horse boxes and prize cattle vans' along with 'carriages by passenger train' other than purely suburban stations. 

[Steamport Southport]

I think this has been posted before.

 

 

 

[Nearholmer]

15 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

I'm fairly sure that a horsebox would usually be shunted off the train into the horse dock for loading or unloading. Attempting to en- or de-train a horse at a passenger platform when the engine might blow off at any moment sounds unwise.

 

Mostly, yes, but at most places the "dock" was at the back of the platform near the main street access, and didn't merit its own signage. I think that at LJ, and maybe Nuneaton too, all the passenger platforms were "islands", thereby necessitating an entirely separate structure for the convenience of equines, who might otherwise cause chaos on the stairs .......... was what I was trying to say.

[Steamport Southport]

They just walk on in Wales, after buying a ticket obviously...

 

 

 

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-13437279

[fezza]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

 

I'm fairly sure that a horsebox would usually be shunted off the train into the horse dock for loading or unloading. Attempting to en- or de-train a horse at a passenger platform when the engine might blow off at any moment sounds unwise.

 

I see no reason why Nuneaton should generate less horse traffic than any other country town. Looking through the RCH Handbook of Railway Stations (I have a reprint of the 1904 edition) I think one is hard pressed to find an example of a passenger station that was not equipped for handling 'horse boxes and prize cattle vans' along with 'carriages by passenger train' other than purely suburban stations. 

 

Nuneaton was close to Atherstone hunting country - an important source of high value horse traffic. Riders and horses came from outside the area for the sport and social life. 

[Guy Rixon]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

 

I'm fairly sure that a horsebox would usually be shunted off the train into the horse dock for loading or unloading. Attempting to en- or de-train a horse at a passenger platform when the engine might blow off at any moment sounds unwise.

 

I see no reason why Nuneaton should generate less horse traffic than any other country town. Looking through the RCH Handbook of Railway Stations (I have a reprint of the 1904 edition) I think one is hard pressed to find an example of a passenger station that was not equipped for handling 'horse boxes and prize cattle vans' along with 'carriages by passenger train' other than purely suburban stations. 

More importantly, the horse may kick if it objects to the box or to the ramp, and the company does not want passengers kicked straight through the booking office into the county court.

[Guy Rixon]

Concerning loading points for animals, there were established droving routes for stock before the railways came, and some of these were quite long IIRC. Is it possible that animals were loaded at out-of-the-way places that happened to be where a droving route met a railway?

 

I have no idea whether horses were led (presumably not driven) to market en masse by their breeders.

[doilum]

2 hours ago, Oldddudders said:

Horses do not like having a hollow feel or sound to what they are standing or walking upon. So getting them to go up a simple ramp can be a trial, unconnected with their willingness to stand in the box or van to which the ramp leads. Trying to tug them can be pointless as they have 4-leg drive, but a rope held across their back-end and pulled can be more productive. 

Hence the need for a full three lane closure of the motorway if a horsebox breaks down.

[Compound2632]

5 minutes ago, Guy Rixon said:

Concerning loading points for animals, there were established droving routes for stock before the railways came, and some of these were quite long IIRC. Is it possible that animals were loaded at out-of-the-way places that happened to be where a droving route met a railway?

 

Probably not, or at least not for long, or maybe only in the Highlands of Scotland. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drovers'_road#Decline_of_droving.

[Andy Hayter]

I rather suspect that there was a lot more horse transport than we are perhaps imagining.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_horse_in_Britain

 

says that around 1900 there were 3.5million horses in the UK of which 1million were working horses.

 

whereas government statistics show only around 7million cattle at the same time.

Sorry I cannot give a link but a search for sn03339.pdf and follow the link for Agriculture: Historical Statistics will get you there.  

 

So for every 2 cows there was a horse.   That's a lot of horses and we can be sure they would not always be where they were needed.

[Compound2632]

15 minutes ago, Andy Hayter said:

I rather suspect that there was a lot more horse transport than we are perhaps imagining.

 

At the end of 1905, the Midland had 483 horse boxes and 709 carriage trucks (open and covered) out of a total carriage stock of 6,243 vehicles. 

[Michael Hodgson]

3 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

all the passenger platforms were "islands", thereby necessitating an entirely separate structure for the convenience of equines, who might otherwise cause chaos on the stairs .......... was what I was trying to say.

Somebody mentioned the Quorn earlier - I immediately had visions of the upper classes trying to get their prized horses up those stairs to the street at Quorn & Woodhouse.   

[Rivercider]

1 hour ago, Andy Hayter said:

I rather suspect that there was a lot more horse transport than we are perhaps imagining.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_horse_in_Britain

 

says that around 1900 there were 3.5million horses in the UK of which 1million were working horses.

 

whereas government statistics show only around 7million cattle at the same time.

Sorry I cannot give a link but a search for sn03339.pdf and follow the link for Agriculture: Historical Statistics will get you there.  

 

So for every 2 cows there was a horse.   That's a lot of horses and we can be sure they would not always be where they were needed.

I don't know how long the working life of a horse is, but I would imagine once bought and trained  a horse would be kept for most of its life. Whereas cattle would get moved, and slaughtered, much sooner.

 

I just looked in a random edition of my Middleton Press collection for traffic figures.

 

In 1928 here are figures for two random stations, Crediton and Umberleigh.

 

Crediton        - horses forwarded 37,  livestock trucks forwarded 409, livestock trucks received 207.

Umberleigh  - horses forwarded  20,  livestock trucks forwarded 162, livestock trucks received 13.

 

cheers

[Oldddudders]

2 hours ago, doilum said:

Hence the need for a full three lane closure of the motorway if a horsebox breaks down.

As happened the other day, I recall. Oddly my late first wife, towing our Welsh x thoroughbred in our Sinclair trailer, had a breakdown on the M25 about 30 years ago, when the alternator on the Landy failed. The police duly appeared to check she was ok while awaiting the AA - and offered to stop the traffic if the horse became upset!

[Compound2632]

10 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

Somebody mentioned the Quorn earlier - I immediately had visions of the upper classes trying to get their prized horses up those stairs to the street at Quorn & Woodhouse.   

 

In the RCH Handbook, Quorn is listed as having the full range of facilities (apart from a lack of goods yard crane) but looking at the 25" map (1902 revision) my guess is that horse and carriage landing was done at the cattle dock - so a bit of a walk round for the hunting gentlemen to collect their steeds. 

 

Although The Quorn's kennels were in Quorn until they moved to Seagrave in 1905, I don't know that the meets would necessarily have been in Quorn, given the wide area hunted over. Seagrave was a place rather remote from the railway, a couple of miles from Sileby on the Midland Counties line; before the arrival of the Central, Quorn was served by the next station to the north, Barrow on Soar. Before the Central muscled in, the Midland would have had a near-monopoly of the hunting traffic associated with Quorn meets, although the LNWR may have got a look in for some parts of Leicestershire; the Midland's stations were generally rather more lavishly equipped than the rather basic facilities provided by the Central.

 

I should say I'm not a hunting gentleman myself, I just read Wikipedia. 

[Compound2632]

While on the hunting theme, several railways had hounds van for conveying the pack fro kennels to meet. The Midland built three in 1894, replacing three old ones [Midland Railway Study Centre Item 64204] with a 5'6" doorway with drop flap to make a ramp and a kennelmen's compartment. Here's an example of a Great Western one, converted from a centre-luggage third, diagram S5 (Penrhos lists just this one conversion). One compartment has been retained for the kennelmen. This photo* shows that hounds were easy to unload; I suspect it may have been harder to get them all in though I suppose intelligent dogs would put two and two together and realise that some doggish fun was in the offing.

 

*The horsebox next along the dock seems to be of antique design with a platform (perhaps formerly a luggage boot) at the nearer end. 

 

Back to Rowsley, a station with more than the average number of dukes among its regular users: on 4 March 1886, the Duke of Rutland sent 43 dogs to Nottingham, at a cost of 1/- per dog. Per the 1903 timetable book "Dogs conveyed in horseboxes or other special vehicles are charged at the dog rate, minimum charge as for one horse". Dog rates are given; 1/- being the rate for a journey of 30 to 40 miles. But I wonder how many dogs could be got into one horse box or hound van?

Edited April 12, 2021 by Compound2632

[fezza]

It is worth saying hunts cover very large areas and meet at different locations within the area. The Quorn hunters might use any larger station in North Leicestershire depending on the meet point or what local stable they might be being liveried at. 

[Nearholmer]

I briefly mentioned "hunt races" earlier, and this link gives some idea of the relationship (close) between hunts and races, at least in Sussex. http://www.greyhoundderby.com/Eridge Hunt Racecourse.html

 

There were still "hunt races" at Eridge in the early-1960s (I used to go to get taken to them, and to hunt meetings, by a very old lady from a farming family who was a sort of "third granny"), and may still be, but what status they have in terms of National Hunt Racing is well beyond my ken.

 

This is the sort of "farmer's son on their fastest horse" racing that generated local horse-box traffic, and the horses would have been pretty sturdy animals, especially given that the clay ground in the district makes the going either lead-heavy, or ankle-breaking hard, with not much in between.

[fezza]

Yes, hunt races or point to points still exist today. I suspect a lot of this traffic disappeared in the late 1950s. A lot of participants tended to be. from local hunts so travel distances were fairly short. Sometimes in the past there was only one Open race for those from any hunt or region. 

[fezza]

55 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

It was sufficiently worth saying, that I did so:

 

 

Sorry Compound2632 I was scrolling on my phone and missed your post. 

[Ian Smeeton]

Britain from above has this photo:

 

https://www.britainfromabove.org.uk/en/image/EAW049202

 

of Melton Mowbray showing no less than 6 horse boxes at the dock.

 

I had the pleasure of visiting the 'Box today as part of work.

 

Only a couple of cattle ens, but Melton Market was adjacent to the now closed Melton North station, where there were much more extensive cattle facilities. See here: https://www.britainfromabove.org.uk/en/image/EPW050263

 

Regards

 

Ian