[OT} Stables

Stables were mentioned recently. We have stables in the garden, and I have never really given much thought to how the buildings would have been used 100+ years ago.

There are two, one probably 15 by 20 feet, the other 10 by 30 feet. The second had two doors in one long side. Not sure about the first, as it has probably been hacked over the years.

What were the likely original uses? Tack room, feed store, cart lodge and stable? Anything else? Likely configuration? Horse and cart in the larger building with tack room and feed store in the second, or would food be in the stable part? Neither building seems tall enough for a hay loft - the larger building has not had a roof for years, and the smaller roof space would not be large enough to use.

Reply to
News
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In message , News writes

The larger building does sound like some sort of cart/carriage store.

Any indication of stable use from the other building?

If it's any help, we have old stables/carriage store next to our house (100 - 150 yrs old?).

What is now the garage must have been the carriage store. The ceiling and main doorway are higher than you would have in a modern garage

Above that is what was the hayloft.

Behind this building accessed from the drive and the garden is the old stable. One of the stable doors is still there, some stabley bits inside (hayrack, mounts for the water trough, an old bridle hanging up, we wonder how old that is :-) ) the floor is cobbled, slopes down to a central offset drainage channel .

Reply to
Chris French

In message , News writes

History?

Some of my farm buildings are Victorian and show signs of use as stables.

The floors were echelon pattern yellow brick loose laid on edge over chalk. The entrance doors: twin stable doors, are wide 1.15m. Inside there are signs of separate stalls with a *hook and eye* system allowing the horse some freedom while still secure. (rope from collar through eye to weight).

The *carriage house* had twin, full height timber doors and similar brick flooring. At some time, a hay loft and Bothy seem to have been added as the floor beams are clearly overlarge and do not coincide with the main structural supports.

The structure is common to Herts. and Essex, timber frame with feather edge cladding over 9" soft red brick foundation dwarf walls, slate roof.

Reply to
Tim Lamb

Stables would normally have had a pitched stone or brick floor, sloping towards a gutter. A hay loft need not have had high side walls, but could have been mainly in the roof space. In that case, there should be signs of a floor a foot or two below the top of the walls. Hay lofts served two purposes, they not only held the hay, but they also insulated stables for working horses, which would be sweating heavily by the end of the day.

If I had to guess, I would suggest that the long building was a working horse stable. The horses would be tethered against mangers and hay racks along the long wall. They might or might not have been separated by wooden stall walls. The harness for each horse being hung opposite them on the wall with the doors.

The squarer building could have been a riding horse stable. Riding horses were often put into loose boxes, which gave them more room. There would be a feed bin and a cupboard for the tack. Most farms would have both working and riding horses and the stables were usually adjacent.

Reply to
Nightjar

All of the answers to this question serve as a stark illustration of how things change. Even 100 years ago, there was an entire industry centred around horses. From breeders, trainers, the infrastructure to buy/sell horses, plus the ancillary industries like smithies, saddlers. Then the associated industries to make and maintain carriages.

All gone. Forever. Certainly there are remnants, but when you think of how universal horses were 100 years ago.

I find it sobering - how technology shapes society.

Reply to
Jethro_uk

In message , Jethro_uk writes

The last working horse left this farm around 1955 and I guess the first tractor arrived with the War-Ag Committee in 1941.

Initially horse drawn tackle was converted to being drawn by tractors but there remained some jobs best done by horses (beet/potato ridging here). Tractor mounted tackle proliferated after the Ferguson 3 point linkage and power take off was adopted.

Yes. Eventually we must be employed as consumers:-) Somebody will remind me where this came from:-)

Reply to
Tim Lamb

In message , Tim Lamb writes

Thanks for all the comments. Not a farm. This is an ordinary domestic house in the centre of a Scottish village. The front of the house faces SW, towards the village green/main road. A further road runs behind the rear garden, with access. House built 1880-ish, and the road behind could easily have just been a track then, purely for rear access to the houses facing the main road. The houses the other side of the rear road are more recent.

Just 'borrowed' an image from the local authority :

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Our house is surrounded by roads on three sides. The main road is SW, with a side road (NW) and rear road (NE). The stables are not quite to scale on the plan- A is deeper than B. B, however, is shorter than as built. Access was between A and B at x, but that was blocked off years ago. Access is now at y, but B used to run right into that corner.

This is B :

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Easy to see that there were two doors, one of which is now a window. The roof to the left seems original. That to the right has been truncated. See :

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That is entrance y on the plan. Looks as though one end of building B was demolished - it almost certainly ran right into that corner up until about 30 years ago.

Building B has a concrete floor and the walls have been rendered with concrete - again, probably 30 years ago. No evidence of what was once there.

Building A is a roofless shell [1]. Part hidden by oil tanks, greenhouse and ivy. Very little evidence of original floor or internal layout. There are two windows in the long side, looking into the garden, and a single door, much like the door in Building B, in the short side facing (bricked up) entrance x.

[1] About 20 years ago, slates started to slip of off the roof of Building A, onto the pavement of the road at the rear. Local Authority wrote to then owner, demanding action. Letter ignored. Contractor hired by LA turned up one day and removed complete roof, which still sits inside the building. Piles of broken slates and beams full of worm holes. LA, of course, sent the bill to the owner.
Reply to
News
[37 lines snipped]

Except it isn't.

From

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- The estimated GB horse population, including both private and professional ownership, is just below one million horses (988,000)

- The estimated cost of the upkeep of horses is £2.8 billion (£3,105 per horse)

- Other indirect consumer expenditure associated with equestrian activity is estimated at £557 million per year.

Reply to
Huge

don't know about the situation in Scotland, but in England the refusal to pay, ends up on the deeds of the property so that it will be paid from the proceeds of a sale. Presumably with interest.

Reply to
charles

Interesting. More to the point would be usage. How many working horses today, rather than leisure, defining leisure as anything from serious horse racing to the local show jumping weekends, pony trekking etc?

UK horse population :

1917 2.1m 1924 1.8m 1934 1.2m 2015 0.9m

What we don't know is whether there was a further decline then increase

1934 - today, or a gradual decline since 1934. Probably the former?
Reply to
News

In message , News writes

Farms can easily be found in village high streets. Usually with a much greater range of yard and outbuildings than yours.

Herts. County Council recently published the 1841 tithe map for my village. Until 1919 the farmhouse and outbuildings associated with roughly half the land I farm was in the centre of the village. The remainder was rented by someone living in the high street. My house was constructed as a pair of *gravel cottages* roughly 1/2 mile from the centre and closer to where gravel was being extracted.

Reply to
Tim Lamb

*Real* working horses? None. There are people who run them (my niece is one) but the point is to attract tourists, not plough fields, even though fields get ploughed.
Reply to
Huge

I think it was the little grey Fergie in the 1950's and 60's which finally put paid to working horses on small farms in the UK.

I can just remember coal deliveries by horse in outer London in the

50's, and the rag and bone man perhaps until 1960. I was interested to see authentic ploughing by Oxen in the Bordeaux region well into the 70's.

I think there has been a reasonably steady increase in "pleasure" horses from the 1970's.

Reply to
newshound

On 19/05/2015 10:51, News wrote: ...

I don't know the practice in Scotland, but, in England, that is a classic layout for a farm in a planned village c 1300 AD. As they used a common field system, the farm buildings were gathered around the village green.

...

Looks like that was once two loose boxes, each with its own door.

Reply to
Nightjar

ISTR someone runs a few somewhere used in forestry, where it's difficult for machines to extract the trees.

Reply to
Chris French

Agreed - horses such as that were my first thought, but in reality, although they work, they are pets and/or tourist attractions.

Police horses are proper working horses. Not sure about military - presumably they are purely ceremonial these days.

Reply to
News

There's a lady who makes a living at it (Forest of Dean?) although I think a proportion of her clients are rock stars, bankers, and the like. She also does training, and demos at county shows.

Reply to
newshound

Good point.

Reply to
Huge

... and the only known species of animal to have the female sexual organs half way along the backbone?

Reply to
gareth

Not a horse rider, then. Actually, you sit close to the shoulders.

Reply to
newshound

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