Driving, Horsedrawn

A carriage is a wheeled vehicle for people, usually horse-drawn. It is especially designed for private passenger use and for comfort or elegance, though some are also used to transport goods. It may be light, smart and fast or heavy, large and comfortable. more...

Home
Airsoft
Archery
Backyard Games
Baseball & Softball
Basketball
Bowling
Camping & Hiking
Cheerleading
Climbing & Caving
Cricket
Curling
Cycling
Disc Golf
Equestrian
Books & Video
Clothing, Boots &...
Driving, Horsedrawn
Horse Trailers & Accessories
Novelties & Gifts
Other
Rodeo
Stable, Care & Grooming
Tack-Australian
Tack-Endurance
Tack-English
Tack-Halters & Leads
Tack-Western
Training Aids
Fencing
Field Hockey
Fishing
Football
Geocaching
Go-Karts (Recreational)
Golf
Gymnastics
Hang Gliding & Paragliding
Hunting
Ice & Roller Hockey
Inline & Roller Skating
Lacrosse
Other
Paintball
Paragliding
Rugby
Scooters
Skateboarding
Sky Diving
Soccer
Track & Field
Triathlon
Volleyball
Wrestling

Carriages normally have suspension using leaf springs, elliptical springs (in the 19th century) or leather strapping. A public passenger vehicle would not usually be called a carriage – terms for these include stagecoach, charabanc and omnibus.

The word carriage (abbreviated carr or cge) is from Old Northern French cariage, to carry in a vehicle. The word car, then meaning a kind of two-wheeled cart for goods, also came from Old Northern French about the beginning of the 14th century; it was also used for railway carriages, and was extended to cover automobile around the end of the nineteenth century, when early models were called horseless carriages.

A carriage is sometimes called a team, as in "horse and team". A carriage with its horse is a rig. An elegant horse-drawn carriage with its retinue of servants is an equipage. A carriage together with the horses, harness and attendants is a turnout or setout. A procession of carriages is a cavalcade.

History of carriages

Some horsecarts found in Celtic graves show hints that their platform was suspended in a frame, elastically. First century BCE Romans used sprung wagons for overland journeys. With the decline of the these civilizations these techniques almost disappeared.

In the Middle Ages all travellers who were not walking rode, save the elderly and the infirm. A trip in an unsprung cart over unpaved roads was not lightly undertaken. Closed carriages began to be more widely used by the upper classes in the 16th century. In 1601 a short-lived law was passed in England banning the use of carriages by men, it being considered effeminate. Better sprung vehicles were developed in the 17th century. New lighter and more fashionably varied conveyances, with fanciful new names, began to compete with one another from the mid-18th century. Coachbuilders cooperated with carvers, gilders, painters, lacquerworkers, glazers and upholsterers to produce not just the family's state coach for weddings and funerals but light, smart fast comfortable vehicles for pleasure riding and display.

In British and French coaches, the coachman drove from a raised coachbox at the front. In Spain the driver continued to ride one of the horses, as also in the 1939 state visit procession in Canada.

Read more at Wikipedia.org