Felton’s Horse Drawn Carriages 1794

WE HAVE REMOVED SEVERAL LINKS FROM THIS SECTION BECAUSE OF A RUSSIAN CYBER-ATTACK ON THE BRITISH LIBRARY IN LONDON IN OCTOBER 2023 WHICH IMMOBILISED THEIR WEBSITE. WE HOPE THEIR OWN WEBSITE WILL BE RESTORED TO HEALTH SOON SO WE CAN RESTORE OUR LINKS TO THEM (September 2024).
In 1794 William Felton, a coach builder in Leather Lane, London, first published:  “A treatise on carriages; comprehending coaches, chariots, phaetons, curricles, whiskies, &c. : together with their proper harness, in which the fair prices of every article are accurately stated.” An original copy of Felton’s original treatise can be viewed on the internet at the British Library. The tome was written 10 years before Obadiah Elliot patented the elliptical (or leaf) spring in 1804. Felton himself acknowledges that springs, including rudimentary forms of leaf and elbow spring, were in use in carriage building by the end of the eighteenth century. But Elliot’s patent so accelerated development of the leaf spring that it would quickly transform all forms of wheeled transport (and make Mr. Elliot rich).  Felton mainly used leather strapping in a sophisticated series of connections between his carriages and their undrcarriages in order to deaden the inevitable turbulance of a ride in the days when highways were niether tarmaced nor macadamed. Such improvements to road surfaces (especially in the capital and other great urban centres) had enabled Carriages to begin to displace the clumsy heavy cart vehicles of earlier days as surfaces improved by the time of Felton. The Prince Regent led the fashion for driving. Horse and carriage became prized possessions instead of just conveyances: Town Coaches and Chariots for formal occasions; Landaus and Sociables for less formal occasions; owner-driven carriages and Phaetons for driving.  Carriages were exported to Europe, the West Indies and America.  Both main types had a high undercarriage:  the “perch” with a straight or slightly curved wooden beam joining the axles and the “crane-neck”, with two curved iron beams under which the front wheels could turn. Here are 12 of Felton’s carriages reconstructed in rich lithograpy, many containing gold and silver.

These images are  accurate copies of the original drawings by Felton: compare this drawing of a Town Coach from the British Library edition with the town coach print, the first in our collection. 
The British Library adds: Jane Austen often uses carriages to convey information about the status and aspirations of her characters. Different kinds of carriage would have had particular connotations for readers of the time, which we cannot understand so easily today. In Emma, for example, Mrs Elton repeatedly refers to her sister and brother’s barouche-landau, which ‘holds four perfectly’ (Emma, II. xiv). A barouche-landau was an expensive four-wheeled carriage drawn by two horses, with two collapsible hoods – one for the front-facing passengers and one for the rear-facing passengers. It was a smaller version of a landau (Plate XXIV). Mrs Elton talks repeatedly about the barouche-landau in order to impress upon her neighbours how wealthy her family is.
A gig was a lighter, cheaper carriage with only two wheels, drawn by a single horse; a curricle was similar, but drawn by two horses instead of one. Both gigs and curricles were also known as chaises. They were suitable for men who wished to drive themselves, and, because of their lightness, they could travel very fast. Frank Churchill in Emma and John Thorpe in Northanger Abbey both drive two-wheeled chaises – a sign of their high spirits and impetuous natures. Mr Collins in Pride and Prejudice also owns a gig, though this probably reflects his inability to afford a larger, grander carriage, rather than a love