Cliffe`s wheelwrights, cart and wagon makers

King’s Cliffe
wheel-wrights, cartand wagon-makers
With acknowledgment to Mrs June Basden for information taken from her thesis
‘The industries of King’s Cliffe in the late 1800s and early 1900s’, written in 1972.
Stokes and Son
Fred Stokes established the Park Street Carriage Works in 1840. Their premises consisted
of a large main workshop, timber store and smaller workshops for carpenter, joiner,
blacksmith, coach painter and upholsterer. The buildings were on either side of a yard with
gates on to Park Street, with a house to the left of the entrance (now number 42) and a
cottage to the right, since demolished.
Stokes made carriages, gigs, traps and flies for the local gentry, vans and traps for
tradesmen, and undertook general wheelwrighting. An article from 1910 in the Peterborough
Advertiser describes Stokes as having been famous for making great vans for Fair people,
both living quarters and animal ‘dens’ for travelling menageries, many of these being richly
decorated. Trade was at its height in the 1860s and 1870s, when the firm employed as
many as 30 men.
In the 1880s, the firm exhibited at the Peterborough Agricultural Show and their
advertisements in the show catalogue were illustrated with examples of their pleasure,
agricultural and trade vehicles.
Carriages were upholstered in leather or moquette, stuffed with horse hair. Four coats of
paint were applied to the carriages, each one being rubbed down with pumice before the next
coat was put on and the final finish of copal varnish applied. The lead paints for each job
were mixed in a hand-operated mill. As well as ‘lining out’ the carriages, special decorations
such as crests or monograms were painted in different colours according to the customer’s
requirements. Axles for the carriages, as well as the horsehair and moquette, were supplied
by Gadsons of London. Leather for the upholstery and harness was purchased from
Crawleys of Peterborough.
By 1885, Stokes and Son had moved into making more functional vehicles - farm carts,
wagons and wains - as well as carriages and vans. By 1890, their advertisements mention
only agricultural and trade vehicles. They also made and repaired the druggs used by the
timber hauliers of King’s Cliffe.
Though still trading under the name of Stokes and Son, by 1900 the firm had been taken over
by George Miles, the timber merchant, through the marriage of his daughter, Agnes, to Fred
Stokes’ son, Charles. Fred Portess was employed as manager and foreman of the works.
A seven year apprenticeship had to be served before a man was considered a skilled
tradesman.
This billhead from 1889 refers
to apprenticeship
arrangements:
acknowledging ‘receipt of a
cheque for £7 11s 0d
apprenticeship money for
Payne’ and promising the
drawing up of Indentures ‘for
the lad Taylor’, if he suited.
A skilled tradesman was entitled to 15 shillings (75p) per week rising to 18 shillings (90p)
after 5 years’ service. It was unusual for an employee to earn over £1 per week, and this
would only be achieved after long and faithful service with the firm.
The men’s working hours were from 6am to 6pm, with half an hour break for breakfast at 8am
and one hour for dinner at 1pm. On Saturdays, work finished at 1pm.
In 1903, employees included Harry Harker, Carpenter; J T Dixon, Carpenter; Arthur Robins,
Blacksmith; J Taylor, blacksmith and wheelwright; and three apprentices whose names we
do not know. (Mr Taylor and the apprentices travelled to work each day by train from
Nassington). Arthur Robins worked for the firm for 60 years, retiring at the age of 80.
Stokes’ employees standing with a timber drugg made by them in
1903
The firm had to adapt to changes in demand, as can be seen in their advertisement in
Bennett’s Business Directory of 1906 which described their business as ‘General Builders
and Contractors, House Decorators and Undertakers’ with ‘Wheelwrights, wagon and cart
builders’ in smaller print. ‘Undertaking’ included coffin making, generally in oak.
After George Miles’ death at the end of 1912, Fred Portess bought the Stokes premises and
house and the business then traded under his name. He continued to run the business until
his death in the 1950s. His son, Alwyn, died relatively young and the firm closed in the late
1960s.
A ‘Carriage Van’ in Stokes’ yard, with Fred
Portess, his daughters and employees, c1910.
J & R Chapman
Joseph and Robert Chapman moved their well-established cart and wagon building business
to King’s Cliffe from Apethorpe in 1896. They took over a disused maltings building beside
the Willow Brook at the bottom of Bridge Street (now Bridge House). The workshops, round
three sides of a square yard, consisted of the main workshop, wheelwright’s and blacksmith’s
shops, paint shop, shoeing shed and stable.
Joseph Chapman ran the business side of the firm. Robert Chapman was in charge of the
blacksmith’s shop. Joseph went to Peterborough cattle market on Wednesdays and
Saturdays and to Stamford market on Fridays to get orders and purchase materials. Many
orders came by post, as the firm was well-known over a wide area. They made drays for
breweries as far away as Bury St Edmunds, and brick carts for the Fletton brickyards.
A cart made for JJ Brett & Son at J R Chapman & Sons’ Bridge Street Works,
King’s Cliffe. Photo dated 1897.
A finished wagon from Chapmans’ works cost £30 (single-shafted) and £40 (double-shafted,
ie for 2 horses). A farm cart cost £12.
The employees of Chapmans’ had mostly joined as apprentices in Apethorpe, where the
Earls of Westmoreland offered a grant of £25 a year for any lad in the village wishing to learn
a trade. When the business transferred to King’s Cliffe, the employees stayed on. They
were:
> John Paine (Morehay Lawn) Chief Wheelwright a nephew of Chapmans, he was with the
firm for 52 years, starting as a lad of 14 in 1877.
> Robert Pain (Apethorpe) Wheelwright. After 7 years apprenticeship, he earned 18
shillings a week as a skilled man, rising to £1.
> George Weatherington Sawyer, woodworker and wheelwright.
> Albert Hunt (Apethorpe) Wheelwright, though chiefly employed in making bodies and
shafts for wagons and carts.
> Joseph Beasley (King’s Cliffe) Blacksmith and shoeing smith
> William Dixon (King’s Cliffe) Shoeing smith and general iron work (gave up because of ill
health)
> Samuel Blake (King’s Cliffe) took over from William Dixon
> Daniel Taylor (Apethorpe)
Odd job man – cleaning down repair jobs, grinding paint,
rough painting, helping in the saw pit, preparing the furnace and operating the blacksmith’s
bellows.
The men from Apethorpe walked to work, 2 miles each way, occasionally getting a lift in the
horse-drawn trap or luggage cart which came to King’s Cliffe station twice a day from
Apethorpe Hall. John Paine lived at Morehay Lawn: he had a lonely 3 mile walk each way,
through Tomblin Wood.
Miss Ida Chapman wrote about the demise of her family’s business:
“During 1913, the country at large became unsettled and finally the Great War
broke out in August 1914. this brought great upheaval everywhere and our
business began to go into decline. The Boss’s (Joseph Chapman’s) two sons,
Harry and Bert, who worked in the firm went away to the war and two of the
remaining men went off to better jobs in town working on munitions. Farmers
lost their men to the army; the wheelwright’s work gradually drifted away.
The Boss’s elder son (Harry) was a skilled workman, able to make any part of a
wagon or cart; the second son(Bert) was an accomplished sign-writer and
painter. These two were very much missed in the business. (Both men were
wounded in the war – Harry was gassed and Bert lost an arm.)
The Chapman brothers (Joseph and Robert) were getting old, work was falling
away and, even though the elder son was eventually released from the Army on
account of his craftsmanship, so vital for the farming community, business never
really recovered. John Paine had been with the firm for 52 years when his health
broke down about this time; he was obliged to put his tools aside and retire.”
Joseph Chapman himself died in September 1922 at the age of 75.
Long after the Bridge Street works
closed, the works lathe remained
there. This photograph was taken
in 1972.
Wagons and carts
Carts were two-wheeled vehicles, easy to manoeuvre and used for lighter work than the
sturdier four-wheeled wagon.
Wagon design varied from one part of the country to another. The style common in north
Northamptonshire, is described in the reference books as either a ‘Northampton’ or a
‘Rutland’ wagon! This was of medium size overall, with a straight bed and deep body, with
two mid-rails running along its sides. The front-board would often be highly decorated.
Hand-operated wheelwright’s lathe similar to that used in Chapmans’
works (from ‘The English Farm Wagon’ by J Geraint Jenkins
A Northamptonshire-style farm wagon used at King’s Cliffe in the 1930s.
Originally, all the timber components for a wagon or cart would have been hand-sawn in the
cartwright’s yard, but when Miles’ timber yard installed its steam-driven saw-mill, time and
labour was saved by buying from them made-to-measure planks, shafts, spokes and felloes,
and short lengths of round wood ready for turning into hubs.
The cartwright still needed a saw-pit on site to cut non-standard components using ‘patterns’
laid onto the planks.
The body of the wagon and the shafts were fastened together with nails, screws and bolts.
The axles were embedded in timber under the body, and after the wheels had been fitted,
brass hub caps were screwed on to metal arms inside the hub – first being well-oiled to allow
the wheel to rotate freely. The shafts were shaped to fit the body of the horse and iron hooks
and chains fixed, ready for the harness.
The wagon body was removed on spare wheels to the paint shop for the first coat of grey
paint. All cracks were puttied and made smooth before the top coats of paint were applied.
Chapman wagons and carts were often painted in ochre red or scarlet, a colour known as
‘Farmer’s Glory’. ‘Lining out’ and sign-writing decoration would be painted on before the final
finish of varnish. Lettering and lining out required a steady hand and a good eye. The effect
would be spoiled if the paintbrush were not loaded with enough paint to finish a stroke.