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Ancient
traffic
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The leading pony of
a pack train usually had a distinctive
bell attached to a collar to warn other
trains to wait in passing places, and
to advertise their coming to customers
because they had goods to sell or trade.
" ...
A pack train was made up of some twelve
to thirty ponies moving single file behind
a bell mare, which had a set of bells
in the middle of her collar and three
small special bells at the side. Tradition
has it that this was for warning of their
approach on narrow roads when passing
would be difficult. Whether anyone still
has a set of these
bells
I do not know, but most of the packhorse bells
were smelted down when the traffic ceased."
(Lionel
Edwards, 1953)
It
is said that it was a fine sight
to see many pack trains converging
through the day on a fair such as
Brough Hill.
Each
pack train was made up of ponies
who knew the route and worked nose
to tail along it. Depending on the
weight of traffic, there were either
narrow "trods" or wider
roads known as "Leadgates", "Rushways" and "Saltways". |
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The
collar illustrated here survived. It is
kept at Kendal
Museum and consists of a leather
body carrying the main bell, which
rings out clearly, and four big "rumble" bells
with a loose piece of metal inside
which make a continuous "chuckle" as
the pony moves. The mural is in the
Fell Pony Museum and was painted in
1983. |
Roads remained relatively
good despite a lack of foundations, until there
was a commercial expansion in the
mid
17th
century,
when the
pressure of
hooves and wheels caused them to become wet
and potholed in winter, and dusty and rutted
in summer. For
instance, three travellers between Penrith
and Kendal in 1634 remarked that they went:
'through such ways as we
hope we never shall again, being no other
but climbing and stony, nothing but bogs
and myres, or the tops of those high hills
so we were enforced to keep to these narrow,
loose, stony, base ways, though never so troublesome
and dangerous... on we went for Kendal, desiring
much to be released of those difficult
and dangerous ways, which for the space of
eight miles travelling
a slow marching pace we passed over nothing
but a most confused mixture of rocks and
bogs.' (Williams,
citing Jones, 1959)
Conditions remained poor
until the 18th Century when a further expansion
of trade
in Cumberland demanded concerted effort in
road building.
Packways and Drove Roads
 Packways
and drove roads avoided the new turnpike
routes
wherever possible. The land beside
the turnpikes was rapidly becoming enclosed
by stone walls. The
walls made it
inconvenient to drove cattle, who needed
space to graze and also to rest to chew
the cud. By keeping off the turnpikes, the
drovers could keep out of the way of faster
coach
and
wagon
traffic,
avoid
paying tolls, and allow their animals
to graze wherever it was handy. Some
of the packways coincided with the drove roads;
others, like the stretch in the pictures left
and below, were almost exclusively pack roads.
Unfortunately,
because they were handy, and free, the packways
and drove roads of the late 16th C were also
much used by highwaymen, who could thus get
from
one section to another of
the richer turnpike routes without being apprehended!
The
Cumbrian drove-road between Scotland and
the towns of North West of England was
known
as the "Galloway Gate" - "gate" or "gait" here
being the Norse word for a way along which
people, goods and animals "ga".
The same name is also used for a stretch
of packway above Dent, near Sedbergh in
the Yorkshire Dales. The
Grayrigg Hause section of the Galloway
Gate is still known as "The Scotch
Road". The name
Galloway
could also easily refer to the type of ponies and
cattle as much as to the destination of the road.
 Left:
Fell Ponies
on
the open fell between Greenholme and Shap. The
line of the wall, and the ruin, mark the
packway extending from the
Galloway Gate and the Lune Gorge, via
Roundthwaite, Greenholme, Scout
Green and Salterwath, the "salters' ford";
on its way north to
Shap, Clifton, Penrith, Carlisle and the Scottish
Border.
 Loading the panniers
Packing
and loading the panniers was an art. Loads
had to be balanced within two or three
pounds of each other or they slid sideways
when the pony began to walk.
A
short-haul train of ten ponies could be
run by one man, but for longer distances
the more usual number was four ponies per
man. So a ten pony train carrying a ton
of lead ore would be attended by two men
and a boy.
At
the start of the day each pony would be
backed up by the "boy" to the
loaded packsaddle, and then loading could
start. The two men lifted the saddle and
load complete onto the pony, and the boy
fastened the girth, breast harness and
breeching. At the evening stop, at
an inn, the process was reversed and
the packsaddles complete with loads were
stored
overnight in a building. The ponies were
turned out in "closes", small
fields near the
alehouse.
Droving and packhorse alehouses
occurred at fairly frequent intervals along
the route, like service stations or
plazas on main roads of today; granted, cattle
would not be forced to walk
huge distances
in a day because the drovers needed them to
arrive at their point of sale in reasonable
condition. However, the alehouses are so close
together that the
drovers
must
have
merely
wetted their
whistles there - they
could not have afforded to stay overnight at
every one! For instance, there was an inn
at
Low
Borrow
Bridge: "Low Borrowbridge Inn was a meeting
point for routes and travellers of all types,
and a stopping place for the packmen and cattle
drovers. Like other inns on the main packhorse
routes, it provided outbuildings for safe overnight
storage of packs, and closes for the ponies."
(Lambert.)
Low Borrowbridge is less than three miles from
the alehouse at Roundthwaite,
and
that
is barely three miles from the alehouse
at Greenholme - though with a steep, thirst-raising
hill in between! (For a modern account of
walking cattle home 5 miles from summer pasture,
see
the Countryside
Museum's Farming Year - Autumn.)
Pannier and packsaddle
design
 The
panniers varied considerably in design depending
on their purpose. Kendal Museum of Lakeland
Life and Industry has another similar pair
to these, again with canvas covered lids.
Why have they survived better? Were they
the later models, or were they perhaps less
adaptable, and so put away and no longer
used, while the other patterns simply wore
out in a different, more varied service?
This
style of pannier was certainly still in use
in the years before the 1914-1918 War, when
the sporting artist G D Armour sketched a
gamekeeper with a pony carrying such a pair.
In the recent reprint of his 1937 autobiography "Bridle
and Brush" the sketch bears the title "Waiting
for the Bag"; in the distance are the "guns" shooting
grouse.
The packsaddle for this style
of pannier is likely to have had had horns
or cross trees which stuck up from the frame,
which fitted into the holes in the back of
the pannier.
Garnett
(1910) writes that panniers were also known
as hults, holts, hots, or creels. Hult or
holt probably means anything that "holds" something
else, as in the Cumbrian phrase "get
a holt o' this" and probably also is
linked to the word "halter", something
that "holds" a pony.
Creels
were probably open-topped. Holts could have
a second, bottom door which was quickly unpinned
to release the metal ore, or whatever was
carried loose, into two heaps either side
of the pony. Pulling out the pins to these
doors had to be done simultaneously from
each side so that unloading happened evenly
and the packsaddle did not roll over from
unbalanced weight.
Garnett
quotes a sale of the effects of Wm Hawkrigg,
Yeoman of Underhelm, Grasmere, held in 1710,
among which were an "oxe-yoak",
four pack saddles, 5 pairs of holts and a
peat holt. Evidently there was a difference
between these two kinds of holt.
Loads
would be lashed fast to the commercial packsaddle
in bundles or sacks. Jonty Wilson of Kirkby
Lonsdale (1978) described an old packhorse
saddle which he owned, built on two steel
bows hinged to the wooden "tree" panels
that rested on the pony's back either side
of the spine. There was another hinged strip
of wood lower down forming a ledge that jutted
out. The hinge allowed the ledge to be pulled
up pretty tight by the lashings to hold the
load. The wooden frame had a canvas cover.
Normally
there was both a breast collar and a crupper
and breeching, made from 2" or 3" wide
canvas webbing, to hold the load steady when
going up or down hill; probably the breast
collar, at least, was put onto the pony first
and fastened up once the load was girthed
in place.
You can see handles woven into the pannier
sides: one of the straps is still looped
on for the breeching to be buckled in. (This
means that the pannier above was the nearside
one... work it out, those of you who drive
ponies!) On the
pack
ponies
page you can see how the pony wears a breast collar.
Sometimes
the packmen cut turf to pad the packsaddle
tree and keep pressure off a sore patch on
a pony's back. This rudimentary saddle seems
to have been common for riding too, and to
have been held in place by "hay bands" -
twisted hay rope. Sometimes the packsaddle
rested on a folded blanket. The Museum's
pair of panniers has a leather pad on the
back to stop the wickerwork rubbing the pony's
sides.
A
solo attendant probably rode behind his train
so that he could see any problems as they
arose. When there were several men with a
train, one might ride the bell horse or lead
it, loaded. Descriptions of the methods vary
from the ponies running loose, to being tied
nose to tail; literally; the leading animal's
tail being plaited into a ring to which the
halter rope of the next was tied. No doubt
there were many variations on this theme,
depending on how much traffic the train was
likely to encounter.
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