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Local historian Martyn Taylor looks back to when Bury St Edmunds was run on horse power




The Angel Hotel, a case in point, had stabling for around 40 horses in its stables in Angel Lane. These stagecoaches had exotic names such as the Phenomena, Times, Hope and Regulator.

Carriers too were an important mode of transport. The lorries of their day, they carried goods from town to town.

Arthur Manning , baker of Out Westgate. Picture: Martyn Taylor
Arthur Manning , baker of Out Westgate. Picture: Martyn Taylor

The inns in Bury were the departure points: The White Lion, Fox, Castle, One Bull and The Griffin, where loads would set off, The Griffin having up to 10 waggons on market days leaving to go to the surrounding villages.

However, that all changed with the advent of the motor vehicle. Faster and cheaper to run, they far outshone the horse and industries that kept the horse going fell by the wayside - harness makers, farriers, wheelwrights, blacksmiths and saddlers all closed, as did the stables. Mind you it was not James Pettitt’s fault when his stables on the corner of King’s Road with St Andrew’s Street South nearly went out of business . . . they were struck by a Zeppelin bomb in 1915.

Pettitt was a forward thinker, combining his stables with being a motor engineer. It didn’t take long for the upper crust of society to exchange their horse-drawn buggies, with exotic names such as Phaeton, Landau and Brougham, for a chauffeur-driven limousine. Hansom cabs gave way to motorised taxis and, by the latter part of the 20th century, the horse drawn carts and waggons slowly disappeared.

Les Freeman, rag and bone man Picture: Martyn Taylor
Les Freeman, rag and bone man Picture: Martyn Taylor

Tradesmen such as Childs bakers, in Guildhall Street, Bootys, with its last horse drawn milk float, and Les Freeman, rag and bone man, the last of their kind. Sadly, Greene King had its last four dray horses put down in 1958.

Martyn Taylor
Martyn Taylor

-- Martyn Taylor is a local historian, author and Bury Tour Guide. His latest book, Going Underground: Bury St Edmunds, is widely available.