A WEDDING AT WYBERTON

It's a Rum Life Book Four Volume One

“Northcote Diary 1984 to 1994”

WEDDING AT WYBERTON

(about 1986)

This episode from the late 1980’s, will always stick in my memory for the sheer anxiety it caused and huge demands it made on my creatability and repair ability!

Wyberton is a small rural suburb of Boston, Lincolnshire. It has its own mediaeval church and there is still the site of its once important castle overlooking the river and estuary to at one time, the third most important port in the Country.

We had been engaged to deliver a bride and her father to Wyberton Church for her wedding and after the ceremony transport the bride and her new husband to their reception at the village hall some two miles away.

The route had been surveyed thoroughly and we had selected to park our lorry for unloading close to the village hall.

“Hebe”, our “Dales” mare and full name “Ashwood Claire Louisa”, was to power the carriage as the bride had selected our ultra elegant “Bow fronted Brougham”.

CARRIAGES

I should explain that at this time we were using two carriages for weddings.

Jupiter, our extrovert part bred dales, (skewbald coloured) brown and white, always worked with our beautiful “Victoria” carriage.

This had wide, swept back mudguards, elegant varnish bodywork and beautiful springing; it followed the typical design for ladies’ made popular by Queen Victoria herself. This carriage was basically open with a hood for inclement weather.

The second carriage was a “Bow fronted Brougham”. Following on a pattern of elegant town carriage designed by Lord Brougham, this had room for two people and was somewhat smaller with beautifully paint work in dark red and black. Forward facing doors on both sides allowed entry to a green leather fitted interior illuminated by most elegant curved glass windows at the front. Normal pattern carriage drop door windows gave a good view of whoever was riding in splendour.

“Hebe “worked with the Brougham as she was smaller in stature than Jupiter and being a black horse herself, suited the “equipage”.

The journey to Wyberton church was uneventful and the bride had been safely delivered when disaster struck.

DISASTER

We were all relaxing, myself, daughter Helen (the groom) and Hebe; after the first part when butterflies always fill me with trepidation. My thoughts before all these events are on the off chance that something untoward should prevent us actually getting to the venue on time!

This time, the unforeseen struck us quite suddenly as we were resting under trees immediately outside the open church gates.

A noisy, bright yellow fork lift truck burst out of a yard immediately to our front and began to roar down the road towards us.

The road was not wide by any imagination and we had nowhere to go and avoid this “monster” which had immediately caught “Hebe’s” attention and set all our hearts to our mouths.

To our right side, behind and ahead of us we were contained by the churchyard wall which continued in solid stone splendour about four feet high as far as we could see.

On our left were a row of smart houses with large front gardens and boundaried at their front by a long, large and deep dyke.

The fork lift rattled and banged and roared its way forward totally oblivious to the terror it was creating in the mind of the horse never mind the human attendants.

Despite all our efforts to attract his attention, the driver seemed in a world of his own.

Then, in the blink of an eye, it was all over.

“Hebe” made her decision which was to avoid the truck the only way possible.

Like an arrow from a bow, she ripped the reins from my hands and dived sideways through the church gateway. There had been no time to take any preventive measures, it had made no matter to her that the carriage was still attached.

Her only concern was for the yellow monster that had filled her vision and mind with unaccountable terror.

The nightmare then began. The damage was stupefying.

“Hebe” was now stood just inside the gateway with carriage attached as normal.

The church gateway had not been sufficiently wide to allow the carriage through

when we had first arrived! Things had now changed.

CHANGES

The right hand gatepost of solid stone and some four feet square and five feet high, was now lying flat inside the churchyard and its gate still attached, beside it.

It had been pushed over, quite intact by the pressure of the carriage body as it twisted thorough an acute 90 degree angle, propelled by the horse.

The off side, previously beautiful, wooden carriage body was to say the least badly damaged. The door would not open.

But there was even worse to see. All four rubber tyres from each of the wheels were lying on the ground at drunken angles.

By now the horse was calm and happy to be facing away from the road.

Our major problem as I could see was in getting the bride back to her reception two miles away in a damaged carriage with only one working door and no tyres!

I left Helen to speak sweet nothings to Hebe I began my search for something to help me remount the tyres.

Now a little explanation.

Wooden horse drawn carriage wheels have either the older iron rims around the wooden wheel. These are incredibly noisy and vibrate in a foul way as they were designed to cope with unmetalled roads.

More modern sprung carriages had a slotted clincher rim system attached to the outside of the wheel. The specially designed rubber tyre is designed and extruded with a thinner line of rubber of either side of the tyre itself. The whole fits snugly in the grooved rim. But it has to be slid into the groove from one end with plenty of lubricant and gradually slide, in that groove, completely round the wheel.

BACK IN WYBERTON

We had neither lubricant, a jack for the wheels or time on our side. I estimated that now we had about 20 minutes before the bride emerged from the Church for the group photographs and then, a maximum of one hour.

Just down the road I did find a lady cutting her lawn and decided that she was our best hope.

In fact once the situation was explained, she was a marvel. Somehow she had her son’s tool box at hand and I selected a number of screwdrivers and various hammers to aid my endeavours.

We moved Hebe and the carriage back on to the road and faced her in the direction we should take for our return. This put the undamaged side on view and problem one was solved.

The tyres were a complete nightmare on their own.

At no time were they ever designed to be fitted the way I was trying. But bit by bit, by levering and hammering; tugging and pushing, they were almost back.

Almost, but not quite!

The rubber just would not push back exactly is it had been.

To anyone who knew about these things, the wheels looked dreadful, but I thought they would get us the two miles we needed to go.

I returned the tools to the lady with my profound gratitude and returned to the carriage with five minutes to spare.

Some serious explanation had to be made to the vicar about his gatepost and all in all the wedding party were disappointed to have “missed the fun!”

We managed the return journey without problems.

The gatepost cost in the region of £500 and the repairs to the carriage cost over £2500. The complicated wrought iron steering turntable beneath the front of the carriage had been bent out of line too!

Such is life as they say!

           Hebe with the actual carriage, (at a different venue). The telephone No is very old!