London Tramways Company ‘Curry Rivel’ horse tram

From the very earliest days, tramway operators were liable for any damage caused by their employees or the vehicles they operated and this made it important to be able to identify individual tramcars within a fleet of identical looking vehicles. In the absence of vehicle registration plates, which were not introduced until 1903, each tramway operator was obliged by Board of Trade regulations to number every tramcar in the fleet and ensure that this number was conspicuously displayed on both the inside and outside of the vehicle.

These numbers also enabled operators to keep service and maintenance records etc for each of their tramcars and they are of considerable interest to tramcar preservationists since they usually make it possible to trace the history of each tram from the moment of its inauguration to its ultimate demise or escape into preservation.

Fortunately, fleet numbers are generally quite durable and traces often remain even after the original number has been painted over, though confusion can be caused when tramcars were renumbered or (as in the case of MBRO 84) when vehicles were given a new lease of life by cannibalising parts of decommissioned trams; or when existing tramcars were effectively rebuilt and issued with a new number.

Just occasionally, however, tramcars are found in such a dilapidated condition that it is impossible to ascertain the original fleet number. One such tramcar was the lower saloon of a double deck horse tram that was found in 1984 in a garden in the Somerset village of Curry Rivel.

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The tramcar is believed to have been built in 1895 for the privately run London Tramways Company and to have operated in the streets of the capital until it was withdrawn to make way for electrically operated trams in 1905. Horse trams had a huge advantage over horse drawn buses since the fact that they were drawn on rails meant they could be twice as large and were capable of carrying 46 passengers (24 inside and 22 on knifeboard seats outside).

London Tramways Company operated on the south side of the river with a fleet of around 300 cars, which required the acquisition and accommodation of 2,116 horses and 288 mules. (The expense that feeding and looking after so many animals entailed was one of the factors encouraging a switch to electric traction).

The London Tramways Company (LTC) is known to have ordered 300 horse cars from the New York firm of John Stephenson & Co., which were at the time the most experienced tramcar constructors in the world, though the LTC also went on to build their own one- and two-horse cars to the same design as the Stephenson cars at a cost of £150. It is not known for certain whether the Curry Rivel horse tram is one of the original Stephenson imports or a locally constructed car, though if it was constructed in 1895 it is likely to have been the latter. Nor, in the absence of a fleet number, is anything known of its time in service.

However, it is known that the Curry Rivel horse tram body remained in service until around 1905. At around that time the lower saloon, together with its running gear, was presented to the Reverend Darlington, who was the vicar of St Mark’s church, Kennington between 1897 and 1947, for the use of the Tramway Christian Brotherhood. This was an organisation that he had founded in 1904 in order to preach the gospel to the tram drivers and conductors who were based at Camberwell though other branches were also established in other parts of the country..

After spending some time in his garden in London, the remains of the tram were transferred to the vicar’s country house in the parish of Curry Rivel, near Taunton in Somerset. This accounts for the name by which it has become known and also how come it was found so far from home.

The tramcar’s remains came to light in 1984 and the following year were transported to Crich with the welcome assistance of the RAC, who agreed to undertake the seven-hour journey to Crich as part of a publicity exercise. As the first double deck horse tram to arrive at the museum, the Curry Rivel car was for many years exhibited in its unrestored state in the depot yard to enable visitors to compare it with the fully restored tramcars in the collection.

That role has now been assigned to the Leamington and Warwick horse tram, whose unrestored remains are currently on display in the main Exhibition Hall.   Since the arrival of this tram, in 1993, the future of the Curry Rivel horse tram has become more precarious and there was even a proposal – subsequently reversed – for it to be dismantled and its components put to use in other restoration projects.

The tramcar was removed to the museum’s off-site storage facility in 2005, where it remains, pending a long-term decision on its future. Rather remarkably, the Curry Rivel horse tram is not the only Stephenson horse tram to have survived into preservation as a magnificently restored double deck car dating from 1882 can also be seen in the London Transport Museum.

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