the Scots Cart

by Ian Sherry of Rostrevor, Northern Ireland
photos by Stasia Sherry

The Box Slipe and Scots Cart were the main transporters on every Mourne farm. I was lucky enough to stand beside my Uncle Peter as he made a prime example of a Box Slipe for me. The completed article is a complex structure of chamfers and bevels, the wooden body sturdy, the steel shod runners friction free. Runners just the right distance apart to give stability, while allowing the contents to be easily tipped out. A traditional transporter to and from patchwork fields in steep rocky craigs and (I found) an essential in the training of a young horse. Backsliding causes little harm and over exuberance can be countered by putting a bit of ballast in the slipe and directing the offender up hill.

The Scots Cart on the other hand was the subject of much research and experimentation in the early 19th century. From the diameter of the wheels to the width of the rim. Generally the broader the rim the better for the road, the narrower the better for the carrier.

The existing Irish block wheel cart with fixed wheels and rotating axle caused considerable damage to roads at points where they turned frequently. This was because the inside wheel, not being free, gouged the road surface. In 1805 Thomastown Farming Society offered a premium of one guinea for every car used after the first of September with an iron axis and the wheels turning there on; in preference to the common car then in use.

Slide cars and block wheel cars were the normal with the lower order of farmers, who took pride in being able to make one. They were easily constructed and at little expense. Two small straight trees made a slide car while an additional ‘round’ from the trunk of a larger tree made a wheel for the common cart.

The Scots Cart with its spoked wheels with central hub, housing a metal sleeve for the axle to turn in, required wheelwright and blacksmithing skills. A granite stone (in two semicircles) – 4’6” in diameter, 9” deep with a 12” hole in the centre – now serves as a table and has pride of place in Rostrevor Square. It was the hooping stone used to put iron rims on cart wheels. The hole in the centre a space to secure the hub. The plaque to the side of the stone tells us it was transferred from outside McCormick’s forge in Water Street; a business that thrived from 1805 to 1958; curiously the exact lifetime of ‘the stiff wheeled cart.’

My interest in the cart stems from having used it as a boy. Harnessing our Clydesdale mare (Nora) – collar, hames; straddle, breeching; reversing her under the cart’s upturned shafts. Cleaking on the chains and tying the bellyband. Always mindful when unhitching that all attachments were loosened before again raising the shafts. The dire consequence of the mare stepping forward with a chain attached always very real.

Rostrevor has a wonderful charity event every harvest. An old fashioned Threshing Day. A field of oats is grown; I note cut with a binder, stooked, shigged and then on the day drawn in with a buck rake on a vintage Ferguson tractor. God be with the days when oats were mowed with a scythe, tied by hand and the shiggs traced into the thresher with horse and hay-needle.

The hay-needle is a curiosity. A nine foot length of one inch diameter steel, pointed at one end and fashioned with a loop grip at the other. The bar is pierced six inches from its point to accommodate an ‘S’ hook. To transport a shigg of corn or cock of hay from field to haggard the metal prong is pushed along the ground through the butt of the stack. The ‘S’ hook is now cleaked in and from this point two stout ropes – one close to the ground, the other higher up – sweep around to be tied at the loop and so encircle the stack. This appliance of science allows the encircled structure to be traced along in its entirety – without the hayneedle the ropes would merely scatter the stack. I have no idea how specific to us this practice was.

But I divert from the great work of the ‘Threshing Day’ committee who organise such a wonderful entertaining day out. Teas and music, even to butter making and an auction in the evening selling the bags of grain and bales of straw, a further boost to overall funds. Before attending the full blown event in the afternoon I did slip out in the morning to get a few photographs of the scotch cart and the spring van I knew would be there. Truly I marvelled at the work involved in turning out such pristine outfits and more than that the achievement of presenting a horse and cart in the razzmatazz of such a day.