Posted by Jon on May 24, 2006 at 15:44:21 from 199.159.117.62 user Jon.
In Reply to: Re: Horseless Carriage? (was Frank's Horse and Copyright posted by PeterH on May 24, 2006 at 13:03:12:
Not only as easy to fetch the carriage with the horse, but easier. For the horse (or horse and driver) to be sent round without a carriage one would need to either ride or walk the animal. Walking would doubtless be slower than riding, but riding would require a horse trained to both riding and draft work (not difficult, but it's less likely that a livery would keep cross-trained horses than separate stock), and would need to have the tack changed on arrival at the carriage. If the driver wasn't the delivery agent, you'd also have the delivery agent hanging around for the duration of the ride. On the whole, I'd expect that the horse and carriage were hired as a complete package regardless of whether Beckfoot had a carriage stashed away somewhere. I fully concur that there is no evidence anywhere in the books that there were any horses resident at Beckfoot during that time period.