The cart without the horse

Today I set off to revisit the tumbledown outbuildings of a former gentleman's residence and park, long since become a not-very-smart hotel and holiday caravan site. The ivy-draped stables, cart houses, pig sties and cow byres that stand a little way to the side are neglected and derelict but at this time of year, before the brambles have grown anew, relatively accessible. The vast stables are still equipped with rotting mangers and stalls, and items of leather harness still hang from wooden racks. In one building I found a desiccated badger's skull to add to my collection, in another I startled a barn owl, the first I have seen for many a year. It fluttered into hiding and I was left with only its regurgitated pellets to examine.

This old hay cart remains where likely it was last left after the final horse-drawn harvest home, 50 or 60 years ago perhaps, succeeded in the following season by the first tractors. It's in a jumble of smaller carts that would once have transported all manner of items and provided work for many hands. The construction of the wooden wheels was a highly skilled job that takes 12 pages of description in the book Traditional Country Craftsmen by Geraint Jenkins. The hub, the spokes and the felloes (which make up the circular rim) all required different types of wood, tools and techniques that took years of apprenticeship to master.
Constructing a wooden wheel is a lengthy task which demands great exactitude and craftsmanship...The wheelwright must possess considerable knowledge of stresses and strains; his measuring must be extremely accurate, while in addition he has to be dexterous in the use of a wide range of hand tools. All the timber used in the manufacture of a wheel must be well seasoned, a process that may take ten years or more.

In the left foreground is the remains of a leather horse-collar with its straw stuffing exposed. This would have been made by a saddler (although at one time there were specialist collar makers too).
Saddlery is essentially a hand craft, depending entirely upon the craftsman's instinct, dexterity and experience....it took seven years to train a skilled saddler. For the first year the apprentice was given no task apart from waxing hemp threads and stitching neatly.

Not sure I can imagine Sir Alan Sugar's bickering protégés putting up with that for as much as a day!