Looking back with Ian Scott on the power of the horse in Falkirk district

Before motor vehicles appeared towards the end of the 19th century and for a good many years afterwards horses pulled ploughs, delivery vans and carts, coaches, hearses and fire engines as well as private traps and gigs. A century ago there were over 1000 horses at work in Falkirk alone along with dozens of blacksmiths shops, livery stables, feed suppliers and the rest to help keep the show on the road.

From the opening of the Forth and Clyde Canal in the 1770s the barges were pulled by one or two horses which had to be changed at various stages. Even when steam powered vessels appeared in the early 1800s the owners preferred horses rather than risk damaging the precious waterway. Around the same time the first passenger boats introduced a different kind of horse which galloped along often with a ‘jockey’ up top who carried a horn to ‘invite’ slower boats to get out of the way. They were still using horses to pull heavy laden barges in the 1950s and I can remember clearly seeing the handlers leading them along the towpath from Camelon to Bonnybridge.

Although Falkirk district had been a growing centre of industry for well over a century, agriculture was still of great importance. In 1900 for example there were 84 farms listed in the area and each of them had a number of horses carrying out the heavy work of ploughing, harrowing, sowing, reaping, binding and carting the produce to market. Even the arrival of the tractor did not stop the widespread use of horses on local farms like Standalane.

The coming of the railways in the 1840s increased rather than diminished the demand for carters as goods were collected from and delivered to Grahamston, the High and other local stations. And even before steam powered locomotives Carron Company had operated a horse drawn railway from the works up through the ‘back wagon’ in Bainsford to meet the canal at Burnbank basin.

The streets of the town were once chock-a-block with delivery horses and carts. Aikens and Barrs ‘lorries’ were familiar sights and there was no more popular animal in the 1930s that the mighty Clydesdale called Carnera said to be the biggest working horse in the world. The Co-operative Societies throughout the district employed hundreds of horses and in Falkirk they were stabled down in Thornhill Road - many more laboured in local foundries. Falkirk Council also depended on horse drawn refuse collection carts and in 1891 (on Christmas Day) the convener of the Council’s Sanitary Committee officially opened the Burgh Stables on High Station Road. The first horse to be stabled there was called the ‘Provost’ though whether this was intended as a tribute or an insult is not known!

The last working horses I can remember in Falkirk pulled the rag and bone wagons and Drysdale’s fruit and vegetable carts which were still around in the early 1960s. They are all gone now and the roses have never been quite the same since.