Medieval uses of wheelbarrows?

If anyone knows the origin of this illustration, please let me know. I found it at the French Wikipedia page, but I think it's from a book, as words seem to show through. Petites questions et grands problèmes: la brouette, on the history of the wheelbarrow, perhaps, by Bertrand Gille. I don't know whether he did his own illustrations (nor whether it is from that book). If so, the illustrations are from the 1980 or slightly earlier, perhaps.

Nice tableau!

This was candid, including the beautiful breeze that lifted the flag.

Hollycombe Steam Fair, just across from the entrance, July 21, 2013.

Liphook, Hampshire

July 21, 2013 in the parking lot of the Royal Anchor pub in Liphook, where we stopped for lunch on our way to Hollycombe Steam museum:

Hot wheelbarrow, France

I did a run quickly through Fort l'Ecluse, where I found this smoking wheelbarrow, in June 2012

Holland

Joyce Fetteroll took this photo of a wheelbarrow against a volkshuis near Leiden (a house in a volkstuin). I like the way the sun lit up the red wheel, and the wooden shoes on the potting shelf add beautifully to the scene.

A volkstuin is hard to understand. It's a place where each family has a combination allotment (strip garden in a common area, not on the property of a home), but these have an added feature: a summer cottage in which the owner can stay overnight, either just on weekends, or occasionally, or for all the summer months. Owners cannot allow others to stay in their stead, nor can anyone stay year round.

Our host's cottage had a lawn and a hedge, and a trampoline for their children.

The lots are not as long and narrow as allotments are in the UK. People lease the land, but own the little houses, I think. They don't reapply each year, as UK residents do for allotments.

Longfields

At Longfields, in Owslebury, Hampshire, 2011:



I'm glad I got to visit Longfields, and the opportunity to meet the Koetsier family. They won't be living there much longer, and I will have fond memories of my time there.

Hampton Court's old wheelbarrow

I mentioned this in the post on Chichester, but here is that view and another, in photos I took in May, 2011:





Being in such a prominent spot as Hampton Court, there must be other mentions and photos of it. I'm curious about that wheel construction. It's not like a cartwheel with spokes, but it IS ringed in iron (an "iron tyre" put on by a blacksmith). It seems, this sort of spokes-to-blocks form, could be really strong for this sort of use by one person.

Here is one, showing bags in it, and linking (if you click it) to a small site called "Wheel Barrow Wheels."

I don't know who took this photo.

Italian electric wheelbarrows, and muck-trucks

The wheelbarrows I'm interested in are the one-wheeled, tripod, easy machinery wheelbarrows, but there is a site advertising "electric wheelbarrows."

I do know that "barrows" can also be two wheeled with two peg legs, or four-wheeled, but at that point I really think it's a hand truck. And I think this is a little battery-powered dump truck:

http://www.zallys.com/frontend/controller/prodotti.php?cat=27&gclid=CKvHk_nQvbgCFY_KtAodFUwA0w

Here's a similar one, petrol-powered:

£800
MUCK-TRUCK POWER BARROW 1/4 tonne capacity, Honda engine, 4 wheel drive, 3 forward/ 1 reverse, Unleaded petrol, Very good condition, £ new ...

Because I had no need to know, I wasn't aware of these, but I like them! A Canadian site says "Since 1993, Muck-Truck has evolved to become the world's most popular power barrow and motorized wheelbarrow," and the company's slogan is "It doesn't cost the earth to move it." Nice. So here's muck-truck Canada.

But they are hand trucks, and not wheelbarrows, in my sorting and labelling world.

(Speaking of Canada, if anyone came here on Learn Nothing Day, I believe you are hosed!!!)

Three-wheeled barrow, antique, France

Yvoire is a medieval village on Lake Geneva, where I visited with Claire Darbaud and her children in June 2012. I took two photos of this wheelbarrow with "iron tires"—iron hoops fixed to the wooden wheels.






I don't know how old it is, but if I were pressed to guess I would say 18th century. I hope it's older, but I have no idea. With the wheels as they are, it could have been pushed on three wheels if it was very full, but lifted and scooted along quickly if it were empty.


More info, maybe, in general:

Here's a page called "hooping wheels," on "The Countryside Museum" site: Hooping Wheels

"In modern times, wheelwrights continue to make and repair a wide variety of wheels, including those made from wood and banded by iron tyres." (source)

Three at a blow

Inside the loop of the little rail train at Hollycombe steam museum, in 2011. It was nice to catch three candid wheelbarrows all together that way, and they were nicely arranged, too.

Hollycombe is a large, beautiful, obscure museum of steam engines doing actual steam engine things. There's farm equipment, a sawmill, many caliopes and fair rides of all kinds. And for the maintenance of those things, some wheelbarrows.

Hollycombe Steam in the Country
Hollycombe Working Steam Museum, Iron Hill
Liphook, Hampshire GU30 7LP

Chichester last Tuesday

Tuesday, July 16, I was in Chichester with Julie Daniel, Adam Daniel and Joyce Fetteroll. We had planned a day of touristing, with seeing the second preview performance of Barnum, that evening.

In the morning, we went to the Cathedral, and we did the edges first. There was a small construction site, and I hoped for a wheelbarrow. Knowing I would, the others had already checked it out. Julie teased me, that I would go to Chichester Cathedral, looking for a wheelbarrow.

But when Julie took me to Hampton Court a couple of years ago, there was a wheelbarrow:

It was nice of them to put it out in the courtyard that way. (So I hope people won't just read the photos here; that wheelbarrow wasn't at Chichester last Tuesday.)

Joyce and I went to walk on the city walls. We came to a sign saying a playground would be closed because of excavation of a motte and bailey castle. That never happens in New Mexico, but it happens here. We walked a bit, on the ground, looking for the way up onto the wall, and saw the mound, and the playground (not closed; full of people), and the construction fence, and a truck with a wheelbarrow! My feet were sore and I didn't want to walk all the way over there, so I had the brilliant idea that if we went on up onto the wall, I could get the wheelbarrow with my zoom lens!

DOH! Bad angle. You can see one of the feet of it, sticking up, past that bag, sort of.

So I took my bad photo, and continued along the wall to an explanation of what they were working on down there.. And there, lower left, in that explanation....


Artist's rendition of wheelbarrow I would like to see in real life.

So we went merrily along, back to town, afternoon tea in an old medieval vaulted building, went to see Barnum (musical about PT Barnum in the US, which has nothing to do with anything, except the scene where they're building the American Museum is choreographed with three wheelbarrows.

I did not take photos because I am a Good Person and my good husband persuaded me years ago to give up pining for images of live theatrical performances, because only paying audiences get to see those things. But the wheelbarrows exist outside the show, and Shelby Coleman will be at the premier, and will get to go backstage because her late husband composed the music, and she's going to try to get a photo of one or more of those, and to find out who retrofitted them to seem older than they are. They had solid metal wheels.

So as the turned out, there were wheelbarrows even though Chichester Cathedral failed to provide one.

1920's, Boston

The papers were for sale on eBay in July 2013 with the title

C.1920 WHEELBARROWS + SOIL SCRAPERS , BARNUM + STONE , BOSTON , MASSACHUSETSS

Under the category Collectibles>Advertising>Agriculture>Other

$24
approximately
£15.73

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/C-1920-WHEELBARROWS-SOIL-SCRAPERS-BARNUM-STONE-BOSTON-MASSACHUSETSS-/221187241346

Wheelbarrow week at "Rust Never Sleeps"

"Rust Never Sleeps," which has been linked and cited here before, is doing a week of wheelbarrows. In the first link below, the blogger tells of a film related to the music here, which is called "Wheelbarrow Walk."

I will add links to the posts as they are sent, so this entry will change as the week goes on.

wheelbarrow walk - 1

wheelbarrow walk - 2

wheelbarrow walk - 3

wheelbarrow walk - 4

wheelbarrow walk - 5

wheelbarrow walk - 6

wheelbarrow walk - 7

Fishbourne

Fishbourne Roman Palace (an archeological site and museum) had no wheelbarrow, but just before I left I saw this photo, on a display about the season of the original excavation, when they had 100 volunteers a day:

Then as we were leaving to get back on the motorway to return to Julie's, after two days in Chichester, I spotted a wheelbarrow and snapped it quickly from the moving vehicle. I was relieved to have gotten it before the van was in my way.

After I got home and looked, I saw that I had captured TWO wheelbarrows! :-)
The back one seems to be empty, but the central object of the image has mortar for the brick wall.

There were more wheelbarrows the day before, but their documentation is a larger project, and so I leapfrog this one in today, which is my dad's birthday. I don't remember my dad especially for dying, or even for father's day. I remember him on his birthday, which was always a week before mine (in my lifetime, that's where I saw it) and was something we shared, that week. And wheelbarrows remind me of my dad because he always had a good one, and gave me rides when I was little. My sister and cousins and I gave each other rides after that.

We weren't riding like those young adults resting in the photo above. We sat up, facing forward, legs crossed, holding the sides, feeling like we were flying. The "dismount" was sometimes a tumble, but as often as not we were gently parked by our bearer. And now, at 59, I remember that, and my dad, and can share it with others in a way he never got to see. My dad died when he was younger than I am now. He never got this old.

Sintra, near Lisbon

Construction within the Castelo dos Mouros (the Moorish castle ruins near Sintra) involved some Portuguese wheelbarrows in action:

Liverpool, a pair of wheelbarrows in traffic

Wheelbarrows, spotted in passing...


..and on their way to a construction area at the Albert Dock, where we were headed, too.

Our wheelbarrow at home, in the snow

A wheelbarrow I know, in a season not long past. A good July image, to cool us off.



This wheelbarrow reminds me of Keith, and of our fireplace, and of our hot tub, and of him cutting wood for his family. Very sweet memories. I hope to use wood he will be cutting in many future years.

Archeon

Archeon living history museum in The Netherlands has a couple of wheelbarrows. If there were more than two, I'm sorry I missed the other(s)!




They were made by archeology students or by woodworkers employed by the museum. It's a great place with some fine artifacts from several periods (prehistoric farmers, medieval, Roman), in buildings made in historical ways, and people can go in and poke around.
Archeon

Toy wheelbarrow in Stroud

In the garden of a home with children, Brimscombe Hill, near Minchinhampton, near Stroud:



The left one is for detail. Right-hand image is as I first saw it, parked.

Larkrise Wheelbarrow

From "Larkrise to Candleford," just the wheelbarrow.