Why Moving Day Always Starts Before Dawn

Moving in Victorian times was not just a personal upheaval, it was an event that affected the whole of a city’s population. Virtually all residential leases in Victorian Britain and the American Northeast expired on the same day and year of the lease signing. This meant that all of a landlord’s tenants, as well as the removal men contracted to the tenants, were operating to the same strict deadline.

The vehicle of the era was the pantechnicon – a term in itself evocative of a bygone age of removals. These huge horse-drawn vans emblazoned with the name of the removals company in bold lettering became a familiar sight on the streets of Victorian towns and cities. The vans were governed by the road-traffic bylaws of busy towns and, of course, the horses that pulled them had their own limits as to how far and for how long they could be worked. So, a long haul through a hilly Georgian spa town with cobblestone streets, such as Cheltenham, would need to start early in the day to allow time for the return journey of the horses before nightfall. The seasonal patterns of Georgian household movement in Cheltenham, a town where the wealthy would come for the waters and then leave for the season, would have been well organised by the standards of the Victorian era and have made for a good removal and cartage trade. If you want Removal Company Cheltenham, https://express-removals.co.uk/removal-companies-near-me/removals-cheltenham is a good place to start.

Today’s 8am start is based on somewhat different reasoning but is just as hard and fast as that of our Victorian forebears. The crucial point in the mortgage chain now completes between late afternoon and early evening and the parking permit holder’s parking suspension will commence at 8am sharp. Therefore by 9am the removal company will be operating against time.

When you are left standing in your empty front room by 7 am with a cup of coffee in your hand whilst the removal van is parked on the drive with a gentleman in a striped shirt polishing the brass work on the Pantechnicon with a white handkerchief, do not be fooled into thinking that he is an early riser. No, this is the result of several centuries of lease law, horse endurance and contractual habit all arriving in a carriage of hard-worn removal men at your door.