Horse-drawn coal delivery cart, c1900

 

 This lovely recreated scene at Milestones Museum, Basingstoke is of a typical Edwardian era horse-drawn coal delivery cart. The carts would travel around towns and cities delivering coal to those who had already paid for it - on delivery it would often be put down a 'coal hole', sometimes a small cupboard under the stairs of a house, or in the cellars of a house, with a hole in the front wall near street level or on the pavement itself, sometimes covered with a metal grille. In this case it would be dropped down a chute to a store in the cellar, and evidence of these can still be seen in many Edwardian and older houses around the United Kingdom