Last Landau in Skegness

By Angela Gooch on November 21st, 2008

Link with past clip-clops out of town’s life

Source: Skegness Standard 21st March 1973

THE last remaining landau in Skegness has been sold to a Nottingham man and its former owner, 74-year-old Mr Cyril Johnson, has gone into retirement. His pony was too old to continue and the traffic too heavy for him to train a new one.
Unless the new owner decided to apply for a Hackney carriage licence it looks as though this popular summer attraction will have gone from the seafront for ever.
When Mr Johnson, who lives at 26 Burlington Road, Skegness, came into the business 35 years ago, there were at least 20 other landaus plying for hire in the resort.
There would be strings of them along Tower Esplanade, and they would also take people out for two-hour trips into the country. They would take parties to the Kings Head, Ingoldmells, in the evenings and during the war sailors were taken from the station to Butlin’s Camp — then the Royal Arthur.”
The landau, a four-wheeled carriage with a top, the front and back halves of which could be independently raised and lowered, was once in general use as a hansom cab in all our main towns and cities.
Ousted by motor transport the landaus became seaside novelties. Mr Johnson got his taste for them when he went out with Mr George Gough, of Alexandra Road, one Easter.
Eventually he bought a landau from Mr Arthur Overton, of Winthorpe. At one time he used to have three horses in the stables behind his bungalow and they would be on duty in turn, sometimes up to 10 pm.
His last landau was bought from Mr Wilf Holland three or four years ago. It was 150 years old and had previously belonged to Mr George Brown, a potato merchant and cab driver, and his son, Billy.
He was able to get repairs done at Sandersons, at Croft, and could send away for tyre replacements and fit them himself. There used to be three or four farriers in Skegness but nowadays horses have to go to a blacksmith at Hogsthorpe to be shod.
KNEW JOB

Mr Johnson’s last pony is Topsy, now 30 years old.
“I’m keeping her because she’s been such a good, honest pony,” he said. “You want something reliable you can trust. That pony knew the job as well as I did.
“Her wind went last season. I was going to have a fresh horse but my wife and I thought better of it with regards to the traffic.”
This got so bad that at times he had a job starting off and getting round the Clock Tower. Towards the end he confined the trips to 20-minute tours of the seafront and quieter residential areas.
The landau held six and there was never any shortage of customers, often the same ones year after year.
For the past three years he has been plying on his own, the other landaus just a memory.
But this familiar sight from the gracious past, the quiet rides and the steady clip-clop of hooves are unlikely to be experienced again in Skegness.