page_title: Stagecoach
section_title: Competitive display and sport
hierarchical_section_title: Stagecoach / History / Decline and evolution / Competitive display and sport
context_page_description: A stagecoach is a four-wheeled public coach used to carry paying passengers and light packages on journeys long enough to need a change of horses. It is strongly sprung and generally drawn by four horses.
  Widely used before steam-powered, rail transport was available, a stagecoach made long scheduled trips using stage stations or posts where the stagecoach's horses would be replaced by fresh horses. The business of running stagecoaches or the act of journeying in them was known as staging.
  Familiar images of the stagecoach are that of a Royal Mail coach passing through a turnpike gate, a Dickensian passenger coach covered in snow pulling up at a coaching inn, and a highwayman demanding a coach to "stand and deliver". The yard of ale drinking glass is associated by legend with stagecoach drivers, though it was mainly used for drinking feats and special toasts.
context_section_description: While stagecoaches vanished as rail penetrated the countryside the 1860s did see the start of a coaching revival spurred on by the popularity of Four-in-hand driving as a sporting pursuit (the Four-In-Hand Driving Club was founded in 1856 and the Coaching Club in 1871).
  New coaches often known as Park Drags began to be built to order. Some owners would parade their vehicles and magnificently dressed passengers in fashionable locations. Other owners would take more enthusiastic suitably-dressed passengers and indulge in competitive driving. Very similar in design to stagecoaches their vehicles were lighter and sportier.
  These owners were (often very expert) amateur gentlemen-coachmen, occasionally gentlewomen. A professional coachman might accompany them to avert disaster. Professionals called these vehicles 'butterflies'. They only appeared in summer.
caption: Carriage driving, 1881. The owner's coachman watches
  Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
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