The Bow-top design is also variously
called the midland, Leeds, Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, Bell and Barrel-top. It is
built with ledges like a Ledge wagon, but has a round canvas top on a bowed
frame. The front and back walls are built rib-and-matchboard style, with
crown-boards and pieces of carving between the chamfered ribs. Inside, the roof
is lined with a patterned chenille stretched over the framing immediately
beneath the canvas. This type has a rather dark interior due to the absence of
side windows but for comfort, lightness of weight and durability combined it is
unequalled by any other
It was especially popular with Gypsies because it combined
elegance with lightness, durability and a low centre of also the least
conspicuous, an advantage when camping near, say, a well-keepered estate: the
green sheet blended with the hedgerow and the absence of side windows rendered
it less likely to be noticed at night. This type was built in the Midlands and
the North, but never for showmen. It is erroneously supposed that it originated
in Ireland, from the profusion there of ‘barrel-tops’ lining the roadsides at
the summer fairs, ‘bodged-up vans for poverty tinkers’, as an English Romani
once haughtily described them. Irish vans of this kind were inferior to the
English, and Irish travelers who could afford to do so came to England to buy
their vans.
 
There is also what
may be described as a sub-type of the Bow-top. It is normally referred to as a
Square Bow. As the name implies, its canvas top is on a square instead of the
bowed wagon. Square Bows were usually Gypsy-built on a tradesman’s wagon. Square
Bows were occasionally made to order by established builders on a cart brought
into the yard by a traveler for the purpose.
Photograph by Barrie Law
©From The English Gypsy
Caravan by C.H. Ward-Jackson & Denis E. Harvey 1973 Edition |
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