The Derek Evans’ archive continues to spring surprises. Most delicious among them are his scrap books, page after page of newspaper cuttings, documenting news from the ‘front line’ of a rural photojournalist’s life. Dive in and revel in the weird and the wonderful, the beautiful and the baffling. They arrive in standard-issue archival boxes, three of them, there is no indication what these boxes of delights hold within. It is only with the distance of time that the seemingly standard local paper story takes on new heights, and meaning.
Evans was on hand in 1960 at Hereford train station, to witness the safe delivery of an exquisite, hand-crafted gypsy caravan, or more correctly, a vardo. The maker’s name, George Cox, is now all but lost in the mists of time. But, thanks to these dusty, scruffy scrapbooks full of press cuttings, we can salvage the name of this humble wheelwright, for that was his first and foremost profession.
We have some sketchy details about George’s life. We do know that, with some encouragement from his parents, he began working as an apprentice wheelwright in Hereford in 1910. He would have been a ripe age for the battle fields of WWI, but that detail is unknown. Somewhere along the way of his working life, his wheelwright skills evolved into creating Vardoes. The travelling life of the gypsy community was still alive and well, and countless first-hand accounts describe the ‘cavalcade of caravans coming through the town as they followed one harvest after another’. He lost count of the number he made over his working life, but in 1960, George reported that he was pretty sure he was ‘the only man in Great Britain still making them’.
One thing is for sure: he would have been in demand. Right up until the seventies, horse-drawn caravans of the Romany community were a common sight on our roads, as they travelled around following the harvest of hops, peas etc. It took George Cox 12 months to make this caravan. The wheels alone are examples of exquisite craftsmanship. His assistant, Albert Wood, was in charge of the delicate and distinctive paintwork. The purchasers of this particular wagon, were a Romany family from Somerset. But he would neither name them or the price they paid. ‘The gypsies don’t like that sort of thing’, said George. Is it possible this caravan is still out there somewhere?