Driving club
membership club for carriage driving
A driving club is a membership club for activities of driving horses. Originating in the 19th century, they were organized for the social and recreational practice of driving carriages and coaches, and they coordinated outings and established equipment standards. In early 1800s Britain, driving clubs established rules for vehicles, harnesses, attire, and group processions, and became fixtures of elite leisure culture. By the mid-1800s, similar organizations emerged in the United States which conducted long distance drives and public demonstrations. Driving clubs have persisted into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in many forms including for recreational driving and competitive horse-driving sports such as combined driving.
19th century British clubs
The Bensington Driving Club was founded in 1807 at Bensington, Oxfordshire, later known as the Benson Driving Club when the village name changed, later still as the Bedfont Driving Club, and commonly referred to as the "B.D.C." Its membership was limited to twenty-five. It met first at the White Hart and later at the Black Dog in Bedfont, giving rise to the nickname "the Black and White Club". The club was disbanded in 1854.
The Four Horse Club was founded in 1808, prompted by the B.D.C.'s membership limit of twenty-five. It was founded by Charles Buxton, inventor of the Buxton bit.
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This entry incorporates text from “Driving club” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.