The Elephant carriage on Folkestone Harbour Arm

There is soon to be an Elephant Carriage on Folkestone Harbour Arm.  It will join the carriages that are part of the Platform 3 restaurants of Shesells Seashells and Cavells, run by the team who brought us The Big Greek Bus. It’s important to preserve and promote the heritage of Folkestone Harbour for residents and visitors alike to appreciate.  The Cavell Carriages are named after Edith Cavell from WW1, and would carry parcels, post and sometimes people.

The Elephant Carriage is much, much bigger and they used to carry… elephants!  In the time when circus’s were popular, these big carriages would carry the huge animals, or large items of staging, or anything else of a size that needed transporting.

Currently the Elephant Carriage is being renovated at the East Kent Railway Trust (EKRT) in Shepherdswell.  The EKRT has played an important part in renovating all of the carriages you see on Folkestone’s Harbour Arm.  They also have a heritage site, with ecology trail that you can visit and explore.

east kent railway trust

The Elephant Carriage – or General Utility Vehicle – has spent the last 4 years sitting outside a Fish and Chip restaurant in Warrington.  It was intended to be a restaurant, but the restoration proved too much for the company.  Now, it is being sandblasted, before being rebuilt to withstand the climate on the Harbour Arm.  All of the vehicles have plastic panels which are designed to look wooden, but will last out the weather for much longer than the original wood.

Matthew Plews from the EKRT has been researching these vans. “There were two batches of 10 of these vans built in 1938 and 1949.  Several of them had adaptations so that they could carry the weight of elephants in circus train formations.  The van that we have had a strengthened floor before we started restoring it, so it may well have carried elephants in its lifetime.  

“Our van is thought to be the one of four from the 1938 batch that have survived. You will see these vehicles have huge doors on each end that open to allow (possibly) elephants and other large items to be loaded on.  There are also doors on the side which are much smaller for loading general goods.”

elephants on the arm

As if an Elephant Van wasn’t exciting enough, in researching this article news came of an image that showed elephants used on the Harbour Arm.  With thanks to Alan Taylor for his meticulous archive, we can now show several grey bundles that are elephants!  Do give thought to the period in which this photo was taken that moving objects would show up as blurry.

The photo is dated to 1900 and in all the records of the building of the Harbour Arm there is no mention of elephants being used.  The Harbour Arm construction was finished in 1904.  These elephants could well be helping in the building process.  But equally reasonable is the suggestion that they might be being loaded onto a ferry for a circus bound for France.

It’s wonderful to discover new images of the Harbour area illustrating how the place worked during bygone times.  There are information boards around the Station and Arm that explain how the site has developed over the years.