At 15 years old i worked as a barrow boy during the school holidays in Birmingham Smithfield fruit market, they had stays or legs at the handle end for keeping them level, the most important thing was loading them right, most of the weight went on the front almost lifting the handle end of the ground, i'd fly down Jamaica row which was a cobble stone hill with the handles under my armpits almost lifting me off the floor, the cart loaded with sacks of potatoes, i'd use animal fat to lube the wheels the sound would drive me crazy, not to mention every man and his dog would here you coming from miles away not to mention your dinner, rabbit or a partridge etc.

Even though this cart was done "by eye", it's quite lovely. There's just something about all the wood being left to look like tree parts, instead of manufactured into "clean lines", that gives it an aesthetic all its own. As ever, thank you for another delightfully educational video.

When I was a young child of 4 to 9 years old, my family lived all over Asia from Thailand, Singapore, Taiwan, and Japan. This would had been the late 1950's to early 1960's and carts very similar to this were ubiquitous especially in the countryside. When these carts were pulled, the carters would have a bar connecting the two handles and push on that crossbar. Also when pulling the cart, the carters used a rope tied to their waist or to some kind of harness which was connected to the frame of the cart and they would pull with their hands on the handbars and with their body. There was this one old man (with the eyes of age) who sold noodles out of his cart. He started with a push/pull cart and about a year later he got a tricycle cart. Everyday just before noon when he arrives, he would announce his presence by using a pair of wooden clapper. To this day over 60 years later, I can still remember the sound of those wooden clappers. "Look not mournfully into the past, it comes not back again. Wisely improve the present, it is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy future without fear and with a manly heart." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

You are right about the "singing cart". In Galica (Northwest of Spain) the Roman fixed axle cart pulled by cows still was widely in use in the 1960s and 1970s, and they "sung" and the Folk song says: "Because nobody sings anymore, my cart sings".

I absolutely love these "slice of medieval life" videos. Things that would have been common, everyday items back then that we just don't really think about these days. Videos about weapons, armour, knights, battles, and all of that are great too (that's what first got me interested in history in general, and medieval history specifically), but there are a lot of channels that do great vids about those things (including this channel of course), and this is one of the few channels that really delves into the more mundane things that are rarely discussed (another channel that's been doing something similar lately with videos about medieval logistics is thehistorysquad). And those mundane things are absolutely fascinating! They give a great window into things that we usually just take for granted.

"There are very few straight lines as we understand them now" Handcarts are an example of an object we never think of when talking about the past, yet it gives us an insight into the materials and techniques you had to work with to build anything in the Middle Ages. The sound is also a great little observation done by the experience with the actual object. Another very wholesome video of yours, thanks, Jason!

Most millionaires buy super cars, Jason gets himself a medieval handcart. You are such a geek, and that is wonderful. Thank you for doing what you do!

Interesting! Here in northern Italy miners used to say that pitprops sing before they snap. That's why they preferred wooden props over the iron ones . Iron may have been stronger, but it gave no signals that's going to break apart.

You can still see working men with hand-carts like this in certain parts of India. You'll see them sleeping in them at an angle on the streets at night. Different continent, of course, but presumably the ways people live day-to-day with such a simple form of trade/tool are fairly universal.

"The song of the wheels" is the name of a Bulgarian 20th sentury short story about a master wagon maker. And the song in this story is the specific creaking sound of the wooden wheels and the way you can tell who the master is by the "song" of the wagon. So yeah I think Kingsley is 100% correct in his assessment of the phrase.

I know that you must have heard this thousands of times, but you are one of the few who truly keep medieval LIFE alive. So many people forget that history is more than some paragraphs in books, but it was the world and its people, Thank you for helping to bring that world to life in your own special way.

Hand carts are completely under appreciated. They allow a person to basically carry another person (or two) for a marginal reduction of speed and a little bit of effort. Compared to having someone being carried on your back it is a godsend. I would have added a wall on the handle portion of the cart to prevent the load from tipping out. Not as simple of a solution as yours and you lose the ability to access the cart easily from the handle side but well within the realm of possible solutions. As a bonus, if you were tipping the cart to sleep under it, your load wouldn't fall out. Lubrication: Try wax or lard or any product that was known. If it is easier to push with a simple lubrication it would have been done (humans are willing to use their brains to be lazy in the long run). Harness: How about a simple rope or twine. You'd be surprised how effective a strong bit of string will be as a harness. I wouldn't be surprised if the axle was included at the wheelwright if you were buying 2 wheels entirely. The construction looks segmented, which would allow for quick and easy repairs/replacements.

The smile at the "this is my authentic medieval handcart" is so lovely. You can feel the passion behind it

Whilst the wheels may not wonder much now, in time as the wooden bearing wears, they may start to wobble as seen on Asian ox carts. Counter intuitively, this make going over rough uneven ground easier, as it allows the wheels to follow the path of least resistance. Look at videos of ox carts in motion and you’ll see what I mean.

"Since they were exactly the same as us, they'd have come up with that solution as well." I love this guy. Along with the plain facts of historical technology, he teaches us to understand that the people of this history were people like us.

Twice as a teenager, I went on a hike with a large group using Victorian era handcarts. They're bigger and sturdier than yours with a crossbar at the front so that a fee of us could push from the front and a couple could push from the back (these were quite heavy). We found it was easiest to pull the cart behind us, and we'd often tip it and rest in the shade underneath. Such a great experience!

Nice to see Jason _slumming it,_ once in a while, to feel around the village for what the commoners are saying about the Lord of the Manor.

I love that those of us in the future with smartphones and computers can looks back and appreciate how cool and interesting a medieval peasant’s handcart could be. Might’ve just been a boring necessity to them, but still very creative and incredibly useful at the time and place.

What a legend X) They really had lots of carts back in Medieval Times. You usually had a few even if you were from the lowest classes. Your best cart was the Market Cart, the one you used to sell and buy on market days. Then that one was used to transport wood from the woods and it was a Woodcart. Later on, when it was pretty damm old and about to break, it was converted into a Fieldcart or Dungcart for hard peasant work. In most descriptions of medieval Spain it was so, 3-4 carts per farm, even in the cities. Another interesting fact was that most old cities had streets as wide as two carts with a little space to spare, so they could go in their own lanes, what today would be considered one of the lanes for a car (that occupies 2 cart spaces side to side).

These sorts of videos are really important to historians. Taking recorded designs (even from a simple manuscript) and recreating them brings history to life and demonstrates what life was like. Thanks so much for this video!

In western Hungary we still have basically the same thing, it is called "kulló". The frame is usually metal, but the cart is mostly made of wood. Sometimes even the wheels are wooden like this one, but smaller in size.

As a woodworker myself, I think your cart is quite lovely. And I also enjoy the sound it makes as it moves. 👍

Red River carts were made and used by the Metis of Canada and the USA. The wooden wheels were 6 feet tall and also ungreased. They were ungreased because any oil or grease would hold dirt or sand and eventually bind up the wheel and axle. The Red River carts were reported to be noisy and could be heard for a long distance across the prairie.

I love the sound of that handcart! Great video as always

There is no data on this (as I know of), but I can imagine that the medieval people might use a mixture of lanolin (from the rendering of wool), and beeswax, smeared into the grain of the wood. To my imagination, this would waterproof it and lubricate it as well. I'm sure they had their (today's), little known tricks to preserve and waterproof their wood, but those two substances would have been readily available. I have enjoyed your brilliant wooden "time machine" cart.

Handcarts are still a common sight in India (though most have 4 bicycle wheels) selling all sort of stuff. Similar 2 wheel hand carts are rare in cities but a bigger version pulled by a bull or camel can be seen regularly. Great video! Love this content 👍 P.S. People here sleep under the carts in the afternoon to escape the sun and use a stick similar to how Jason showed to keep the cart horizontal.

How interesting! I can imagine different people who visit the same 'wheel-shop' having the same wheels, obviously, but the other parts of the car being all personal. I can picture people back then stopping on the road admiring each other's carts, sharing ideas and compliments. And yours looks amazing - a great mixture between authentic and practical still.

One of my absolute favorite books is an old (1930s printing) series called A History of Everyday Things in England, which is about precisely this sort of stuff--how were handcarts built, how did they tie their shoes, how did they lay out their homes--episodically comparing tidbits across different periods, from 1066 until the printing of the final book in the 1930s. I love these little quotidian tidbits about daily life, and I hope you do more of them!

This is so neat. I have ancestors who walked half way across America with something similar. It's amazing how far a little ingenuity and grit will get you.

You are absolutely right, to make such a stroller, it was enough to order wheels from a qualified wheelwright. The rest could be done by the peasant himself, using the tools he usually had at home. I remember quite similar carts in the countryside, but with the minimum use of iron - forged wheels (but still wooden!) and an iron hub (in still a wooden rim). Moreover, I know from literature and old drawings that similar carts were used by traveling traders (in our country they were mostly Jews), the poorest who could not afford a horse or a donkey. P.S. OMG, what have you on your head? Even the blindest guard at the gate would know that you were a knight in disguise.

Growing up in the country side of Bulgaria there were still some horse and donkey wagons, more modern of course, but same principle. I remember, people saying that in the past they would lubricate hubs with tar. Don't remember why, maybe against rotting. And about singing carts, one if the best of Bulgarian writer Yordan Yovkov has a story named "The songs of the wheels". It states people recognize whose wagon is coming by the "song of the wheels. There's one sentence: "The horse wagons were singing on the roads as if they were telling how one man could be very rich and in the same time very unhappy." Please, forgive my English and butchering translation.

'Bring out yer dead!' is my frame of reference for the cart.

This isn't accurate, he's not wearing a dirty outfit made out of brown and black leather. And the handcart, including the wheels, aren't made of bulky planks

An old man who had worked on his parents farm as a child in the late 1800s told me that it takes four times as much force to push a cart as to pull it and that is why horses pull them. Not sure about the numbers but I sure know it is easier to pull than to push.

I've slept under a handcart with a tarp over it just as you descripted in a pioneer reinactment. It was a more modern (19th centery) handcart, but the basic shap was still the same.

So strange how history obsessed over the movers and shakers and conquerors, that we have missing gaps of knowledge about how a common worker operated a simple handcart during a period that was not devoid of bookkeepers. Probably never occurred to anyone of the time that this common knowledge would become lost and academically important. EDIT: I suppose movers and shakers would be the headlines of gossip, but it's also not like there was ever a lack of common people on every countryside just trying to get by.

If rawhide is that susceptible to moisture I'd assume it would be coated in wax or tallow for waterproofing.

These are fantastic videos. You’re a great presenter. The enthusiasm and joy you explore everything with is really good to watch!

“Singing carts “ reminded me of using the two man cross cut saw. The best rhythm was hearing the blade “sing” back and forth cutting through the wood. Marvelous material.

I use a cart like that regularly (one made with modern materials, but it is functionally the same). I pull it if I'm on an even surface without much obstacles, I push it when I'm in the woods and need more precise navigation. It is useful to carry my tools with me when I go do some work in inaccessible terrain with modern vehicle, and I can bring back kidding or bucked trees (or whatever I went to fetch) out of the wood on the cart.

Also famously used by Mormon pioneers in America, during the short period between oxen becoming prohibitively expensive and the railways finally passing through Utah. Those people actually did use them as a basis for simple shelters when traveling hundreds of miles through sparsely populated territory :)

I have to say you truly appear to thoroughly enjoy presenting this wonderful cart! Thank you very much!

Never thought I'd catch myself admiring the lines of a medieval peasant handcart, but that's a really pleasing thing to look at.

I would be curious to see an "overburdened" load compared to a "light" load. Such as stone vs grain. Firewood also would be a nice thing to experiment with.

And this is why we love you, what other channel would get a "authentic medieval hand cart"... 😁

These kinds of carts were essential to one key phase of settling the western United States and a lot of the survival techniques you suggested were essential! 😄 They used them as portable shelters and had systems of flipping the carts backwards and tying ropes to allow additional people to haul the carts up particularly steep hills- I imagine similar techniques might have been used as well!

First of, I’d like to say I love your channel, and I’m not an historian or an experimental archaeologist (though that would be amazing!) I am a commercial landscaper, who spends a lot of time using a wheelbarrow to move heavy and / or awkward things, and I can confirm your theory that in my experience it’s much easier to pull the barrow - or cart - across soft or rough ground, than to push it 👍🏼 If you’ve ever had to drive with a trailer on, you’ll know it’s easy going forward, but much harder to steer in reverse and this is the same thing. But like I say, that’s just my view, and most of the lads I work with only push their barrows, although that is perhaps because I’m more ambitious with how heavily I load mine so have needed to get creative due to necessity!

That's absolutely fantastic. The sound alone is really marvelous. At first I thought it must be an incredible annoying sounds, wooden wheels on wooden axels without grease. But actually it's really beautiful and it immediately takes you back. I guess it's one of those things you'd never expect.

You LOVE this stuff, don't you? ... So do I. This is brilliant!

You're right. The sound is simply delightful. I didn't expect to smile so much at that!

There's just something about the noise those wheels makes that gives me a cozy vibe

That's one handsome cart! I hadn't thought of all the techniques and materials that would go into making one.

This channel is an absolute goldmine of information on medieval knights and the period. Thank you so much for all your work (and the horses too)! What about doing a future video on how horses are controlled with just legs/knees, specifically in the case of King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem in the Crusades? I read that knights, whose hands were occupied with shield and lance, had to control the horse with just their legs and knees and wondered how a medieval knight would have trained for this. 🐎⚔

This episode really resonates with me. I have been doing contracting, restoration and plumbing for the better part of 15 years now and one thing I have come to really appreciate are hand trucks and wheeled tool boxes. I cram ever conceivable convince, contraption and necessity on those and man it makes a huge difference. I do a lot of work solo and in some rather remote or off the beaten path places with both real and imagined dangers all around me. The comforts of having everything i can scoop up and go in a moment's notice, make fewer trips with or just be able to take a break and sit, make a hot cup of coffee and read a book i keep on hand is so amazingly comforting and makes the job infinitely more enjoyable. I can definitely see folks adding small comforts and kits to these carts when possible and feasible just so they have peace of mind and comfort on their long travels. Although I do agree most would opt to stay in an inn when available; I don't think camping out with their carts would be so uncommon an occurrence. Only thing I think could add would be that they would probably had traveled with a few carts and folks for safety and reliance. As always your videos are simply amazing!

This is a beautiful cart and you can see the usefulness. Definitely a medieval DIY.

I need a loop of the sound it makes. So calming to listen to :)

17 seconds in and I have never seen a video of a man so enamoured and enthusiastic than Jason saying; 'This is my authentic medievil hand cart.' Epic!!

Absolute professional level of dedication. Entirely timeless, so well planned. Charming, yet precise, though enough play. Really strong medieval point for the whole name, yet understandably most fancied in English heritage. Very well executed. Very underrated by the masses maybe.

Bro that last remark about dining carts, I think you’re spot on.

Is handcart envy a thing? Such a lovely and modest insight into the life and mechanics/design of a medieval peasant and their tools. This really made this period come to to life for me, I really enjoyed this and so many of your other videos.

Hearing the sound that the handcart made really brought it home to me what it must have sounded like in the medieval period when several people would have been using these on the same road etc Thank you again for another awesome video. I really enjoy learning about the medieval period from a practical perspective

There's an apparent contradiction here: If it gets wet the joints get stronger, but the rawhide comes undone. Can the rawhide be protected? I know they had pitch and tar in the Middle Ages, as well as tanned and waxed leather, as well as waxed linen (used for covering food, so it would have been familiar); would those cover some of the more fragile (for want of a better word) parts? I could also see them taking the opportunity to re-set the rawhide. It's going to be a real pain to fix when it's dry if you make a mistake, but eventually it'll get wet enough to make fixing it relatively easy. I also noted that the spokes didn't form a plain with the wheel. They formed a cone, with the pointy end towards the body of the cart. I wonder if that contributes to the wheels wanting to stay on. I will say, your comments on the sounds of the Middle Ages are really interesting. We're used to the noise of the modern era--air conditioning, cars, radios, TV, and the like--and whenever we're not around those sources of sound we tend to hear nothing. It's really interesting to get a view on what the Medieval soundscape was like. Bells on horses, hand carts trundling along, and all the rest. I imagine a major Medieval road was as much a noise issue as a modern road is!

Love this! It is reminiscent of the "Red River" carts from the Selkirk Colony in Southern Manitoba and the borders of Minnesota and North Dakota. Built without nails, and using rawhide to bind the joints. As a wheelwright myself, I find these old designs fascinating. Our forebears were wonderfully inventive!

Always nice to see a video about the average medieval serf. I feel, making videos like this is showing your respect for the interesting lives they lived. Thanks for another great vid!

That sound is soooo satisfying. It sounds like it came straight out of a movie or medieval game.

You might want to put a crossbar between the handles, similar to jinrickshaws in Asia. This would allow for more grip options and better control over the cart. From experience, I think it is quite likely that carts were mostly drawn on rough terrian (better leverage for going over obstacles), pushed uphill, and "drawn" downhill (as in, the person would walk in front of the cart); though what you've said about changing positions to rest different muscles occasionally certainly makes sense.

Something so simple and something that been in use probably since the invention of the wheel and is still in use today. You are probably one of a handful of people in the world who would look at something so simple with wonderment and joy. And that is why we love your channel!

A number of years ago I constructed an 18th century French Candian Red River cart of similar construction as a living history project in Washington State. It was considerably larger because it was intended to be drawn by oxen. They were used to haul the freight of the fur trade and had wooden hubs on wooden axels. With no lubrication, they made an incredibly loud squeal as they progressed across the plains in trains that could heard for miles. The axel and hub were never greased because of the attraction of dust particles acting like sandpaper as they turned. So to lengthen their lifespan, they were left dry.

Your videos give a much more intimate look into how people lived than any history book or class could ever convey. This channel should be youtube top 10.

These sorts of videos are my favourite. I love speculating about the day to day things that would have been so familiar to medieval life but have been mostly forgotten now. And you are quite right, they thought no differently to us and were capable of solving problems just as we do.

There's something extremely soothing about hearing this sound. I could absolutely use that sound as a sleep aid, were it longer or looped. One thing that our modern era does is silence everything. I notice this particularly as a blind person. I've been asked before, particularly in reference, for instance, how a blind beggar (as in the Bible) would know someone is passing. Well, I know when people are passing even now, when I'm out and about (not begging, of course), but it is slightly difficult. Most shoes are soled in rubber. People also walk with a heel-toe stride, whereas some evidence (I can't site it at the moment) suggests medieval walkers used a toe-heel step instead, which is noisier. Combine that noisier tread with the fact that shoes were harder-soled, roads were rougher, and the environment itself was just less consistently noiseful. This has been mentioned in some other videos on this channel. Today, we deal with consistent noises: the hum of traffic, of fans and climate control pumps, of computers, even of lights. Our brains, massively efficient that they are, adapt our listening so as to tune out these consistent (constant) sounds. We don't even notice them anymore most of the time. But when it's truly silent, something I've rarely experienced, it's amazing the amount of audible detail there is in the environment. I've strayed a bit from my original pair of points, but basically, the conclusion is this: These sounds, these analogue, earthy, medieval sounds of cart wheels and harness bells and rough shoes on roads, they are an audible environmental topographical map of the active participants in any given area, and with the level of silence present, even passive sounds like breathing would be much more detectable by a person using his or her ears, let alone a blind person who has been trained by experience, at least, to gather that kind of detail. And coming full circle, the peace of these sounds is, I think, something to be admiread and emulated as much as possible. We have lost much by making our world uniform and silent. Thanks for the great video.

My husband made something sorta like this for me to transport feed buckets, back when we lived about a mile from the horses. It was nothing as wonderful to look at, being made out of old horse float flooring and push bike wheels, but it was useful... And I did use a stick under it to prop it level just as demonstrated here.

What a cool thing to own! 😍 Thank you for the very interesting video!

I just LOVE this kind of exploration of history by just putting yourself into these situations and use your noggin. You and Lindybeige do such an amazing job at it :)

You‘re so a lovely man. It‘s sweet, how you‘re getting happy by the sound of the cart. That makes me smile.

This man is living his dream. I wish I could join you. Cheers!

These videos have a very relaxing and calming quality to them….love this channel…you could repost every video as if it were brand new and I’d watch it again lime it was the first time….just a great KZfaq channel all the way around 👍🏼

I have a feeling it was pulled more than pushed. Pulling is mostly about leaning your body weight and a good grip. Pushing uses body weight also, but a lot more stress is on the pectoral/shoulder area, which has lot less endurance. Also, navigating over small rocks is a lot harder to push over, than pull over. Not to mention, if your cart is full, you can’t see the road over your cargo.

That "singing carts" bit was beautiful.

We just rescued the front and back of a old wagen , now it is newer with steel axle & tires. I gave one half to my friend ,we both plan to create two wheel carts good for F. &. I , Separation war with England and it will work for Medieval Reenactments . Sleeping in it will be a plus but I want to sit up in it. I like your cart simple design . Thankyou.

Videos like these are KZfaq's true potential, realized.

That's a fantastic piece of experimental history. I suppose if someone wished to silence the cart, they could just use goose fat or similar around the axle? Excellent upload! Thank you Jason! Dave.

Jason has to be one of if not my favorite content creator, genuine passion, come from a background of video game design too, what an absolute legend of a man

So awesome to hear the sounds that folks would have heard back in the day...thank you for all you do!

Pioneers traveled across the U.S. with hand carts and that worked well as long as they started early enough so they could beat winter.

Now I'm curious if you could upgrade it to be horse powered

First read of builders using handcarts in The Ragged Trouser Philanthropist, then about 40 years ago actually saw one being used by a local builder on the Shaftsbury Estate in Battersea.

Oh you wernt kidding i love that sound. Something kinetic and cozy about it.

The sound is soooo soothing and pleasant. Honestly, I could listen to it along with chirping birds and swooshing trees while studying or something. Absolutely lovely ❤️

When I use a wheelbarrow or small cart, I like to have more of the weight towards the front, so it's easier to push though less stable, and prefer lower handles rather than high ones. (So when holding it at hand height with arms straight it leans forward a bit.) I have sometimes attached some ropes to the handles or lashed a cross bar (if the cart doesn't have one) to help either push or pull a cart or wheelbarrow full of heavy stuff or over rough ground.

These videos are my favorite ! The contributions to the historic soures are fantastic!

I love the intro on these videos. Epic music, glorious riding on a horse. A stunning man. I love this channel!

J, this is the first time you showed up on my Feed in ages.. nice to see you again. Its been about a year or More.

this reminds me of the chinese wheelbarrow, a very similar type of device, but with just one meal directly in the center, underneath the bulk of the load. They are super versitile, sometimes used to transport people, sometimes people even attatched sails to them to use wind power to help push it, also beasts of burden were used to pull them often too. Amazing how such a simple device can augment what a single person can acomplish so drastically! Wonderful recreation of a handcart too

That sound it makes, is pretty much the stereotypical background effects for medieval villages in games and movies! Just hearing it places you directly in that setting. Looking at the design of it, it really just reminds me of a regular wheelbarrow. The 2nd wheel I think just adds a load of convenience to using it over a longer distance with a heavier load. Sometimes 'simple' is the best 'smart'.

How very neat that you explained this. I've never seen this described in all it's details like this.

What a fantastic little video! Learned a lot. I love little bits of history that are off the beaten path.

Bought a new wheelbarrow yesterday, should be out putting it together. Instead I´m here watching this video :) If it had been me n my dad we would´ve put a tarp over that handcart. If my mom was with us, it would´ve been the Inn :) Very enjoyable content as always.

I know it's an old video by now, but I'll just throw in that when you pull a wheelbarrow/handwagon on anything but a smooth and hard surface, you'll be using less energy than when pushing it. When you pull, you are removing weight from the wheel and pulling the wheel over obstacles. When you push, you add weight to the wheel and push the wheel into obstacles.

never thought of hand carts in "days of old" but I've seen illustrations showing them. thanks for demonstrating this!