Living van

A living van is a portable caravan, used by the itinerant crew of a traction engine.

Living vans developed from the earlier shepherd's wagons, used to provide portable accommodation following a flock as they were moved between pastures.

Traction engines in the Victorian period represented an expensive capital investment in the latest agricultural technology of the period. Many were owned by contractors who would move them from farm to farm for hire, as required. Typical work included threshing after harvest time. A rake of engine, threshing machine, a living van and often a water cart would travel from farm to farm as needed, stopping at each for a few days. The first engines, from around 1840, were portable engines: movable steam engines that were horse-drawn to move them, unlit, between farms. From the 1860s the locomotive traction engine appeared, now capable of moving under its own power. The engine's crew would include a driver, a steersman, and often a boy. Other agricultural labourers carrying out the threshing work would already be resident on the farm. Threshing an average-sized farm of 50 acres would take about two weeks, so the capital cost of the investment in an engine and 'drum' encouraged farms to purchase such a rig as a jointly shared investment, or for others to establish themselves as itinerant contractors. Threshing would continue after harvest and into the winter, with the corn stacked in ricks until then. The first locomotive threshing teams were local and did not require living vans, the driver walking or cycling from home up to ten miles. Use of vans did not become widespread for threshing until the 1880s, some years after they were popular for ploughing.

Larger engines, working in pairs, were also used as ploughing engines. These too were itinerant and would pull a living van and the balance plough behind them. Ploughing teams travelled longer distances, with living vans, from their outset.

In his last TV series, Fred Dibnah's Made in Britain, Fred Dibnah travelled around industrial Britain with his traction engine drawing its living van — although, owing to his advanced illness, he was no longer able to live in it.

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