Riding coat

A riding coat is a garment originally designed as outerwear for horseback riding. Original waterproof designs – similar to a mackintosh – generally comprised a full-length coat with wide skirt and leg straps to keep it in place. Other typical features included a belted waist, large patch pockets with protective flap, raglan sleeves with tab and wind cuff, fly front, throat tab and a broad collar.

In 1823 Charles Macintosh (1766–1843) patented his invention for waterproof rubberised cloth, pressing together two sheets of cotton material with dissolved India-rubber sandwiched in between. It was a brilliant idea for making any fabric weatherproof, and the very first macintosh coats were made at the family's dyestuffs factory, Charles Macintosh and Co of Glasgow.

The rubber processing pioneer Thomas Hancock (1786–1865) was aware of Macintosh’s work and in 1825 he took out a licence to manufacture the patented "waterproof double textures". For historical background, refer to the hardback "The Hancocks of Marlborough" and website "Bouncing Balls", author John Loadman

Using masticated scrap rubber instead, Hancock's solutions had a higher rubber content than those of Macintosh and so could more readily give a uniform film on the cloth, minimising water penetration and odour.

Eventually the two men co-operated, so that in 1831 Hancock became a partner in Charles Macintosh & Co and their two companies merged. One feature of the co-operation was the construction of an automated spreading machine to replace Macintosh’s original paint brushes. In 1834 Hancock's London factory burned down and Macintosh had already closed the Glasgow factory, hence all the work transferred to Manchester. See the "Virtual Encyclopedia of Greater Manchester"

From then on, the manufacturing of "proper" raincoats or macs impervious to all weathers – constructed of two layers of rubber-coated cotton fabric or "double textured" – was concentrated, with all necessary expertise and experience, in Manchester or the Lancastrian cotton towns. There such rubber or rubberised products amounted to a "cottage industry", as confirmed by the abundance of company records in the National Archives at Kew, Surrey.

Classic, belted, double-textured trench coats in off-white or fawn for riding or walking were fashionable prior to World War 2 until the end of the century as a specifically British fashion, flattering the human form and enhancing its magnetism. To see typical wartime usage, a good reference is Danger UXB (Anthony Andrews), Thames Television's acclaimed drama series first broadcast in the late 1970s, or the 1976 movie The Eagle Has Landed (film) (Donald Sutherland). The military flavour of rubberised raincoats continued with the 1997 programme Bodyguards (TV series) (as sported by John Shrapnel playing Commander MacIntyre of the elite protection team).

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