Charabanc

The name derives from the French char à bancs ("carriage with benches"),[4] the vehicle having originated in France in the early 19th century.

Introduced in the 1830s as a French sporting vehicle, the char à bancs was popular at race meetings and for hunting or shooting parties where it served as a mobile grandstand.

Charabancs were normally open-top, with a large canvas folding hood stowed at the rear in case of rain, much like a convertible motor car.

The charabanc offered little or no protection to the passengers in the event of an overturning accident, they had a high centre of gravity when loaded (and particularly if overloaded), and they often traversed the steep and winding roads leading to the coastal villages popular with tourists.

Factory day outings (annual works trips) in the 19th and early 20th century were quite common for workers, especially for those from the northern weaving mill towns of Lancashire and Yorkshire during the wakes weeks.

The charabancs, or coaches, were pretty basic vehicles; noisy, uncomfortable and often poorly upholstered with low-backed seats and used mainly for short journeys to the nearest resort town or the races.

As the mills prospered and things improved financially, the annual "wakes week" took over and a one-week mass exodus from northern mill towns during the summer months took precedence over the charabanc trips, and a full week's holiday at a holiday camp or in a seaside boarding house for the full family became the norm, instead of a single day out.

In Agatha Christie's "The Dead Harlequin", from The Mysterious Mr Quin series, the young artist Frank Bristow reacts angrily to the older Colonel Monkton's dismissive (and presumably snobbish) attitude towards charabancs and their use in tourism.

They are also mentioned in the story "Double Sin" when the motor coach Poirot and Hastings are traveling on stops for lunch at Monkhampton: "...in a big courtyard, about twenty char-a-bancs were parked—char-a-bancs which had come from all over the country".

[13] On the Small Faces' 1968 album Ogden's Nut Gone Flake, the title character of the Happiness Stan suite of songs taking up side 2 lives in a Charabanc, described in characteristic fashion by narrator Stanley Unwin as "a four-wheeled fillolop out the backgrove".

On the 1968 performance by the band of the suite on BBC2's Colour Me Pop, Unwin renders this section as "an ancient Victoriana Charabanc – and this was the old type, sit-up-and-beg, rotate fit a poppy with solid wheels.