Back in the day, what did people do with their horse after they rode them to work or school?

Question

Edited to add: Jane Fonda was interviewed on Armchair Expert and mentioned that she rode a horse to school.

In: 6

Answer 1

For most of history, a horse was the equivalent of either an RV, a large work truck or a sports car. So the situation of riding one to work or school wouldn’t come up.

For nomadic cultures (e.g. native Americans, Huns), life revolved around the horse. It was used for war, for hunting, to transport the family tent, but not as a personal transport for things like workplaces and schools that didn’t even exist.

In Europe, horses were used on farms to pull plow and wagons, or by breweries and merchants to pull heavy transport wagons, not for riding. As a riding horse, it would be used by messengers or wealthy people who had servants. One wouldn’t use a draw horse for daily personal transport, and rich people didn’t go to work or school on horseback.

Horses also were used in the military. But war horses also don’t make good school busses 😉

Until the invention of the railroad, common people simply walked. Even long distances were travelled on foot. For a time, it wasn’t too uncommon for English people to walk all the way to Spain for a pilgrimage. If you had some money to waste…um…spend, there were postal coaches you could buy seats on.

But life also was organised in a way that minimised daily travel. People lived where they worked, often literally in the same house. Master were expected to provide journeymen and apprentices with accommodations, farmhands lived on the farm they worked on, and servants had the servants’ quarters in their employer’s house.

One common travel that involved horses was market day. There, farmers from the town surrounding a city would transport their wares to the city…on horse-drawn wagons. If there was space, people would hitch a ride to get to the city and buy stuff that wasn’t available locally. If not, they would walk.

The US in the 1800s may be a bit of an exception. There the land was settled in a uniquely spread-out way that made walking impractical. But still, daily personal transport wasn’t a thing there either. The daily commute is very distinctly an invention that came with trains and cars.