Pictures that recall the golden age of caravanning

The world’s oldest caravan is considered to be the Wanderer, a luxury affair made of mahogany and maple by Dr William Staples in 1885 and equipped with a bookcase, china cabinet and a piano. But it was horse-drawn and owed more to the covered wagons of the American west than to caravans as we know them.

Holidays on wheels began in earnest in 1919 with the Eccles, a caravan named after a district of Manchester but produced 100 miles away in Birmingham. With small opening windows on the front and sides and with paraffin for heat and light, it looked like a shed on wheels – but once parked it could be extended with awnings, and offered the travelling family all the comforts they could expect from a typical B&B, and more besides.

And Eccles Motor Transport was not a company to let the grass grow under its feet. In the interwar years it was producing luxury touring models – one of which got as far as the Arctic Circle – and continued to dominate the market until the early 1950s.

That was when the Streamlite Rover – a forerunner to the more famous Sprite – began to find favour. Built of lighter and cheaper materials and divided inside into multiple rooms, it broke free from the old box shape and set the template for every caravan since.

The even larger models that followed came with two axles instead of one, and ushered in what many consider to be the golden age of caravanning. They even had built-in toilets – an en suite luxury not available in many hotels or even houses of the period.

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