The final journey

Here at Tester & Jones, we pride ourselves on supporting our families to create a funeral service that truly reflects their loved one. This isn’t just in the type of service itself but also in the way they are transported there. While many of our families opt to use our own traditional hearse, we can offer a variety of options or help people to create their own.

Over the years, we’ve had local farming families use their own vehicles – such as a steamroller or tractor to transport a coffin - while families have also used VW camper van (we know company that hires those), lorries and a motorbike with side car.

For a more ‘fun’ option, we know a company called ‘Only Fools and Hearses’ that can create a farewell Dell Boy would be proud of, utilising a yellow three-wheeler, with a yellow trailer behind for the coffin. It’s certainly made people smile over the years. The same company also offers a superbike funeral hearse, featuring a Suzuki GSXR1000 with a stunning sidecar attached for the coffin.

Over the years, our own hearse has been joined by police outriders, for a former member of the police and by motorcycle outriders, if the deceased was into their motorbikes. As ever, we’ll support families to make it work.

Some of our families opt for a horse drawn hearse. While we don’t have our own horses, we use a local firm to provide them, along with the hearse. Because the roads are busy travelling to our local crematoria, we’ll transport the coffin in our own hearse to a spot fairly close to the crematorium and transfer it safely at that point.

In years gone by, mourners would simply carry a body themselves to the burial ground. Then, when the wheel was invented, it would be transported on a ‘bier’, a sort of flat wooden frame set on wheels. Interestingly, when we’ve arranged natural burials at Eden Valley Woodland Burial Ground in Edenbridge, the team there still uses a basic bier to transport a coffin from the hearse to the burial area. This can be some distance from the entrance, but it reflects the ‘green’ credentials of the natural burial.

The word ‘hearse’ comes from the Anglo-Norman French word ‘herce’ from a harrow. Often the structure would include spikes to hold burning candles.

Later, dedicated roads, known as ‘corpse roads’ or sometimes ‘bier roads’, ‘coffin roads’ or ‘lynch ways’ were created to transport bodies. Most of these don’t exist as roads anymore but some survive as footpaths and still feature coffin stones – where people could lay a coffin down and rest for a while.

As folk began to decorate the hand-drawn hearses, they became heavier, so horses were then more often used to pull them along. In the 19^th century, funeral carriages became more ornate, featuring intricate carvings and black velvet drapes. In Victorian times, glass-side hearses became a feature, so people could see the coffin, as you typically can in a modern hearse.

With the introduction of motorised vehicles in the early 1900s, we began to see the first motorised hearses. These tended to be built around larger, more powerful, chassis and, here at Tester & Jones, our latest hearse is a Jaguar.

If you’d like to know more about your funeral options, call our team on 01892 611811.