`The minute I set eyes on it in the field, I knew it had potential. It had been painted bottle green, the wheels weren't safe and the shaft was missing but the romantic notion of owning a gypsy caravan and travelling the country took hold. I made a deal with the owner for £7, 10 shillings."
Aidan Rogers remembers with nostalgia, the day he bought his Romany gypsy caravan in Carlingford, Co Louth in 1964. The bottle green paint has since been stripped from the caravan's timbers and replaced by traditional Romany russets and golds. Authentic wooden wheels were fitted by one of the few wheelwrights left in this country, Alfred Woods from Duleek, Co Meath, and the harness was made by Sam Greer of Poolbeg Street, in Dublin's city centre. Appleby gypsy fair in Cumbria, England was trawled for the ornaments that adorn the interior.
"Gypsies traditionally tend to like bright colours and gold leaf," says Aidan, a businessman from Dundalk, Co Louth who carried out a lot of the restoration work himself. "I found polished steel pots and pans, masonware and the kind of Staffordshire ornaments once popular with gypsies, and an authentic Queenie stove which was a fixture of all these caravans."
Far from being a museum piece, the caravan, pulled by either a placid piebald gelding called Prince or a mare called Rosie, takes to rural lanes for two to three weeks each year when Aidan and his friend John Evans, a horse dealer from Dundalk, leave the rat race behind and head for the west of Ireland.
"I couldn't do it without John. You need two people and it's not my wife Maureen's type of holiday. The caravan is self-contained and is an extraordinarily peaceful way of travelling. You travel at four mph and in contrast to a car at 60 mph you can really reflect and get into the slow lane."
The restoration of the caravan began in earnest 10 years ago when he came across a book by author Denis Harvey called English Gypsy Caravans. He travelled to Dorking in Surrey to meet Harvey who encouraged him to go ahead with the restoration. Up until then the caravan had languished in the garden of a relative near Carlingford harbour.
"I discovered my caravan was made in the UK in 1925 and is known as a Ledge caravan. Other well-known makes were the Reading, the Barrell Top and the Burton. Romany gypsies bought them from English manufacturers and often Irish travellers went over to England and bought them second hand," he says.
Indeed his caravan was once owned by an Irish travelling family who sold it on to Sam Armstrong, a farm contractor who travelled the farms of the country with his thrashing mill. During the war Mr Armstrong took it to the top of Annaverna in the Cooley mountains where he would harvest turf by day and sleep in the caravan at night.
"In England there are still half a dozen families travelling in horse drawn wagons. Other families bring them to fairs like Appleby fair, the biggest gypsy fair, where women tell fortunes in them. They are a kind of status symbol. There is a man in Preston who makes replica caravans that sell for £15,000 plus."
Aidan Roger's Ledge caravan is believed to be the only one of its kind in Ireland. When not in use it sits at the side of his house in Blackrock, Co Louth. "I don't cover it up, it gives me immense pleasure just looking at it. The National Museum has a collection of horse-drawn vehicles but it has no caravans. When I'm too stiff to travel I would like it to go somewhere people can enjoy it."
