Mounting Block - Decline in Use of Mounting Blocks

Decline in Use of Mounting Blocks

Mounting blocks were a common feature up until the late 18th-century. They are still used at equestrian centres, but are no longer a common feature of inns, churches, farms, country houses, etc. in the United Kingdom, where they were once almost an obligatory feature.

The generally poor condition of roads up until the late 17th-century in Scotland for example, meant that most passenger transport by horse was literally on horseback. For instance, wheeled vehicles were practically unknown to farmers in Ayrshire until the end of the 17th century, and prior to this sledges were used to haul loads as wheeled vehicles were useless. The roads had been mere tracks and such bridges as there were could only take pedestrians, men on horseback or pack-animals. The first recorded wheeled vehicles to be used in Ayrshire were carts offered gratis to labourers working on Riccarton Bridge, Kilmarnock, in 1726.

Once wheeled vehicles became commonplace the need for horse mounting blocks would have greatly decreased, thus mounting block as a permanent fixture went out with changing times. You didn't need one for getting into carriages, and thus as roads got better and fewer people rode, the need decreased. With the invention of the automobile, the need for the public mounting block vanished and they now are used exclusively by equestrians or retained as historic features at old inns, kirks, etc.

In the 1860s, those mounting blocks that remained in London e.g. Bayswater, were thought of as quaint and old fashioned "in the true style of olden times".