I knew/know very little about these living vans before starting this journey. But like many old things, they are getting fewer and fewer and the more I learned, the more I wanted my own.
There seem to be a few classes of vans for living in, ploughing vans were lived in by those working the land with ploughs and other farm machinery (obviously) and moved from field to field/farm to farm? by migrant workers. The vans were made by the same manufacturers who made the ploughs and machinery - hence the Fowler van made by the Fowler company who made Fowler ploughs and machinery.
Along with the 'living vans' pulled by steam rollers for road making and repairs, vans I've seen are predominately timber clad - both inside and out, with curved corrugated tin or iron roofs. Simply furnished inside, with a bed or two bunks at one end, and a woodburning stove at the other. They generally have a fold down table against one wall, and a cupboard or two. Some have storage boxes - both internally and externally - presumably the external
Shepherds huts are incredibly often seen as the latest garden accessory but originally a very simple tin roofed and tin sided van for the shepherd to live in, with a bunk built over lamb pens for orphan or weakly lambs to be housed in and fed by the shepherd at night. Shepherds huts seem to be considerably smaller - presumably pulled by much smaller tractors than the larger vans moved around by road rollers.
What I want to know is who made my van and where has it come from?
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