Company History of Horse-Drawn Funerals

When Thomas Cribb started the family undertaking business in 1881all funerals were horse-drawn and by the beginning of the 20th century the company had eight Belgian Black stallions – traditional funeral horses from Friesland in the Netherlands.

Towards the end of the Second World War the nature of the business was changing and the company no longer owned any horses because of the mourners’ preference for cars and the fact it was now impossible to import Fresian horses into Britain due to the German occupation of Holland.

Nearly half a century later, in 1985, an impulse purchase of an old funeral carriage led to us re-introducing horse-drawn funerals and for the company to begin, once again, importing magnificent Belgian Blacks from the Netherlands.

Today we have twelve magnificent Belgian Blacks at our stables in Essex and more than thirteen carriages including three Marston hearses, two Dottridge hearses, two mourning coaches and a landau.

A dedicated team of coachmen and grooms maintain our horses and carriages to a very high standard. Time permitting, we also show our horses and we have won many awards at national shows for detail and presentation of the highest quality and are known to be the premier ‘turnout’.

T Cribb & Sons - Present and Future

Although funerals are still a fundamental part of our business T Cribb & Sons, over recent years, have, developed, or are in the process of developing, new companies under the T Cribb & Sons banner. Our current and future services are as follows:

T Cribb & Sons – Funeral Directors

Established in 1881 this is the core business of T Cribb & Sons where our priority is to ensure that we offer a wide and varied range of funerals and associated services and to fulfil every bereaved family’s expectations, whatever these may be.

Link to T Cribb & Sons website www.tcribb.co.uk

T Cribb & Sons – Carriage Masters

In 1985 we re-introduced horse-drawn funerals as part of our service. Not only do we offer these majestic funerals to our own bereaved families but we also provide a trade service to other funeral directors.

Link to Tcs-horses website www.tcs-horses.co.uk

T Cribb & Sons – TCS Exhumation Services

This recently established company is designed to offer a quick and efficient cemetery and crypt clearance as well as a renovation service. It is the formulation of two disciplines – archaeology and funerary direction. We will remove and re-bury remains from graves found at building sites as well as from existing crypts and cemeteries to make more space in over-crowded cemeteries and churchyards. We recognise that sites deserve to be recorded before being altered, replaced or removed so all our projects are subjected to the highest level of recording and the results integrated into a national database of funerary styles.

Link to Tcsservices website www.tcsservices.co.uk

T Cribb & Sons – Ghana

The demographics of our funeral business are always evolving and we are proud to offer funeral services for all religions and to observe all customs. In recent years increasingly we have been asked to repatriate many bodies to various countries and in particular to Ghana. In order to improve our service both in England and in Ghana we are currently building a large mortuary in Dobro, in the District of Nsawam to place repatriated bodies, as well as bodies from local communities, in a safe environment prior to funerals taking place.

Link to Tcs-ghana website – www.tcs-ghana.co.uk

T Cribb & Sons – National Funeral Museum

T.Cribb & Sons are also responsible for establishing the National Funeral Museum. We are in the process of constructing a purpose built museum to house our collection of artefacts associated with funeral history.

The Museum is closely linked to the European Federation of Funeral Museums.

Link to Tcs-museum website – www.tcs-nationalfuneralmuseum.co.uk