A Vardo or Gypsy Wagon is a traditional horse-drawn wagon used by English Roma people (gypsies). The design of the vardo included large wheels running outside the body of the van, which slopes outwards considerably towards the eaves. Originally Romnichals would travel on foot, or with light, horse-drawn carts, typical of other Roma groups or would build "bender" tents - so called because they were made from supple branches which they bent inwards to support a waterproof covering. These tents are still favored by New Age Travelers groups.

Wagons as a form of living accommodation (as opposed to carrying people or goods): Undecorated wagons were first used in France in 1810 by non-Romany circus troupes. Large transport wagons combined storage space and living space into one vehicle, and were pulled by teams of horses. By the 1800s wagons became smaller, reducing the number of horses required, and around the mid- to late-nineteenth century (1840-1870), Romnichals in Britain started using wagons that incorporated living spaces on the inside, and characteristically made them their own. There is a description of the vardo in the work of Charles Dickens, who described Mrs. Jarley's van with its bed, stove, closet or larder and several chests The Old Curiosity Shop:

One half of it... was carpeted, and so partitioned off at the further end as to accommodate a sleeping-place, constructed after the fashion of a berth on board ship, which was shaded, like the windows, with fair white curtains... The other half served for a kitchen, and was fitted up with a stove whose small chimney passed through the roof. It also held a closet or larder, several chests, a great pitcher of water, and a few cooking-utensils and articles of crockery. These latter necessaries hung upon the walls, which in that portion of the establishment devoted to the lady of the caravan, were ornamented with such gayer and lighter decorations as a triangle and a couple of well-thumbed tambourines.