RURAL DISTRICT SUB-POSTMASTERS. RURAL POSTMEN. INCIDENTS.
The Bristol postal area is an extensive one, the distance from point to
point being thirty miles, with width ranging from five to twelve miles.
It is bounded on one side by the river Severn, from a point about five
miles below Sharpness to a point close to Portishead; thence the
boundary stretches across country to the Mendip Hills, up to Cheddar
Cliffs; then from a point four miles north-east of Wells to
Newton-St.-Loe, near Bath; across the river Avon, under Lansdown, thence
in a line by Pucklechurch, Iron Acton, and Thornbury across to the
starting-point on the Severn. The large rural area is for the greater
part agricultural in character, but there are collieries and stone
quarries in some few districts.
At the Bristol town and rural sub-Post Offices there are 554 assistants
of all kinds employed. Many rural sub-postmasters act as postmen; in
the main it is a healthy occupation, and proves a very good antidote to
sedentary employment, although there are hardships to be borne, as the
toil has to be undergone in all weathers--the scorching sun of summer,
the pitiless cold of winter--in rain, hail, and snow. In connection With
the Early Closing Movement, at some of the outer Post Offices business
is suspended at 5.0 on one day in the week--usually Wednesday.
In the suburban and rural districts there are 105 sub-Post Offices, and
78 of them are letter delivery offices, served by an aggregate number of
226 postmen. Of the 78 districts, 42 have two daily deliveries 28 three,
and 6 four, with about a corresponding number of collections.
The sorting clerks and telegraphists at head-quarters gain some sort of
acquaintance with sub-postmasters through daily communication by mail
bag and wire; also in the passage of reports and counter-reports; but
occasionally people performing postal work throughout the extensive
Bristol district are brought into closer harmony and touch with each
other by means of social functions, such as "outings" and Bristol
Channel steamer trips, when town and country officials take their
pastime in company, and the sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses of
the Somersetshire portion of the district get acquainted with those of
the Gloucestershire side, and all with the head office officials. By
these means of friendly intercourse and interchange of kindly feeling,
the service is much benefited. As an indication of this exchange of
courtesy, the felicitations exchanged by telegram when the first annual
trip by steamer to Ilfracombe was taken ran thus:--
"From Postmaster, Bristol.--Pleasant journey to you. Long may
Sub-Postmasterly friendship continue."
"From Sub-Postmasters at Ilfracombe.--Telegram received. Thanks for good
wishes. Have just drank your good health. Pleasant trip. Regret your
absence extremely.--Sub-Postmasters."
The Bristol Post Office has only recently had electric light introduced,
but the squire of East Harptree had long before set the good example of
progress by having the Post Office in his village illuminated by
electricity. In the Bristol area very many villages have their little
counterpart of the huge combination shops in London, where the villager
is enabled to procure everything that his modest income will allow him
to purchase. It is at these village "Whiteleys" that the Post Office is
generally to be found, and a surveying officer may soon become well
versed in the qualities of bacon, cheese, bread, flour, candles, and get
a knowledge of rakes, prongs, and besoms, without much difficulty. In
other instances no business except that of Post Office work is carried
on.
The picture of the sub-Post Office at Cribbs Causeway, five miles from
Bristol, may give our readers who are "in cities pent" an idea of a
delightful place for the sale of postage stamps and postal orders and
the distribution of letters. This unique Post Office has few houses
anywhere near it, but it serves a large, albeit very sparsely populated,
area. Some of its interest rests in the fact that it was formerly the
half-way inn on the once important highway from Bristol to New Passage,
for the ferry over the Severn into South Wales. Some of our elderly
readers may probably recollect it as the stopping stage of the coaches
which ran prior to the introduction of the railway system. The sub-Post
Office, which stands on high ground, is held by two sisters, who went to
it as a health resort from a farm in the low-lying Severn marsh. They
act as postwomen, and brisk exercise and the early morning dew has
brought such roses to their cheeks as would be envied by their Post
Office sisters whose fate it is to reside in smoke-begrimed regions.
[Illustration: CRIBBS CAUSEWAY POST OFFICE.]
Although some of the Bristol district villages are situated at a long
distance from town and remote from main roads, yet only one of the Post
Offices presents the primitive condition of having a thatched roof. None
of the rural postmen now avail themselves on their journeys of the
services of that faithful creature, the donkey; but the last animal so
used was on the road until 1890, when its master, poor Sims, the
Congresbury to Shipham postman, shuffled off this mortal coil. Times
change, and our manners change with them; so also do our tests for gold
coins. At the Wrington Post Office there are brass testing weights, for
sovereigns and half-sovereigns, inscribed "Royal Mint, 1843," such as
have not been observed by the writer at any other Post Office, either in
the Bristol district or in London. A certain sub-postmistress in the
district has for many years been in the habit of keeping her sheets of
reserve postage stamps in a large Family Bible. Not that she is
irreverent--indeed, she is a pious woman,--but, being a lone widow, she
has kept them in that manner for safety, as she imagines that no burglar
would look for them in such a depository.
[Illustration: MR. EDWARD BIDDLE.
(_Sub-Postmaster of Rudgeway._)
_Photographed by Mr. Protheroe, Narrow Wine Street, Bristol, from an oil
painting._]
A notable man in his day was Edward Biddle, on the Thornbury side of
Bristol. Mr. Biddle was sub-postmaster of Rudgeway for over forty years,
and occupied the post until his death in 1889, at the ripe age of 91
years, when he was succeeded by his daughter, and she, in turn, was
succeeded by his son, William Biddle, who still holds the appointment.
Prior to becoming sub-postmaster, Mr. Edward Biddle was "Pike" keeper at
Stone, and used to pay L752 per annum for his post. There he had to open
his gate to no fewer than twenty mail coaches daily, on their way
between Bristol and Gloucester. At Rudgeway he carried on the joint
occupation of sub-postmaster and innkeeper, at a tavern where the Post
Office business had been conducted for many years before he succeeded to
it; but the innkeeping business had in course of time to be given up,
under Post Office regulations. Mr. Elstone, of Alveston House, wrote
expressing his satisfaction that the Post Office was to be carried on at
a private house, and not as previously at a "roadside pothouse," which
all the district considered a very improper place. At that time John
Blann and other stage carriers drove their unwieldy waggons, drawn by
four strong cart-horses at a walking pace, along the Gloucester turnpike
road. The waggons were indeed the goods trains of olden times. The
present sub-postmaster, the son of Edward Biddle, who has had for many
years to use "Shanks's" pony in the delivery of letters, was engaged in
olden times in going on horseback down to the Passage to take, in
saddlebags, the mails for South Wales and receive them therefrom. As
late as 1850, letters from Rudgeway for Bristol were impressed with a
stamp thus:--
BRISTOL
4 JA 50.
BY POST.
Mr. James Tiley, the village blacksmith of Clutton, now an octogenarian,
calls to mind that sixty years ago the letters for Clutton, Temple
Cloud, Stowey, Bishop Sutton and adjacent districts were delivered from
Old Down, a hamlet on the main coach road from Bath to Wells, distant
from Tyburn Turnpike, London, 121 miles. Mr. Tiley has had the luxury of
paying 10d. for a letter brought from London by the above means; and as
it was dear to him at the time, it is dear to him now in another sense
as a reminiscence of the past. Mr. Tiley recalls the sending of letters
of the district by waggoners to Bristol or Bath to save the postage, and
slyly remarks: "So stupid were the waggoners that as often as not they
brought the letters back again, having forgotten to--what Post Office
people now term--'properly dispose of them.'" Also that Joseph Tippett,
a postman of the olden time, was brutally assaulted on Stowey Hill, and
nearly lost his life and his letters. His assailants were discovered
and were transported for life. The Old Down postman was timed to reach
Temple Cloud Bridge at 12.0, and always blew horn or whistle to let the
village schoolmaster know the time of day. During the Bristol riots the
arrival of the mail every morning was eagerly awaited by persons far and
near, anxious to hear the latest news.
So recently as the year 1867, a postman had to trudge right away from
Bristol to the distant village of Chew Stoke, having to breast the steep
hill of Dundry and pass through Chew Magna on his way. All the letters
and newspapers then delivered at Bishopsworth, Dundry, Chew Magna and
Chew Stoke were carried by this man. Now, with the introduction of the
parcel post and a cheaper letter post, and consequently increased
weight, the morning mail is carried in a mail cart, and that service is
supplemented by two or three other despatches to Chew Magna and Chew
Stoke by train _via_ Pensford. The hamlets of Breach Hill, Moreton and
Herons Green were at that time unserved by the postman officially, and
if delivered privately by him he charged for them at the rate of an
extra penny each. The residents in those outlying districts who did not
get their letters delivered in that way, and who did not call for them
at the Chew Stoke Post Office, usually obtained them--two, three, or
four days old--from the postman on Sundays, who stationed himself at the
church door to oblige such worshippers. Some of the older country
postmen say that in by-gone days the poor people, unable to read
themselves, considered it part of a postman's duty to read their letters
for them, and they looked for sympathy from the postmen in case of
receipt of bad news. The Chew Stoke postman had a walk, in and out, of
over twenty miles, and had to carry whatever load there was for the
route. The pay attached to the post was small. This was in the good (?)
days of not so long ago, but the postman who then had to take the
journey is by no means anxious for a return to them, for now he receives
double the amount of pay then allowed. He was out from five o'clock in
the morning till seven or eight o'clock at night; but now he performs
his eight hours' duty straight off, and has, therefore, more time at
home for his private purposes.
When, about eight years since, there was a deep fall of snow in this
district, the West Town postman, who is likewise sub-postmaster, very
considerably added to his labours by carrying tea, sugar, medicine, and
even bread to the people on the Mendips, who were snowed up and deserted
by baker, butcher, grocer, and indeed by everyone except the faithful
Queen's messenger. The floods of November, 1894, which proved very
disastrous in the West of England, interfered in no small degree with
Post Office arrangements in the rural districts around Bristol. In some
villages the roads were submerged from three to four feet, and it was
impossible for the public to get to the letter boxes, the postmen and
postwomen being, perhaps, the greatest sufferers. In order to avoid
flooded roads, it was necessary to change routes and make long detours.
Many postmen were compelled to wade through the water waist deep, whilst
others had to be driven through in horse and cart. The inhabitants and
farmers in many places kindly lent their horses and carts for the
purpose, and but for these kindnesses the letters would have been
delayed for many hours. In spite of all difficulties, the letters were
generally delivered without much delay, and only in a few cases had the
letters to be held over for any length of time until the waters had
subsided.
[Illustration: LETTER BOX AT WINTERBOURNE.]
A tit made her nest in the bottom of a Post Office letter box at
Winterbourne, near Bristol, laid her eggs, and notwithstanding that
letters were posted in the box and that the box was cleared by the
postman everyday, the bird tenaciously held to her nest and brought up
five young tits, two of which perished in their attempts to get out of
the box by means of the small posting aperture through which their
mother had squeezed so frequently, carrying with her all the materials
for the nest. The three survivors flew off one day when the door of the
box was purposely left open for a time by the obliging postman portrayed
in the picture.
That all is not gold that glitters has been recently brought home to
three or four of the sub-postmasters in the Bristol district, a
"sharper" having presented coins gilded to represent sovereigns and
half-sovereigns, and obtained Postal Orders in exchange for them.
Through the vigilance of the Bristol police the offender was eventually
taken into custody, and, having been sentenced at the Assizes to six
months' imprisonment, he had plenty of time to reflect on his offences.
A bright, shining new farthing was received at the Bristol head office,
sent inadvertently in a remittance from a sub-office as a
half-sovereign, and mixed up with coins of that value, only to be
detected, however, by the vigilant check clerk. The sub-postmaster who
accepted it in error for a coin of more precious metal, and did not
discover the mistake even in preparing the remittance, had to bear the
loss.
One sub-postmaster, who has now departed this life, was wont to furnish
his explanations and reports in rhyme, a course which was tolerated on
account of its singularity and of the writer's zeal and known devotion
to his duty. The following is an example:--
To the POSTMASTER OF BRISTOL:
"I willingly answer the question
Respecting the length of the track
From Shirehampton P.O. to Kingsweston
House front door, or lodge at the back;
But respecting the relative merits
Of back door, or door at the front,
As delivery door, I aver it's
A question I cannot but shunt.
To return to the question of distance:
Suppose that the birds of the air,
Sworn in as Post Office assistants,
To Kingsweston would messages bear:
As straight through their skiey dominions
They flew from front door to front door,
The length of the track of their pinions
In yards would be 1224.
When a featherless biped is bearer,
And through the lone woods his path picks,
The feet of this weary wayfarer
Cover yards quite 1466.
Should the wight have a key, there's a second
Way thro' the sunk fence's locked gate,
And then his poor feet must be reckoned
To make yards 1388.
As regards the back door, I pass by it;
The back lodge itself is much less
Than a mile, howsomdever you try it,
By Shirehampton Post Office Express.
I do not pretend to correctness,
To one yard or even a dozen;
No need for extreme circumspectness,
The margin's too ample to cozen.
I'm obliged by your flattering reference,
And when you've another dispute on,
I shall still be, with all proper deference,
Your obedient Servant,--G. NEWTON."
The turnpike gates in the neighbourhood of Bristol were abolished in
October, 1867, and the consequence was that the proprietors of the
various omnibuses by which day mail bags were conveyed to and from
several of the districts around Bristol applied for, and obtained, a
money payment in lieu of the tolls, the exemption, from which had formed
the sole remuneration for the services performed.
The Bristol mail carts running to the rural districts, by permission of
the Post Office, carry for the newspaper proprietors bundles of papers,
weighing on an average on ordinary days 40 lbs., and on Saturdays 80
lbs. The enterprise of the Bristol newspaper proprietors in circulating
by private means the many thousands of the newspapers which they daily
print is evidenced, from the circumstance that they find it necessary to
commit to the agency of the Post Office only about 160 copies for
distribution, and that chiefly in remote rural districts.
Sub-postmasters in the rural districts of Bristol attain to great ages.
The sub-postmaster of Mangotsfield, who had long since passed
three-score years and ten, had his cross to bear, having at 60 entirely
lost his eyesight. Although blind, and unable to work in consequence, he
quaintly appeared in his apron to the end, and said that having worn it
for so many years he did not feel happy without it. A daughter acted as
his deputy, and mitigated, as far as possible, his hard lot. At his
funeral some hundreds of people, representing various religious and
other bodies, attended to pay their last tribute of respect to him.
At Bitton, a village midway between Bristol and Bath, there died
Sub-postmaster James Brewer, in the 87th year of his age, and in the
fifty-seventh year of his Post Office service. It was more pleasant to
enter this Post Office and find the old man calmly smoking his
churchwarden pipe before the fire, cheery and chatty, than to have such
a welcome as that afforded at another office by the exhibition on the
Post Office counter of a miniature coffin and artificial wreaths for
graves. Another worthy of local Post Office fame has lately passed away
in the person of Join Warburton, aged 84, who for thirty years was the
sub-postmaster of Henbury, and who for five years was his daughter's
adviser after her succession to the appointment. The sub-postmaster of
the village of High Littleton lost an arm some fifty years ago, but
notwithstanding that affliction he manages with adroitness to sell
postage stamps and issue postal orders to the public. This will not be
considered a very great feat, considering that he has been for years a
crack one-handed shot, and even now, at the age of 70, can bowl over a
pheasant or a rabbit quite as readily as many of our sportsmen who have
the use of both arms.
Sub-postmistresses of great longevity are also to be found. One dame
(Martha Pike), now in her 93rd year, represented the Department until
quite recently in the charming little village of Wraxall. When nearly
90 years old she had a three hour letter round every morning up hill and
down dale, and she even trudged a mile and a half to fetch a letter and
parcel mail from the railway station. The sub-postmistress of Stoke
Bishop died at the age of 84; she and her father had held the Post
Office in the village for over fifty years. An equally remarkable case
was that of Hannah Vowles, the sub-postmistress of Frenchay, who, after
performing the active duties of that position in the village of Frenchay
for forty-seven years, resigned when within five years of 100 years old.
In her youth she lived for some time in the West Indies; but she gave up
her employment there in order to return home to support her mother, who
was 90 years of age when she died. Mrs. Hannah was succeeded in the
office of sub-postmistress by Miss Kate Vowdes, a relation, who had
already been postwoman in the same district forty-two years!
[Illustration: HANNAH BREWER.
(_Postwoman._)]
Hannah Brewer is one of the Bristol Post Office worthies. Her father was
the sub-postmaster of the village of Bitton alluded to herein. Hannah
commenced to deliver letters in the hamlets and at the farmhouses near
Bitton when a mere child, and continued to do so during all the years
our gracious Sovereign has sat on the throne. Recently, however, she had
to give up the work, as, having attained the advanced age of 72 years
and walked her quarter of a million of miles, she felt that she ought
to take life more easily than hitherto. In distance her round was eleven
miles daily, and the route was a very trying one on account of the steep
hills she had to traverse, and of great exposure to the sun in summer,
and to the wind, frost, and snow in winter. It may be interesting to
record that Hannah Brewer, although she had to serve a district sparsely
populated, was never robbed, stopped, nor molested in any way. She was
the recipient of the first official waterproof clothing issued to
postwomen in England, and in her picture she is represented as wearing
it. She only occasionally made visits even to places so near as Bath or
Bristol, and was, as a rule, a stay at home.
She was not a great reader of the newspapers, but persons on her round
looked to her as an oracle, and derived information from her as to
passing events. Hannah naively says that, as regards Christmas boxes,
she fared very well in olden times, but they were not so plentiful in
her later years. Hannah, through her devotion to her father when he was
alive, and through her assiduous attention to her duties as a humble
servant of the Crown, had gained the respect of all those who knew her,
both in her native village and on the long round she daily had to
traverse. As she served the Post Office throughout her long life (her
memory carrying her back to the days when the letters reached Bitton by
mail coach and a "single" letter from London cost 10d.), it is
gratifying that in her old age, when unable to continue to do her daily
round, the Lords of the Treasury, under her exceptional circumstances,
granted her half-pay pension, a sum which, with her savings, will serve
to maintain her until the end of her days. The writer has had few more
pleasurable duties than that which he undertook of presenting Hannah, in
her neat and trim cottage, with her first pension warrant.
At the celebration of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee in the village, the
opportunity was taken, in the midst of the festivities, to make a
presentation of an elegant marble clock and purse to Miss Brewer. The
inscription ran: "Presented during Her Majesty's Diamond Jubilee,
together with a purse of money, by the inhabitants of the postal
district of Bitton, Gloucestershire, to Miss Hannah Brewer, postwoman,
upon her retirement, having served this office from the commencement of
Queen Victoria's reign."
Even Post Office surveyors are sometimes the subject of little jokes on
the part of their subordinates. An assistant surveyor, when testing a
rural postman's walk, said that if he had arranged the round originally,
he should have taken a shortcut across the fields to a certain little
hamlet so as to serve it before instead of after a more distant place,
when the postman drily said that he should not have done anything of the
kind, as there was a rhine about 18 ft. wide and very deep, which could
not well be got over or through, and, turning to the surveyor, he
remarked: "Evidently you never were a postman." The humour of this
incident lies in the fact that the surveyors have always been drawn from
the elite of the Service. A certain imperious surveyor visited a
sub-office for the purpose of reprimanding the sub-postmaster for some
delinquency, and after soundly rating the individual he addressed, and
refusing to hear a single word in explanation, he, when his harangue
was over, was coolly informed that he had made a slight mistake, as the
circumstance referred to another sub-office altogether.
On a certain occasion recently, on entering a Post Office the writer
heard proceeding from a back room a voice, recognisable as that of the
sub-postmaster, shouting out a greeting in his (the writer's) Christian
name: "Come in, Robert." Well, the sub-postmaster thought he saw through
the partly-curtained glass in the door a friend of that name, and meant
no disrespect to his surveyor-postmaster.
On calling at another little Post Office on a Saturday, the aged
sub-postmistress was washing her stone floor--down on her knees in
business-like attitude. Without looking up, her greeting to the writer
was: "Halloa! I thought you had been to Jericho. You have not been to
see me for such a long time!" That salutation was rather embarrassing;
but on getting to the perpendicular the old lady was the confused party,
as she had thought her visitor was a local resident who occasionally
looked in to have a cheery word with her.
It would seem that postal improvements in the Bristol district have been
carried almost as far as is needful; indeed, in one district, not seven
miles from the city, contemplated improvements whereby letters would be
delivered an hour earlier in the morning and might be posted two hours
later at night, and a day mail in and out be afforded, were declined by
the parish authorities in council and by memorial from the villagers
generally. In this rural hollow the people are very clannish, and rather
than let their postwoman suffer a loss of two shillings a week, which
the change involved, they were content to forego improved postal
facilities, and were not greatly stirred by the "lasinesse of posts" as,
according to history, was King James of old.
While Bristol is ever expanding and while splendid buildings are being
erected, there are not wanting places within a short distance of the
ancient city where there are signs of decadence, as indicated by houses
unoccupied and cottages in ruins, and by shrinkage in the number of
letters. At Stanton Drew, where some thirty large stones alone remain to
mark a site where there probably stood a splendid Druidical Temple, the
postal arrangements a few years since were not in a satisfactory
condition. Not unlike the story which has recently been going the round
of the newspapers, that a sub-postmaster of an Oxfordshire village fixed
this notice up: "Have gone fishing. Will be back in time to sell
stamps," the sub-postmistress of this Somersetshire hamlet went away for
days without putting up any notice whatever, and left her son to supply
the inhabitants with postage stamps when he got home in the evening from
his work as an agricultural labourer. Still, people did not complain, so
that they may be regarded as accessories to the sub-postmistress's
delinquencies. There was, however, a postal super-session in that
village!
There is still in the rural service a postman who labours under the
disabilities of having only one arm and of being unable to read or
write. He has not a very extensive delivery, and so his pockets are made
to do duty in the place of the faculty of reading. The left breast
pocket indicates that letters placed in it are for Cliff Farm, those in
the right breast pocket for Rush Hill Farm, several other pockets
serving in like manner.
From very old official books sent into store on the change of holders of
sub-offices, it is noticeable that the writing of fifty years ago was
much superior to that of the present day, indicating that
sub-postmasters of olden time either took more interest in caligraphy
than their successors, or possibly had more leisure in which to make the
necessary entries than is afforded in the present period of high
pressure.
'Tis strange that it was so, as at the time the steel pen had not ousted
the quill. Even so short a time as forty years since a new intrant to
the Post Office, hailing from the Emerald Isle, had, like all other
new-comers, to enter his name and address in the Order Book on his first
introduction to St. Martin's-le-Grand. A steel pen was handed to him,
with which he dallied for a time, and when asked why he did not proceed,
said: "Sure, I was waiting for a feather."
The institution for the care of consumption started in this country, and
known as Nordrach-upon-Mendip, is in the Bristol postal district at one
of its most distant points on the range of the Mendip Hills, at an
altitude of 850 feet above sea level. It has already played an important
part as regards the Bristol Post Office, inasmuch as a consumptive
telegraph clerk has benefited considerably from the new treatment, and
has indeed left the institution as cured. It is not generally known that
until recently there existed a small Convalescent Home on the Mendips,
but "Cosy Corner," founded and maintained by Sir Edward Hill, K.C.B.,
stood there as such, and it served a good part as regards a postal
servant. A postman employed at the Bristol railway station as mail
porter, who had suffered from a serious attack of typhoid fever, and who
had been verily at death's door, passed several weeks at this rural
retreat, and derived such benefit from the kind treatment he received
and from the bracing air of the district that he quite recovered from
his ailment and is now in robust health. "Cosy Corner" has now been
affiliated to Nordrach-upon-Mendip.
The rule of the Service is that coins, postage stamps, and other
articles of value picked up in a sorting office are regarded as treasure
trove and have to be handed over to the authorities for disposal; but a
letter carrier's round can hardly be regarded in the light of a Post
Office, and so a postman of the Thornbury district who at Aust Cliff,
picked up a well-preserved bronze coin with the image and superscription
of Claudius Caesar (A.D. 41-54) did not consider himself called upon to
give it up to the sub-postmaster, but disposed of it for the sum of 15s.
6d. The purchaser presented it to the Leicester Museum.
Tradition hath it that Miss Hannah More, the celebrated authoress and
philanthropist, when residing (1770) at Wrington, near Bristol, in the
churchyard of which place her remains now repose, made an arrangement
with the postman of the period whereby on passing along the road near
her residence he was to signal to her when any event of importance had
occurred. Her sitting and bedroom windows commanded a view of the walk
near which the postman had to pass, so that she could see him coming,
and she always hurried down to the wicket-gate in readiness to meet him
when he put up his flag. A son of the postman, now alive, remembers well
that his father told him that he had given the signal on the death of
Queen, Caroline. It was outside the postman's function, to wave the red
flag with which Mistress Hannah, had provided him, but Post Office
matters were not carried on so strictly in those days as under the
present regime. The Wrington postman obtained the news about important
passing events from the mail-man who rode through the village on his way
from Bristol to Axbridge. George Vowles, who died twenty-six years ago,
at the ripe age of 88 years, was the mail-man who conveyed to the
villages on his way the news of the battle of Waterloo, brought down
from London by the mail coach, which had been decorated with laurels and
flowers in honour of the great event.