breathe an air of competition. The old “Gee-hoes,” “Caravans,” and
“Diligences”; the “Originals” and their like, made way for the “Prince
Regent,” “Royal Union,” “Sovereign,” and “John Bull”; and to them
succeeded such suggestions of speed as the “Celerity,” “Antelope,”
“Greyhound,” “Express,” “Rocket,” and “Swallow.” Moderate charges were
hinted at in the names of the “Economist” and the “Liberal”; and a high
courage, calculated to daunt opponents, in those of the “Triumph,”
“Retaliator,” “Defiance,” and “Tartar.” The public largely benefited in
those ultimate years by the competition, as also did the turnpike tolls;
but it may be doubted whether many coach-proprietors then made much
profit. For one thing, a stage-coach running every day throughout the
year on the road as far as Birmingham paid in tolls alone £3 11_s._
9_d._ a day, in addition to the duty of a penny a mile paid by all
coaches for every four passengers they were licensed to carry,
irrespective of the places being occupied or not. Turnpike gates
encouraged Sabbatarian feeling by charging double on Sundays; so, on the
assumption that a Birmingham coach ran 365 days in the year, it would
have to pay something like £1400 in tolls alone, or to Holyhead £3400.
[Illustration: CLARK’S STEAM CARRIAGE, 1832. _From an Old Print._]
Long before railways seriously threatened to drive coaches off the road,
the steam carriages of the early motor-car period entered into a
fleeting rivalry with horses. Of these, William Clark’s steam carriage
was the most notable. It was put upon the road between London and
Birmingham in June 1832, and was a huge three-wheeled conveyance,
carrying 50 passengers, 28 inside. Little is known of this conveyance
beyond the claims made for it, which included the statements that it
could develop 100 horse-power and that the pace could be regulated at
pleasure from 1 to 50 miles an hour. Another contrivance of this kind
was Heaton’s steam carriage, of 1833, which is recorded to have made
several journeys between Birmingham and Coventry, at a speed of 8 miles
an hour, but soon faded into obscurity; probably crushed out of
commercial existence by the extravagant tolls levied on all these
mechanical inventions by road trustees, highly prejudiced against
anything of the kind.
V
Such were the conditions of coaching when rumours of a projected London
and Birmingham Railway began to be noised about in 1825, and then in
1830. “London and Birmingham” that railway was first named, although, if
the original project be closely followed, it will be seen that not
London, but Birmingham, took the initiative. London has ever lagged in
the rear. When the early Birmingham, Shrewsbury, and Chester coaches
plied between those towns and the metropolis, it was not from London
that they originated, but from the provinces; and, just in same way, it
was the Birmingham merchants to whom the idea of a railway to London
occurred, as not merely a cheaper and more expeditious way of travelling
to the capital, but an excellent means by which goods might be conveyed,
and London, as a great market for them, duly exploited. The original
organising committee was eventually joined by a body of London bankers
and financiers, and a line of country surveyed by George and Robert
Stephenson in face of a most determined opposition offered by landowners
on the way. Robert Stephenson has left an account of his difficulties,
and stated that he walked the whole distance between London and
Birmingham no fewer than twenty times. The long story of the fight in
Parliament for the Bill in 1832, of its first defeat, and of its
eventual success in 1833, is not a matter for these pages. Only let it
be noted that the opposition of the landed proprietors was bought off by
the addition of half a million sterling to the estimates for the
purchase of land along the route.
How enormous was the road and canal traffic at that time may be judged
from the statement prepared by the projectors of the railway, who put
the sum paid annually for travelling and conveyance of goods between
London and Birmingham at £800,000.
The construction of the railway was begun in June, 1834. On July 20th,
1837, the first portion was opened to Boxmoor, a distance of 24½ miles,
and on October 16th following to Tring. On April 9th, 1838, the railhead
had reached a point just beyond Bletchley, and there it stopped for some
months, owing to engineering difficulties at Roade and Kilsby. Meanwhile
the works had been pushed on from the Birmingham end, and between that
town and Rugby the line was complete. A temporary station, known as
“Denbigh Hall,” was provided near Bletchley, where the railway crossed
the Holyhead Road, and between this and Rugby the 38 miles break in the
line was traversed by a service of coaches until the following
September, when the London and Birmingham Railway was opened along its
entire length.
No one was more pleased at this than Dr. Arnold, the great Headmaster of
Rugby School, whose attitude was in strong contrast with that generally
adopted by the classes. “I rejoice to see it,” he said, “and to think
that feudality has gone for ever. It is so great a blessing to think
that any one evil is really extinct.”
This event, of course, sounded the death-knell of coaching along the
first half of the Holyhead Road, but there were those who thought the
railway must soon show its inability to beat a well-appointed coach, and
so they held on a little while longer, encouraged by some of the more
irreconcileable among travellers. The “Greyhound” and the “Albion” were
the last to go, in the early weeks of 1839, basely deserted even by
those who had egged their proprietors to such foredoomed opposition.
Edward Sherman, the great coach proprietor of the “Bull and Mouth,” who
had nine coaches on this road, was a fanatical opponent of railways, and
struggled to the last against them, losing thereby the important
carrying and van business of the London and Birmingham, secured by the
far-seeing policy of Chaplin and Horne, of the “Swan with Two Necks,”
who abandoned coaching and threw in their interest with the new order of
things. Sherman eventually saved himself by joining his interests with
the Great Western Railway.
The opening of the London and Birmingham had a great effect upon the
Irish mails and passenger traffic; for the Grand Junction Railway,
between Birmingham and Liverpool, had already been in existence since
July 1837, and thus a continuous route between London and Liverpool was
available to Post Office and public, saving many hours and much expense.
Both seized the opportunity, and everything went by train to the
Lancashire port. It seemed as though not only the Holyhead Road but
Holyhead itself was a thing of the past.
In 1846 the London and Birmingham and the Grand Junction Railways
amalgamated, under the title of the London and North-Western Railway,
and the Liverpool route might thus have been thought settled for all
time; but in the meanwhile two separate lines had been authorised—one
from Crewe to Chester, and another from Chester to Holyhead. By the
completion of the second of these (in March 1850) Holyhead was brought
back to its old importance, and is once more on the mail route between
London and Dublin. Alterations on the main line have long since left
Birmingham on one side, and the “Wild Irishman” now goes from Rugby by
way of Nuneaton and Tamworth to Stafford, Crewe, and Chester.
VI
The Holyhead and the Great North Roads are identical as far as Barnet,
and the first landmark on the way is the “Angel.” Every one knows the
“Angel,” Islington. It is a great deal more than a public-house, and has
attained the dignity of a geographical expression. Any teetotaller can
afford to know the “Angel,” and the acquaintance is no more a stigma
than an intimacy with the English Channel or the North Foreland. Five
roads meet at this spot—for seventy years or so the meeting and starting
point of omnibuses to and from all parts of North London. Nothing
strikes the foreigner with greater astonishment than that our omnibus
routes start from or end at some public-house, and that the “Angel,” the
“Elephant and Castle,” the “Eyre Arms,” and the “Horns,” should be
household names in different parts of London. The intelligent foreigner
goes away and writes scathingly upon what he considers an evidence of
drunkenness rampant in all classes of English society, and does not stop
to enquire the origin of the custom, to be found far back in omnibus
history, when many public-houses had convenient stables, and omnibus
proprietors had none.
The “Angel” is not in Islington at all, but just within the parish of
Clerkenwell. How it came to be just inside the Clerkenwell boundary is
told in the legend of a pauper being found dead in what was then called
Back Road, now the Liverpool Road, at that time in the great parish of
St. Mary, Islington (which by the way, is the largest and most populous
parish in England, numbering over 350,000 souls), but now, with the
“Angel” in that of St. John’s, Clerkenwell. Islington refused to bury
the pauper and Clerkenwell performed that duty, afterwards claiming the
land.
The modern “Angel,” built somewhere about 1870, before public-houses
became Elizabethan, Jacobean, or Queen Annean, is frankly a public-house
in appearance, like the rebuilt “Elephant and Castle” and others, and
carries in its aspect no reminiscence of coaching times. It has been
left for the proprietors in recent years to grow somewhat ashamed of
that fact, for, painted on tiles, there now appears on the wall of its
entrance lobby one of those quasi-historical pictures, that have of late
begun to decorate the entrance walls of our otherwise unredeemed gin
palaces. By means of these tile-pictures those patrons who are not too
far gone in intoxication may learn something of local or national
history and topography. In the case of the “Angel,” the subject selected
is that of the starting of the Holyhead Mail from the old house, whose
frontage, pictured from old prints, bears the inscription, “For
Gentlemen and Families,” and at whose windows the gentlemen and families
are accordingly observed to be sitting, enjoying the scene. It is not
conceivable that any one should now hope to find pleasure in doing the
like at these modern windows that nowadays light billiard-rooms, and
look down upon a busy scene of omnibuses and tramcars; but perhaps even
what we rightly consider to be a sordid confluence of traffic may come
to have a retrospective romance of its own in, say, the twenty-first
century. Exactly what the “Angel” was like in 1812 may be seen from the
accompanying illustration by Pollard, of the illuminations on the night
of the King’s birthday in that year. The Holyhead Mail is prominent in
front of two others drawn up before the house.
[Illustration:
THE “ANGEL,” ISLINGTON. MAIL COACHES AND ILLUMINATIONS ON NIGHT OF THE
KING’S BIRTHDAY, 1812.
_From a Print after J. Pollard._
]
A few paces north stood the at one time equally famous “Peacock,” and
the not altogether obscure “White Lion”; coaching inns both, but long
since rebuilt as mere “publics.” “All coaches going anywhere north
called at the ‘Peacock,’” says Colonel Birch-Reynardson. “As they came
up, the old hostler, or a man, whoever he was, called out their names as
they arrived on the scene. Up they come through the fog, but our old
friend knows them all. Now ‘York Highflier,’ now ‘Leeds Union,’ now
‘York Express,’ now ‘Rockingham,’ now ‘Stamford Regent,’ now ‘Truth and
Daylight,’ and others which I forget, all with their lamps lit, and all
smoking and steaming, so that you could hardly see the horses. Off they
go. One by one as they get their vacant places filled up, the guard on
one playing ‘Off she goes!’ on another, ‘Oh, dear, what can the matter
be?’ on another, ‘When from great Londonderry’; on another, ‘The
flaxen-headed ploughboy’; in fact, all playing different tunes almost at
the same time. The coaches rattling over the stones, or rather
pavement—for there was little or no macadam in those days; the horses’
feet clattering along to the sound of the merry-keyed bugles, upon which
many of the guards played remarkably well, altogether made such a noise
as could be heard nowhere except at the ‘Peacock’ at Islington, at
half-past six in the morning. All this it was curious to hear and see,
though not over pleasant in a dense fog, particularly if it were very
cold into the bargain, with heavy rain or snow falling.”
Half-past six in the morning! Yes; but that was not by any means an
early hour in coaching days. If we turn to _Tom Brown’s Schooldays_, we
shall find that Tom, with his father, come to see him off to Rugby by
the “Tally-Ho,” stayed at the “Peacock” overnight, to make sure of
catching that conveyance, and that in order to do so they were actually
up and breakfasting at ten minutes to three on a winter’s morning. And
none too early, either; for just as Tom was swallowing the last mouthful
of breakfast, winding his comforter round his throat, and tucking the
ends into the breast of his overcoat, the horn sounded, Boots looked in,
with the fateful cry of “Tally-Ho, sir,” and the “Tally-Ho” itself
appeared on the instant outside. But what “Tally-Ho” this could have
been that passed through Rugby does not appear. “Tell the young gent to
look alive,” said the guard; “now then sir, jump up behind,” and they
were off. “Good-bye, father—my love at home”; and the coach whirls away
in the darkness.
London then ended at Islington. Where does it now end? At Highgate; at
Whetstone, where the boundary of the Metropolitan Postal District is
crossed; or beyond South Mimms, where the frontiers of the Metropolitan
Police march with those of the Hertfordshire Constabulary? Highgate
Archway was wont to be regarded as the northern gate into London, and
may now be taken as dividing the far suburbs and the near. Seventy years
ago it was quite rural.
[Illustration:
_THE_ HIGHGATE ARCHWAY _FROM THE_ TURNPIKE GATE _AT_ HOLLOWAY.
_Published Nov. 9, 1813 by_ James Whittle & Rich^d. Holmes Laurie, _53
Fleet Street, London_.
Published, 20th March 1823, by RICH. HOLMES LAURIE 3 Fleet Street,
London
]
VII
It is curious to look upon an old print like that of the Archway road
and its toll-gate, reproduced here, and then, with a knowledge of that
busy spot, with its thronging omnibuses and tramcars, to compare the old
view with the present-day aspect of the place. An Archway Tavern is seen
standing at the junction of the roads, but it is quite unlike the
flaunting gin-palace of to-day. What, also, has become of the horse and
cattle pond in front? The toll-gate, we know, finally disappeared in
1876, but long before then the ascending roadway had been lined with
buildings on either side. Only recently the old and ugly archway has
been removed, to make way for the new and handsome iron and steel
viaduct, which bears the misleading date of 1897, although the structure
was not opened until the summer of 1900. It, may be as well to put upon
record that it is situated a hundred yards to the north of where the old
Archway stood. Of late years, since the government of London has been
taken over by the London County Council, the Archway has been more than
ever a landmark, showing to where the frontier of London extended, for
the London County Council’s boundary ran half-way through the structure,
whose northern moiety lay within the territory of the Middlesex Council.
[Illustration: THE NEW HIGHGATE ARCHWAY.]
The new viaduct, wholly in Middlesex, cost £25,000. Its date, “1897,”
prominent in cast iron on the southern approach, together with the fact
that the work was not completed until midway through 1900, perpetuates
the sinister memory of the great engineering strike in progress during
that interval. Five authorities—the London County Council, the Middlesex
County Council, the Islington Vestry, Hornsey District Council, and the
Ecclesiastical Commissioners (who are administrators of the Bishop of
London’s estates here)—contributed in varying proportions to the cost.
They may look with satisfaction at the result: a light and handsome
bridge, that, vaulting across the roadway with a clear flight of three
times the span of the old arch, renders it possible to widen the road to
any conceivable width, against that time which Mother Shipton foresaw,
when “England shall be undone and Highgate Hill stand in the middle of
London.”
Let us look back, on passing beneath this triumph of engineering skill,
and, seeing with what grace the huddled mass of London is framed by it,
conceive the welcome it may seem to extend to the wayfarer (if such
there be) coming to the capital to seek his fortunes. It may, however,
be readily supposed that the days when ambitious youth resorting by road
to London, there to win fortune with the customary half-crown, are done.
The roads nowadays have lost all possibilities of that endearing romance
of high ambition and courage, coupled with slender resources and an
uninstructed belief that London’s streets are paved with gold. The
precociously worldly-wise youngsters of to-day, who resort to the
Metropolis by rail, have no such illusions.
On the fortune-seekers of old, who tramped the weary miles to this
gateway of their ambition, the forbidding old Archway must needs have
exercised a dispiriting influence. It looked, from its outer side, so
like a fortress gate, and was alas! too often a prison-gate when once
within. London, lying down below them, vast and unknown; how, they might
have thought, would it be possible to conquer _that_; to win a place
_there_? Little blame to such of them as may have trembled at the
prospect and retraced their steps; and better perhaps had it been for
many of those who went forward that their courage had thus failed them
at the threshold; rather than that they had gone down into that human
whirlpool, to return broken in after days, to leap to death from the
footpath above the lofty arch, into that roadway they had trod so
hopefully years before.
For old Highgate Archway was a veritable Bridge of Sighs; a favourite
resort of London suicides to whom a leap from Waterloo Bridge into the
river did not offer great attractions. It was not until the Archway was
opened toll-free that the iron railings fencing the upper roadway were
erected. They were 7 feet in height, cost £700, and were the cause of
great disappointment to would-be suicides by leaping, who have an
illogical objection to falling one yard more than necessary for the
purpose of breaking their necks. This explains the comparative disfavour
with which suicides regard the Golden Gallery of St. Paul’s Cathedral
and other high places.
[Illustration:
HIGHGATE ARCHWAY: MAIL COACH NEARING LONDON.
_From a Print after J. Pollard._
]
It remains uncertain whether those protective railings were erected for
the sake of the suicides, or for that of the increased number of persons
who used the Archway Road when tolls were abolished, some of whom might
have been injured by those too anxious to shuffle off their mortal coil,
to first ascertain whether or not the road was clear. Certain, however,
it is that it mattered very much to the local authorities from which
side the suicides came down: the territory of the Islington Vestry
having been on one side and that of the Hornsey Local Board on the
other. It is even related that one authority proposing to the other that
railings should be erected, and meeting with a refusal to share the
cost, fenced in its own side and thus left the self-murderers no choice.
The expense and trouble of the necessary inquests falling on the other
authority speedily brought about the railing-in of that side also.
VIII
The roadway of Highgate Archway is on a level with the cross upon the
dome of St. Paul’s. From what the perfervid preachers of our own
time—the Solomon Eagles of our day—call that “sink of iniquity,” the
voice of London, inarticulate, like the growl of a fierce beast, rises
continually, save for some sleepy hours between midnight and the dawn.
Frank Osbaldistone, in _Rob Roy_, journeying north, heard the hum of
London die away on his ear when he reached Highgate, the distant peal of
her steeples sounding their admonitory “turn again,” just as they did to
Whittington. Looking back from the Hill upon the dusky magnificence of
the Metropolis, he felt as if he were leaving behind comfort, opulence,
the charms of society, and all pleasures of cultivated life. The modern
wayfarer is not so easily rid of the Great City, whose low-pitched roar
not only follows him to these northern heights, but pursues him,
clamant, onwards through Finchley, and whose rising tide of houses now
laps the crest of Highgate Hill and spills over the brim, in driblets of
new suburban streets, like a brick and mortar Deluge.
Just half a mile past the Archway, which of old was the _ultima thule_,
the Hercules Pillars of London in this direction, still stands the
“Woodman” inn, pictured in the coaching print of the thirties, shown
over page. It is the original building that still stands here, but
carved and cut about and greatly altered, and stands converted into an
ordinary public-house. The curious little summer-house, or look-out,
remains, little changed, but no visitors ascend to it to admire the view
with telescopes, as we see them doing in the picture; for the spreading
hill and dale towards London are covered with houses—objects not so rare
in the neighbourhood of London that one needs to seek them with a
spy-glass.
[Illustration:
THE “WOODMAN,” FINCHLEY, 1834: COVENTRY AND BIRMINGHAM COACH PASSING.
_From a Print after J. Pollard._
]
Southwood Lane, opposite this old inn, leads across from this branch of
the high road to Highgate village, which should be noticed before the
modern spirit seizes upon and transforms it.
“When Highgate Archway and the Archway Road were completed, in 1813, and
traffic, notwithstanding the heavy tolls, began to come and go this way,
Highgate village was ruined. Few cared to painfully toil up Highgate
Hill and go through the once busy village down the corresponding descent
of North Hill. Ever since then, while the suburbs round about have
grown, Highgate village has gradually decayed. Little alteration has
been made here in the broad street—empty now, that was once so busy—and
Highgate remains preserved like a fly in amber, testifying to the
old-world appearance of a typical coaching village near London. True it
is that its fine old houses are a thought shabby, while the “Red Lion,”
though still standing, has long been closed, and its elaborate sign-post
innocent these many years of its swinging sign. The “Gatehouse Tavern,”
too, was rebuilt in 1896; but, for the rest, Highgate is the Highgate of
old.
“Established over five hundred years” was the legend displayed by the
old “Gatehouse Tavern” pictured here. Many old clubs held high revel in
it—literary clubs and others making their several ostensible objects the
excuse for holding high revel. _Punch_ itself was founded in a
pot-house. Among the clubs that foregathered here were the “Ash Sticks,”
the “Aged Pilgrims,” and the “Ben Jonson”; while in the old
low-ceilinged rooms the Sunday ordinary that was long a favourite
institution, combined with some deservedly renowned port, attracted
George Cruickshank (before he found grace and became a total abstainer)
and his brother Robert; Archibald Hemming, _Punch’s_ first cartoonist;
and many an Early Victorian.
The steep descent of North Hill brings the explorer from old Highgate to
East Finchley, where a modern suburb struggles bravely, but with
indifferent success, to live down the depressing circumstance of being
set in midst of some half-dozen huge cemeteries, and on a road along
which every day and all day a continual stream of funeral processions
passes dismally along. The chief gainer from this traffic appears to be
the “Old White Lion,” where the mourners halt and refresh on their
return. Mourning should seem, judging from the assemblage outside the
“Old White Lion” (which should surely, in complimentary mourning, be the
“Old _Black_ Lion”), to be a thirsty business.