THE EXETER ROAD
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR
=THE BRIGHTON ROAD=: Old Times and New on a Classic Highway.
=THE PORTSMOUTH ROAD=, and its Tributaries, To-day and in Days of
Old.
=THE DOVER ROAD=: Annals of an Ancient Turnpike.
=THE BATH ROAD=: History, Fashion, and Frivolity on an Old Highway.
=THE GREAT NORTH ROAD=:
Vol. I. LONDON TO YORK. [_In the Press._
II. YORK TO EDINBURGH.
[Illustration: THE LIONESS ATTACKING THE EXETER MAIL, ‘WINTERSLOW HUT’
(AFTER JAMES POLLARD).]
THE
EXETER ROAD
_THE STORY OF
THE WEST OF ENGLAND HIGHWAY_
BY CHARLES G. HARPER
AUTHOR OF ‘THE BRIGHTON ROAD,’ ‘THE PORTSMOUTH ROAD,’
‘THE DOVER ROAD,’ AND ‘THE BATH ROAD’
[Illustration: colophon]
_Illustrated by the Author, and from Old-Time
Prints and Pictures_
LONDON: CHAPMAN & HALL, LIMITED
1899
_All rights reserved_
[Illustration: PREFACE]
_This, the fifth volume in a series of works purporting to tell the
Story of the Great Roads, requires but few forewords; but occasion may
be taken to say that perhaps greater care has been exercised than in
preceding volumes to collect and put on record those anecdotes and
floating traditions of the country, which, the gossip of yesterday, will
be the history of to-morrow. These are precisely the things that are
neglected by the County Historians at one end of the scale of writers,
and the compilers of guide-books at the other; and it is just because
this gossip and these local anecdotes are generally passed by and often
lost that those which are gathered now will become more valuable as time
goes on._
_For the inclusion of these hitherto unconsidered trifles much
archæology and much purely guide-book description have been suppressed;
nor for this would it seem necessary to appear apologetic, even although
local patriotism is a militant force, and resents anything less than a
detailed and favourable description of every village, interesting or
not._
_How militant parochial patriots may be the writer already knows. You
may criticise the British Empire and prophesy its downfall if you feel
that way inclined, and welcome; but it is the Unpardonable Sin to say
that Little Pedlington is anything less than the cleanest, the neatest,
and the busiest for its size of all the Sweet Auburns in the land! Has
not the writer been promised a bad quarter of an hour by the local
press, should he revisit Crayford, after writing of that uncleanly place
in the_ DOVER ROAD? _and have the good folks of Chard still kept the tar
and feathers in readiness for him who, daring greatly, presumed to say
the place was so quiet that when the stranger appeared in its streets
every head was out of doors and windows?_
_Point of view is everything. The stranger finds a place charming
because everything in it is old, and quiet reigns supreme. Quietude and
antiquity, how eminently desirable and delightful when found, he thinks.
Not so the dweller in such a spot. He would welcome as a benefactor any
one who would rebuild his house in modern style, and would behold with
satisfaction the traffic of Cheapside thronging the grass-grown
market-place._
_No brief is held for such an one in these pages, nor is it likely that
the professional antiquary will find in them anything not already known
to him. The book, like all its predecessors, and like those that are to
follow it, is intended for those who journey down the roads either in
person or in imagination, and to their judgment it is left. In
conclusion, let me acknowledge the valuable information with regard to
Wiltshire afforded me by Cecil Simpson, Esq., than whom no one knows the
county better._
CHARLES G. HARPER.
PETERSHAM, SURREY,
_October 1899_.
[Illustration: _List of Illustrations_]
SEPARATE PLATES
PAGE
1. THE LIONESS ATTACKING THE EXETER MAIL, ‘WINTERSLOW
HUT.’ (_After James Pollard_) Frontispiece.
2. THE ‘COMET’ 13
3. THE ‘REGULATOR’ ON HARTFORD BRIDGE FLATS 19
4. THE ‘QUICKSILVER’ MAIL:--‘STOP, COACHMAN, I
HAVE LOST MY HAT AND WIG’ 23
5. THE WEST COUNTRY MAILS STARTING FROM THE
GLOUCESTER COFFEE HOUSE, PICCADILLY. (_After
James Pollard_) 35
6. THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON’S STATUE 39
7. THE WELLINGTON ARCH AND HYDE PARK CORNER,
1851 41
8. ST. GEORGE’S HOSPITAL, AND THE ROAD TO PIMLICO,
1780 43
9. KNIGHTSBRIDGE TOLL-GATE, 1854 45
10. KNIGHTSBRIDGE BARRACKS TOLL-GATE 49
11. BRENTFORD 57
12. HOUNSLOW: THE PARTING OF THE WAYS 67
13. THE ‘WHITE HART,’ HOOK 111
14. THE RUINS OF BASING HOUSE 117
15. WHITCHURCH 129
16. ‘WINTERSLOW HUT’ 159
17. SALISBURY CATHEDRAL. (_After Constable, R.A._) 171
18. VIEW OF SALISBURY SPIRE FROM THE RAMPARTS
OF OLD SARUM 189
19. OLD SARUM. (_After Constable, R.A._) 193
20. THE GREAT SNOWSTORM OF 1836; THE EXETER
‘TELEGRAPH,’ ASSISTED BY POST-HORSES, DRIVING
THROUGH THE SNOW-DRIFTS AT AMESBURY. (_After
James Pollard_) 197
21. STONEHENGE (_After Turner, R.A._) 201
22. SUNRISE AT STONEHENGE 207
23. ANCIENT AND MODERN: MOTOR CARS AT STONEHENGE,
EASTER 1899 213
24. COOMBE BISSETT 235
25. THE EXETER ROAD, NEAR ‘WOODYATES INN’ 239
26. TARRANT HINTON 243
27. BLANDFORD 259
28. TOWN BRIDGE, BLANDFORD 263
29. THE ‘WHITE HART,’ DORCHESTER 269
30. DORCHESTER 277
31. WINTERBOURNE ABBAS 281
32. ‘TRAVELLER’S REST’ 287
33. ‘THE LONG REACHES OF THE EXETER ROAD’ 301
34. EXETER, FROM THE DUNSFORD ROAD 311
ILLUSTRATIONS IN TEXT
PAGE
Vignette (_Title-page_)
Preface (Stonehenge) vii
List of Illustrations (Hartford Bridge Flats) xi
The Exeter Road 1
‘An Old Gentleman, a Cobbett-like Person’ 38
The Pikeman 47
The ‘New Police’ 51
Tommy Atkins, 1838 53
Old Kensington Church 54
The Beadle 56
The ‘Bell,’ Hounslow 65
The ‘Green Man,’ Hatton 72
The Highwayman’s Retreat, the ‘Green Man’ 73
East Bedfont 79
The Staines Stone 84
The ‘Bells of Ouseley’ 88
Bagshot 97
Roadside Scene. (_After Rowlandson_) 103
Roadside Scene. (_After Rowlandson_) 104
Roadside Scene. (_After Rowlandson_) 105
Roadside Scene. (_After Rowlandson_) 107
Funeral Garland, Abbot’s Ann 154
St. Anne’s Gate, Salisbury 182
Highway Robbery Monument at Imber 231
Where the Robber fell Dead 233
Judge Jeffreys’ Chair 273
Kingston Russell 284
Chilcombe Church 285
Chideock 293
Sign of the ‘Ship,’ Morecomblake 294
Interior of the ‘Queen’s Arms,’ Charmouth 295
‘Copper Castle’ 298
The Exeter City Sword-bearer 307
‘Matty the Miller’ 313
The End 314
THE ROAD TO EXETER
London (Hyde Park Corner) to--
MILES
Kensington--
St. Mary Abbots 1¼
Addison Road 2½
Hammersmith 3¼
Turnham Green 5
Brentford--
Star and Garter 6
Town Hall (cross River Brent and Grand
Junction Canal) 7
Isleworth (Railway Station) 8½
Hounslow (Trinity Church) 9¾
(Cross the Old River, a branch of the River Colne).
Baber Bridge (cross the New River, a branch of the
River Colne) 11¾
East Bedfont 13¼
Staines Bridge (cross River Thames) 16½
Egham 18
Virginia Water--
‘Wheatsheaf’ 20¾
Sunningdale--
Railway Station 22¾
Bagshot--
‘King’s Arms’ 26¼
‘Jolly Farmer’ 27¼
Camberley 29
York Town 29¾
Blackwater (cross River Blackwater) 30¾
Hartford Bridge 35½
Hartley Row 36½
Hook 40
Water End (for Nately Scures) 41¾
Mapledurwell Hatch (cross River Loddon) 43
Basingstoke--
Market Place 45¾
Worting 47¾
Clerken Green, and Oakley--
Railway Station 49¾
Dean 51¼
Overton 53½
Laverstoke, and Freefolk 55½
Whitchurch--
Market House 56¾
Hurstbourne Priors 58½
Andover--
Market Place (cross River Anton) 63½
Little Ann 65½
Little (or Middle) Wallop (cross River Wallop) 70½
Lobcombe Corner 73¾
‘Winterslow Hut’ (cross River Bourne) 75
Salisbury--
Council House 81½
West Harnham (cross River Avon) 82¼
Coombe Bissett (cross a branch of the River Avon) 84¼
‘Woodyates Inn’ 91¼
‘Cashmoor Inn’ 96¼
Tarrant Hinton (cross River Tarrant) 99
Pimperne 101½
Blandford--
Market Place (cross River Stour) 103¾
Winterbourne Whitchurch (cross River Winterbourne) 108¾
Milborne St. Andrews (cross River Milborne) 111½
Piddletown (cross River Piddle) 115
Troy Town (cross River Frome) 116¼
Dorchester--
Town Hall 120
Winterbourne Abbas (cross River Winterbourne) 124½
‘Traveller’s Rest’ 131¼
Bridport--
Market House (cross River Brit) 134½
Chideock 137¼
Morecomblake 138¾
Charmouth (cross River Char) 141½
‘Hunter’s Lodge Inn’ 145
Axminster--
Market Place (cross River Axe) 147
(Cross River Yart)
Kilmington 148¾
Wilmington (cross River Coly) 153
Honiton 156½
Fenny Bridges (cross River Otter) 159½
Fairmile 161½
Rockbeare 166
Honiton Clyst (cross River Clyst) 168¼
Heavitree 171
Exeter 172¾
[Illustration: THE EXETER ROAD]
I
From Hyde Park Corner, whence it is measured, to the west end of
Hounslow town, the Exeter Road is identical with the road to Bath. At
that point the ways divide. The right-hand road leads to Bath, by way of
Maidenhead; the Exeter Road goes off to the left, through Staines, to
Basingstoke, Whitchurch, and Andover; where, at half a mile beyond that
town, there is a choice of routes.
The shortest way to Exeter, the ‘Queen City of the West,’ is by taking
the right-hand road at this last point and proceeding thence through
Weyhill, Mullen’s Pond, Park House, and Amesbury to Deptford Inn,
Hindon, Mere, Wincanton, Ilchester, Ilminster, and Honiton. This ‘short
cut,’ which is the hilliest and bleakest of all the bleak and hilly
routes to Exeter, is 165 miles, 6 furlongs in length. Another way, not
much more than 2¼ miles longer, is by turning to the left at this fork
just outside Andover, and going thence to Salisbury, Shaftesbury,
Sherborne, Yeovil, Crewkerne, and Chard, to meet the other route at
Honiton; at which point, in fact, all routes met. A third way, over 4½
miles longer than the last, instead of leaving Salisbury for
Shaftesbury, turns in a more southerly direction, and passing through
Blandford, Dorchester, Bridport, and Axminster, reaches Exeter by way of
the inevitable Honiton in 172 miles, 6 furlongs.
It is thus, by whichever way you elect to travel, a far cry to Exeter,
even in these days; whether you go by rail from Waterloo or
Paddington--171½ and 194 miles respectively, in three hours and
three-quarters--or whether you cycle, or drive in a motor car, along the
road, when the journey may be accomplished by the stalwart cyclist in a
day and a half, and by a swift car in, say, ten hours.
But hush! we are observed, as they say in the melodramas. Let us say
fourteen hours, and we shall be safe, and well within the legal limit
for motors of twelve miles an hour.
Compare these figures with the very finest performances of that crack
coach of the coaching age, the Exeter ‘Telegraph,’ going by Amesbury and
Ilchester, which, with the perfection of equipment, and the finest
teams, eventually cut down the time from seventeen to fourteen hours,
and was justly considered the wonder of that era; and it will
immediately be perceived that the century has well earned its reputation
for progress.
[Sidenote: _OLD ROUTES_]
It may be well to give a few particulars of the ‘Telegraph’ here before
proceeding. It was started in 1826 by Mrs. Nelson, of the ‘Bull,’
Aldgate, and originally took seventeen hours between Piccadilly and the
‘Half Moon,’ Exeter. It left Piccadilly at 5.30 A.M., and arrived at
Exeter at 10.30 P.M. Twenty minutes allowed for breakfast at Bagshot,
and thirty minutes for dinner at Deptford Inn. The ‘Telegraph,’ be it
said, was put on the road as a rival to the ‘Quicksilver’ Devonport
mail, which, leaving Piccadilly at 8 P.M., arrived at Exeter at 12.34
next day; time, sixteen hours, thirty-four minutes. Going on to
Devonport, it arrived at that place at 5.14 P.M., or twenty-one hours,
fourteen minutes from London. There were no fewer than twenty-three
changes in the 216 miles.
II
But those travellers who, in the early days of coaching, a century and a
half ago, desired the safest, speediest, and most comfortable journey to
Exeter, went by a very much longer route than any of those already
named. They went, in fact, by the Bath Road and thence through Somerset.
The Exeter Road beyond Basingstoke was at that period a miserable
waggon-track, without a single turnpike; while the road to Bath had,
under the management of numerous turnpike-trusts, already become a
comparatively fine highway. The Somersetshire squires were also
bestirring themselves to improve their roads, despite the strenuous
opposition encountered from the peasantry and others on the score of
their rights being invaded, and the anticipated ruin of local trade.
A writer of that period, advocating the setting up of turnpikes on the
direct road to Exeter, anticipated little trouble in converting that
‘waggon-track’ into a first-class highway. Four turnpikes, he
considered, would suffice very well from Salisbury to Exeter; nor would
the improvement of the way over the Downs demand much labour, for the
bottom was solid, and one general expense for pickaxe and spade work,
for levelling, and for widening at the approaches to the villages would
last a long while; experience proving so much, since those portions of
the road remained pretty much the same as they had been in the days of
Julius Cæsar.
‘It may be objected,’ continues this reformer, ‘that the peasantry will
demolish these turnpikes so soon as they are erected, but we will not
suppose this is in a well-governed happy state like ours. _Lex non
supponet odiosa._ If such terrors were to take place, the great
legislative power would lie at the mercy of the rabble. If the mob will
not hear reason they must be taught it.
[Sidenote: _A PLEA FOR GOOD ROADS_]
‘It may be urged that there are not passengers enough on the Western
Road to defray the expenses of erecting these turnpikes. To this I
answer by denying the fact; ’tis a road very much frequented, and the
natural demands from the West to London and all England on the one part,
and from all the eastern counties to Exeter, Plymouth, and Falmouth,
etc., on the other are very great, especially in war-time. Besides, were
the roads more practicable, the number of travellers would increase,
especially of those who make best for towns and inns--namely, such
people of fashion and fortune as make various tours in England for
pleasure, health, and curiosity. In picturesque counties, like Cornwall
and Devon, where the natural curiosities are innumerable, many gentlemen
of taste would be fond of making purchases, and spending their fortunes,
if with common ease they could readily go to and return from their
enchanted castles. Whereas, a family, as things now stand, or a party of
gentlemen and ladies, would sooner travel to the South of France and
back again than down to Falmouth or the Land’s End. And ’tis easier and
pleasanter--so that all beyond Sarum or Dorchester is to us _terra
incognita_, and the mapmakers might, if they pleased, fill the vacuities
of Devon and Cornwall with forests, sands, elephants, savages, or what
they please. Travellers of every denomination--the wealthy, the man of
taste, the idle, the valetudinary--would all, if the roads were good,
visit once at least the western parts of this island. Whereas, every man
and woman that has an hundred superfluous guineas must now turn bird of
passage, flit away across the ocean, and expose themselves to the
ridicule of the French. Now, what but the goodness of the roads can
tempt people to make such expensive and foolish excursions, since, out
of fifty knight-and lady-errants, not two, perhaps, can enounce half a
dozen French words. Their inns are infinitely worse than ours, the
aspect of the country less pleasing; men, manners, customs, laws are no
objects with these itinerants, since they can neither speak nor read the
language. I have known twelve at a time ready to starve at Paris and lie
in the streets, though their purses were well crammed with _louis
d’or_. When they wanted to go to bed, they yawned to the chambermaid, or
shut their eyes; when hunger attacked, they pointed to their mouths.
Even pretty Miss K., and Miss G., realised not the distortion of their
labial muscles, but cawed like unfledged birds for food. They paid
whatever the French demanded, and were laughed at (not before their
faces, indeed) most immeasurably. And yet simpletons of this class spent
near £100,000 last year in France.
‘But to return. A rich citizen in London, a gentleman of large fortune
eastwards, has, perhaps, some very valuable relations or friends in the
West. Half a dozen times in his lifetime he hears of their welfare by
the post, and once, perhaps, receives a token when the Western curate
posts up to town to be initiated into a benefice--and that is all. He
thinks no more of visiting them than of traversing the deserts of Nubia,
considering them as a sort of separate beings, which might as well be in
the moon, or in _Limbo Patrum_.
[Sidenote: _CONSERVATIVES_]
‘I hear the nobility and gentry of Somersetshire have exerted a laudable
spirit, and are now actually erecting turnpikes, which will give that
fruitful county a better intercourse with its neighbours, and bring an
accession of wealth into it; for every wise traveller who goes from
London to Exeter, etc. will surely take Bath in his way (as the
digression is a mere nothing). At least, all the expensive people with
coaches certainly will--and then the supine inhabitants of Wilts and
Dorset may repine in vain; for when a road once comes into repute, and
persons find a pleasant tour and good usage, they will never return to
that which is decried as out of vogue; unless, indeed, they should
reason as a Marlborough stage-coachman did when turnpikes were first
erected between London and Bath. A new road was planned out, but still
my honest man would go round by a miserable waggon-track called
“Ramsbury narrow way.” One by one, from little to less, he dawdled away
all his passengers, and when asked why he was such an obstinate idiot,
his answer was (in a grumbling tone) that he was now an aged man; that
he relished not new fantasies; that his grandfather and father had
driven the aforesaid way before him, and that he would continue in the
old track to _his_ death, though his four horses only drew a
passenger-fly. But the proprietor saw no wit in this: the old
_Automedon_ “resigned” (in the Court phrase), and was replaced by a
youth less conscientious. As a man of honour, I would not conclude
without consulting the most solemn-looking waggoner on the road. This
proved to be Jack Whipcord, of Blandford. Jack’s answer was, that roads
had but one object--namely, waggon-driving; that he required but 5 feet
width in a lane (which he resolved never to quit), and all the rest
might go to the devil. That the gentry ought to stay at home and be
damned, and not run gossiping up and down the country. No turnpikes, no
improvements of roads for him. The Scripture for him was Jeremiah vi.
16.[1] Thus, finding Jack an ill-natured brute and a profane country
wag, I left him, dissatisfied.’
III
In these pages, which purport to show the old West of England highway as
it was in days of old and as it is now, it is not proposed to follow
either of the two routes taken by the ‘Telegraph’ coach or the
‘Quicksilver’ Devonport mail, by Amesbury or by Shaftesbury, although
there will be occasion to mention those smart coaches from time to time.
We will take the third route instead, for the reasons that it is
practically identical with the course of the _Via Iceniana_, the old
Roman military way to Exeter and the West; and, besides being thus in
the fullest sense the Exeter Road, is the most picturesque and historic
route. This way went in 1826, according to _Cary_, those eminently safe
and reliable coaches, the ‘Regulator,’ in twenty-four hours; the ‘Royal
Mail,’ in twenty-two hours; and the ‘Sovereign,’ which, as no time is
specified, would seem to have journeyed down the road in a haphazard
fashion. Of these, the ‘Mail’ left that famous hostelry, the ‘Swan with
Two Necks’ (known familiarly as the ‘Wonderful Bird’), in Lad Lane,
City, at 7.30 every evening, and Piccadilly half an hour later, arriving
at the ‘New London Inn,’ Exeter, by six o’clock the following evening.
[Sidenote: _EARLY COACHING DAYS_]
But even these coaches, which jogged along in so leisurely a fashion,
went at a furious and breakneck--not to say daredevil--pace compared
with the time consumed by the stage coach advertised in the _Mercurius
Politicus_ of 1658 to start from the ‘George Inn,’ Aldersgate Without,
‘every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. To Salisbury in two days for xxs.
To Blandford and Dorchester in two days and a half for xxxs. To
Exminster, Nunnington, Axminster, Honiton, and Exeter in four days xls.’
The ‘Exeter Fly’ of a hundred years later than this, which staggered
down to Exeter in three days, under the best conditions, and was the
swiftest public conveyance down this road at that time, before the new
stages and mails were introduced, had been known, it is credibly
reported, to take six.
[Sidenote: _FARES_]
Palmer’s mail coaches, which were started on the Exeter Road in the
summer of 1785, rendered all this kind of meandering progress obsolete,
except for the poorest class of travellers, who had still for many a
long year (indeed, until road travel was killed by the railways) to
endure the miseries of a journey in the great hooded luggage waggons of
Russell and Company, which, with a team of eight horses, started from
Falmouth, and travelling at the rate of three miles an hour, reached
London in twelve days. A man on a pony rode beside the team, and with a
long whip touched them up when this surprising pace was not maintained.
The travellers walked, putting their belongings inside; and when night
was come either camped under the ample shelter of the lumbering waggon,
or, if it were winter, were accommodated for a trifle in the stable
lofts of the inns they halted at. Messrs. Russell and Company were in
business for many years as carriers between London and the West, and at
a later date--from the ’20’s until the close of the coaching era--were
the proprietors of an intermediate kind of vehicle between the waggon at
one extreme and the mail coaches at the other. This was the ‘Fly Van,’
of which, unlike their more ancient conveyances which set out only three
times a week, one started every week-day from either end. This
accommodated a class of travellers who did not disdain to travel among
the bales and bundles, or to fit themselves in between the knobbly
corners of heavy goods, but who would neither walk nor consent to the
journey from the Far West occupying the best part of a fortnight. So
they paid a trifle more and travelled the distance between Exeter and
London in two days, in times when the ‘Telegraph,’ according to Sir
William Knighton, conveyed the aristocratic passenger that distance in
seventeen hours. He writes, in his diary, under date of 23rd September
1832, that he started at five o’clock in the morning of that day from
Exeter in the ‘Telegraph’ coach for London. The fare, inside, was £3:
10s., and, in addition, four coachmen and one guard had to be paid the
usual fees which custom had rendered obligatory. They breakfasted at
Ilminster and dined at Andover. ‘Nothing,’ he says, ‘can exceed the
rapidity with which everything is done. The journey of one hundred and
seventy-five miles was accomplished in seventeen hours[2]--breakfast and
dinner were so hurried that the cravings of appetite could hardly be
satisfied, and the horses were changed like lightning.’ The fare,
inside, was therefore practically 5d. a mile, to which must be added at
least fifteen shillings in tips to those four coachmen and that guard,
bringing the cost of the smartest travelling between London and Exeter
up to £4: 5s. for the single journey; while the fares by waggon and ‘Fly
Van’ would be at the rate of a halfpenny and twopence per mile
respectively, something like 7s. 6d. and 29s. 6d.; without, in those
cases, the necessity for tipping.
There were, however, more degrees than these in the accommodation and
fares for coach travellers. The proper mail coach fare was 4d. a mile,
but the mails were not the _ne plus ultra_ of speed and comfort even on
this road, where the ‘Quicksilver’ mail ran a famous course. Hence the
5d. a mile by the ‘Telegraph.’ But it was left to the ‘Waggon Coach’ to
present the greatest disparity of prices and places. This was a vehicle
which, under various names, was seen for a considerable period on most
of the roads, and can, with a little ingenuity, be looked upon as the
precursor of the three classes on railways. There were the first-class
‘insides,’ the second-class ‘outsides,’ and those very rank outsiders
indeed, the occupants of the shaky wickerwork basket hung on behind,
called the ‘crate’ or the ‘rumble-tumble,’ who were very often noisily
drunken sailors and people who did not mind a little jolting more or
less.
Some very fine turns-out were on this road at the end of the ’30’s.
Firstly, there was the ‘Royal Mail,’ between the ‘Swan with Two Necks,’
in Lad Lane, and the ‘New London Inn,’ Exeter, both in those days inns
of good solid feeding, with drinking to match. It was of the first-named
inn, and of another equally famous, that the poet (who must have been of
the fleshly and Bacchic order) wrote:--
At the Swan with Two Throttles
I tippled two bottles,
And bothered the beef at the Bull and the Mouth.
One can readily imagine the sharp-set and shivering traveller, fresh
from the perils of the road, ‘bothering the beef’ with his huge
appetite, and tippling the generous liquor (which, of course, was port)
with loud appreciative smackings of the lips.
Then there were the ‘Sovereign,’ the ‘Regulator,’ and the ‘Eclipse,’
going by the Blandford and Dorchester route; the ‘Prince George,’
‘Herald,’ ‘Pilot,’ ‘Traveller,’ and ‘Quicksilver,’ by Crewkerne and
Yeovil; and the ‘Defiance,’ ‘Celerity,’ and ‘Subscription,’ by Amesbury
and Ilminster; to leave unnamed the short stages and the bye-road
coaches, all helping to swell the traffic in those old days, now utterly
forgotten.
IV
A very great authority on coaching--the famous ‘Nimrod,’ the mainstay of
the _Sporting Magazine_--writing in 1836, compares the exquisite
perfection to which coaching had attained at that time with the era
[Sidenote: _A RIP VAN WINKLE_]
[Illustration: THE ‘COMET.’]
of the old Exeter ‘Fly,’ and imagines a kind of Rip Van Winkle old
gentleman, who had been a traveller by that crazy conveyance in 1742,
waking up and journeying by the ‘Comet’ of 1836. Rousing from his long
sleep, he determines to go by the ‘Fly’ to Exeter. In the lapse of
ninety-four years, however, that vehicle has been relegated to the
things that were, and has been utterly forgotten. He waits in
Piccadilly. ‘What coach, your honour?’ asks a ruffianly-looking fellow.
‘I wish to go home to Exeter,’ replies the old gentleman.
‘Just in time, your honour, here she comes--them there gray horses;
where’s your luggage?’
But the turn-out is so different from those our Rip Van Winkle knew,
that he says, ‘Don’t be in a hurry, that’s a gentleman’s carriage.’
‘It ain’t, I tell you,’ replies the cad; ‘it’s the “Comet,” and you must
be as quick as lightning.’ Whereupon, vehemently protesting, the ‘cad’
and a fellow ruffian shove him forcibly into the coach, despite his
anxiety about his luggage.
The old fellow, impressed by the smartness of the Jehu--a smartness to
which coachmen had been entire strangers in his time--asks, ‘What
gentleman is going to drive us!’
‘He is no gentleman,’ replies the proprietor of the coach, who happens
to be sitting at his side; ‘but he has been on the “Comet” ever since
she started, and is a very steady young man.’
‘Pardon my ignorance,’ says our ancient, ‘from the cleanliness of his
person, the neatness of his apparel, and the language he made use of, I
mistook him for some enthusiastic bachelor of arts, wishing to become a
charioteer after the manner of the illustrious ancients.’
‘You must have been long in foreign parts, sir,’ observes the
proprietor.
Presently they come to Hyde Park Corner. ‘What!’ exclaims Rip, ‘off the
stones already?’
‘You have never been on the stones,’ says a fellow-passenger; ‘no stones
in London now, sir.’
The old gentleman is engaged upon digesting this information and does
not perceive for some time that the coach is a swift one. When he
discovers that fact, and mentions it, he is met with the rejoinder, ‘We
never go fast over this stage.’
So they pass through Brentford. ‘Old Brentford still here?’ he exclaims;
‘a national disgrace!’ Then Hounslow, in five minutes under the hour.
‘Wonderful travelling, but much too fast to be safe. However, thank
Heaven, we are arrived at a good-looking house; and now, waiter, I hope
you have got breakf----’
Before the last syllable, however, of the word can be pronounced, the
worthy old gentleman’s head strikes the back of the coach with a jerk,
and the waiter, the inn, and indeed Hounslow itself, disappear in the
twinkling of an eye. ‘My dear sir,’ exclaims he, in surprise, ‘you told
me we were to change horses at Hounslow. Surely they are not so inhuman
as to drive those poor animals another stage at this unmerciful rate!’
[Sidenote: _THE GALLOPING GROUND_]
‘Change horses, sir!’ says the proprietor; ‘why, we changed them while
you were putting on your spectacles and looking at your watch. Only one
minute allowed for it at Hounslow, and it is often done in fifty seconds
by those nimble-fingered horse-keepers.’
Then the coach goes fast and faster on the way to Staines. ‘We always
spring ’em over these six miles,’ says the proprietor, in reply to the
old gentleman’s remark that he really does not like to go so fast. ‘Not
a pebble as big as a nutmeg on the road, and so even that the
equilibrium of a spirit-level could not be disturbed.’
‘Bless me!’ exclaims the old man, ‘what improvements; and the roads!!!’
‘They are at perfection, sir,’ says the proprietor. ‘No horse walks a
yard in this coach between London and Exeter--all trotting-ground now.’
‘A little _galloping_ ground, I fear,’ whispers the senior to himself.
‘But who has effected all this improvement in your paving?’
‘An American of the name of M’Adam,’ is the reply; ‘but coachmen call
him the Colossus of Roads.’
‘And pray, my good sir, what sort of horses may you have over the next
stage?’
‘Oh, sir, no more bo-kickers. It is hilly and severe ground and requires
cattle strong and staid. You’ll see four as fine horses put to the coach
at Staines as ever you saw in a nobleman’s carriage in your life.’
‘Then we shall have no more galloping--no more springing them as you
term it?’
‘Not quite so fast over the next stage,’ replies the proprietor; ‘but
he will make good play over some part of it; for example, when he gets
three parts down a hill he lets them loose, and cheats them out of half
the one they have to ascend from the bottom of it. In short, they are
half-way up it before a horse touches his collar; and we _must_ take
every advantage with such a fast coach as this, and one that loads so
well, or we should never keep our time. We are now to a minute; in fact,
the country people no longer look to the _sun_ when they want to set
their clocks--they look only to the _Comet_.’
Determined to see the changing of the team at the next stage, the old
gentleman remarks one of the new horses being led to the coach with a
twitch fastened tightly to his nose. ‘Holloa, Mr. Horsekeeper!’ he says,
‘you are going to put an unruly horse in.’--‘What! this here _’oss_,’
growls the man; ‘the quietest hanimal alive, sir.’ But the good faith of
this pronouncement is somewhat discounted by the coachman’s caution,
‘Mind what you are about, Bob; don’t let him touch the roller-bolt.’
Then, ‘Let ’em go, and take care of yourselves,’ his next remark, seems
a little alarming. More alarming still the next happening. The near
leader rears right on end, the thoroughbred near-wheeler draws himself
back to the extent of his pole-chain, and then, darting forward, gives a
sudden start to the coach which nearly dislocates the passengers’ necks.
We will not follow every heart-beat of our old friend on this exciting
pilgrimage. He quits the coach at Bagshot, congratulating himself on
being still safe and sound, and rings the bell for the waiter.
[Sidenote: _THE ‘REGULATOR’_]
[Illustration: THE ‘REGULATOR’ ON HARTFORD BRIDGE FLATS.]
A well-dressed person appears, whom he takes for the landlord. ‘Pray,
_sir_,’ says he, ‘have you any _slow_ coach down this road
to-day?’--‘Why, yes, sir,’ replies the waiter. ‘We shall have the
“Regulator” down in an hour.’
He has breakfast, and at the appointed time the ‘Regulator’ appears at
the door. It is a strong, well-built _drag_, painted chocolate colour,
bedaubed all over with gilt letters--a Bull’s Head on the doors, a
Saracen’s Head on the hind boot, and drawn by four strapping horses; but
it wants the neatness of the other. The waiter announces that the
‘Regulator’ is full inside and in front; ‘but,’ he says, ‘you’ll have
the _gammon-board_ all to yourself, and your luggage is in the hind
boot.’
‘Gammon-board! Pray, what’s that? Do you not mean the _basket_?’
‘Oh no, sir,’ says John, smiling, ‘no such a thing on the road now. It’s
the hind-dickey, as some call it.’
Before ascending to his place, our friend has cast his eye on the team
that is about to convey him to Hartford Bridge, the next stage. It
consists of four moderate-sized horses, full of power, and still fuller
of condition, but with a fair sprinkling of blood; in short, the eye of
a judge would have found something about them not very unlike galloping.
‘All right!’ cries the guard, taking his key-bugle in his hand; and they
proceed up the village at a steady pace, to the tune of ‘Scots wha hae
wi’ Wallace bled,’ and continue at that pace for the first five miles.
The old gentleman again congratulates himself, but prematurely, for
they are about to enter upon Hartford Bridge Flats, which have the
reputation at this time of being the best five miles for a coach in all
England. The coachman now ‘springs’ his team and they break into a
gallop which does those five miles in twenty-three minutes. Half-way
across the Flats they meet the returning coachman of the ‘Comet,’ who
has a full view of his quondam passenger--and this is what he saw. He
was seated with his back to the horses--his arms extended to each
extremity of the guard-irons--his teeth set grim as death--his eyes cast
down towards the ground, thinking the less he saw of his danger the
better. There was what was called a top-heavy load, perhaps a ton of
luggage on the roof, and the horses were of unequal stride; so that the
lurches of the ‘Regulator’ were awful.
Strange to say, the coach arrives safely at Hartford Bridge, but the
antiquated passenger has had enough of it, and exclaims that he will
_walk_ into Devonshire. However, he thinks perhaps he will post down,
and asks the waiter, ‘What do you charge per mile, posting?’
‘One and sixpence, sir.’--‘Bless me! just double! Let me see--two
hundred miles at two shillings per mile, postboys, turnpikes, etc., £20.
This will never do. Have you no coach that does not carry luggage on the
top?’--‘Oh yes, sir,’ replies the waiter; ‘we shall have one to-night
that is not allowed to carry a bandbox on the roof.’--‘That’s the one
for me; pray, what do you call it?’--‘The “Quicksilver” Mail, sir; one
of the best out of London.’--‘Guarded and
[Sidenote: _THE ‘QUICKSILVER’ MAIL_]
[Illustration: THE ‘QUICKSILVER’ MAIL:--‘STOP, COACHMAN, I HAVE LOST MY
HAT AND WIG.’]
lighted?’--‘Both, sir; blunderbuss and pistols in the sword-case; a lamp
each side the coach, and one under the footboard--see to pick up a pin
the darkest night of the year.--‘Very fast?’--‘Oh no, sir, _just keeps
time, and that’s all_.’--‘That’s the ‘coach for me, then,’ says our
hero.
Unfortunately, the ‘Devonport’ (commonly called the ‘Quicksilver’) mail
is half a mile faster in the hour than most in England, and is, indeed,
one of the miracles of the road. Let us then picture this unfortunate
passenger seated in this mail on a pitch-dark night in November. It is
true she has no luggage on the roof, nor much to incommode her
elsewhere; but she is a mile in the hour faster than the ‘Comet,’ at
least three miles quicker than the ‘Regulator.’ and she performs more
than half her journey by lamplight. It is needless to say, then, our
senior soon finds out his mistake; but there is no remedy at hand, for
it is dead of night, and all the inns are shut up. The climax of his
misfortunes then approaches. He sleeps, and awakes on a stage called the
fastest on the journey--it is four miles of ground, and twelve minutes
is the time. The old gentleman starts from his seat, dreaming the horses
are running away. Determined to see if it is so, although the passengers
assure him it is ‘all right,’ and assure him he will lose his hat if he
looks out of window, he _does_ look out. The next moment he raises his
voice in a stentorian shout: ‘Stop, coachman, stop. I have lost my hat
and wig!’ The coachman hears him not--and in another second the broad
wheels of a road waggon have for ever demolished the lost headgear. And
so we leave him, hatless, wigless, to his fate.
V
The late Thomas Adolphus Trollope, brother of the better-known Anthony,
was never tired of writing voluminously about old times, and what he has
to say about the coaches on the Exeter Road is the more interesting and
valuable as coming from one who lived and travelled in the times of
which he speaks.
The coaches for the South and West of England, he says, started from the
‘White Horse Cellars,’ Piccadilly, which was one of the fashionable
hotels of 1820, the time he treats of.
[Sidenote: _COACH CONSTRUCTION_]
The ‘White Bear,’ Piccadilly, he adds, was looked upon with contempt, as
being the place whence only the slow coaches started. The mails and
stages moved off to the accompaniment of news-vendors pushing the sale
of the expensive and heavily taxed newspapers of the period, and the
cries of the Jew-boys who sold oranges and cedar pencils on the pavement
at sixpence a dozen. Once clear of town, his enthusiasm over the travel
of other days finds scope, and he begins: ‘What an infinite succession
of teams! What an endless vista of ever-changing miles of country! What
a delicious sense of belonging to some select and specially important
and adventurous section of humanity as we clattered through the streets
of quiet little country towns at midnight, or even at three or four
o’clock in the morning; ourselves the only souls awake in all the place.
What speculations as to the immediate bestowal and occupation of the
coachman as he “left you here, sir,” in the small hours!’
Then he goes on to give a kind of gossipy history of the smart mails put
on the road about 1820.
‘A new and accelerated mail-coach service was started under the title of
the “Devonport Mail,” at that time the fastest in England. Its
performances caused a sensation in the coaching world, and it was known
in such circles as the “Quicksilver Mail.” Its early days had chanced,
unfortunately, to be marked by two or three accidents, which naturally
gave it an increased celebrity.
‘And if it is considered what those men and horses were required to
perform, the wonder was, not that the “Quicksilver” should have come to
grief two or three times, but rather that it ever made its journey
without doing so. What does the railway traveller of the present day,
who sees a travelling Post Office and its huge tender, crammed with
postal matter, think of the idea of carrying all that mass on one, or
perhaps two, coaches? The guard, occupying his solitary post behind the
coach on the top of the receptacle called, with reference to the
constructions of still earlier days, the _hinder_-boot, sat on a little
seat made for one, with his pistol and blunderbuss in a box in front of
him. And the original notion of those who first planned the modern mail
coach was that the bags containing the letters should be carried in the
_hinder_-boot. The fore-boot, beneath the driver’s box, was considered
to be appropriated to the baggage of the three outside and four inside
passengers, which was the _Mail’s_ entire complement. One of the
outsiders shared the box with the driver, and two occupied the seat on
the roof behind him, their backs to the horses, and facing the guard,
who had a seat all to himself. The accommodation provided for these two
was not of a very comfortable description. They were not, indeed,
crowded, as the four who occupied a similar position on another coach
often were; but they had a mere board to sit on, whereas the seats on
the roof of an ordinary stage coach were provided with cushions. The
fares by the mail were nearly always somewhat higher than those by even
equally fast, or, in some cases, faster, coaches; and it seems
unreasonable, therefore, that the accommodation should have been
inferior. I can only suppose that the patrons of the mail were
understood to be compensated for its material imperfections by the
superior dignity of their position. The _box_-seat, however, was well
cushioned.
[Sidenote: _THE COACHING AGE_]
‘But if the despatches, which it was the mail’s business to carry, could
once upon a time be contained in the hinder-boot, such soon ceased to be
the case. The bulk of postal matter which had to be carried was
constantly and rapidly increasing, and often as many as nine enormous
sacks, which were as long as the coach was broad, were heaped upon the
roof. The huge heap, three or four tiers high, was piled to a height
which prevented the guard, even when standing, from seeing or
communicating with the coachman. If to these considerations the reader
will add the consideration of the Devon and Somerset roads, over which
this top-heavy load had to be carried at twelve miles an hour, it will
not seem strange that accidents should have occurred. Not that the roads
were bad. They, thanks to M’Adam, were good, hard, and smooth, but the
hills were numerous and steep.
‘The whole of the service was well done and admirable, and the drivers
of such a coach were masters of their profession. Work hard, but
remuneration good. There were fewer passengers by the mail to “remember”
the coachman, but it was more uniformly full, and somewhat more was
expected from a traveller by the mail. It was a splendid thing to see
the beautiful teams going over their short stage at twelve miles an
hour. None but good cattle in first-rate condition could do the work. A
saying of old Mrs. Mountain, for many years the well-known proprietress
of one of the large coaching inns in London, used to be quoted as having
been addressed by her to one of her drivers: “You find whip-cord, John,
and I’ll find oats.” And, as it used to be said, the measure of the corn
supplied to a coach-horse was--his stomach!
‘It was a pretty sight to see the changing of the horses. There stood
the fresh team, two on the off side, two on the near side, and the coach
was drawn up with the utmost exactitude between them. Four ostlers jump
to the splinter-bars and loose the traces; the reins have already been
thrown down. The driver retains his seat, and, within the minute (more
than once, within fifty seconds by the watch) the coach is again on its
onward journey.
‘Then how welcome was breakfast at an excellent old-world country
inn--twenty minutes allowed. The hot tea, after your night’s drive, the
fresh cream, butter, eggs, hot toast, and cold beef, and then, with your
cigar alight, back to the box and off again.
‘I once witnessed on that road--not quite _that_ road, for the
“Quicksilver” took a somewhat different line--the stage of four miles
between Ilchester and Ilminster done in _twenty_ minutes, and a trace
broken and mended on the road. The mending was effected by the guard
almost before the coach stopped. It is a level bit of road, four miles
only for the entire stage, and was performed at a full gallop. That was
done by a coach called the “Telegraph,” started some years after the
“Quicksilver,” to do the distance between Exeter and London in one day.
We started at 5 A.M. from Exeter and reached London between 9 and 10
that night, with time for breakfast and dinner on the road. I think the
performance of the Exeter “Telegraph” was the _ne plus ultra_ of
coach-travelling. One man drove fifty miles, and then meeting the other
coach on the road, changed from one box to another and drove the fifty
miles back. It was tremendously hard work. “Not much work for the whip
arm?” I asked a coachman. “Not much, sir; but just put your hand on my
left arm.” The muscle was swollen to its utmost, and as hard as iron.
Many people who have not tried it think it easier work to drive such a
coach and such a team as this than to have to flog a dull team up to
eight miles an hour.’
[Sidenote: _AN OLD MAIL-GUARD_]
Thomas Adolphus Trollope’s reminiscences may be fitly supplemented by
those of Moses James Nobbs, who died in June 1897, at the age of eighty
years, and was one of the last of the mail-guards on the Exeter Road. To
say that he was actually _the_ last would be rash, for coachmen,
postboys, and guards were a long-lived race, and it would not be at all
surprising to learn that some ancient veterans still survive. Nobbs
entered the service of the Post Office in 1836, and was transferred from
the Bristol and Portsmouth to the London, Yeovil, and Exeter Mail in
1837.
Retiring at the close of 1891, he therefore saw fifty-five years’
service, and vividly recollected the time when the mails were conveyed
in bags secured on the roof of the coach. At Christmas-time the load was
always heavy; but although the correspondence of that season sometimes
severely strained the capacity of the vehicle, it is not recorded that
the mail had to be duplicated, as had to be done sometimes in after
years when railways had superseded coaches.
When the Great Western Railway was opened through to Exeter in 1844 and
the last mail coach on this route had been withdrawn, Nobbs was given
the superintendence of the receiving and despatching of the mails from
Paddington, and often spoke of the extraordinary growth of the Post
Office business during the railway era. At one Christmas-tide he
despatched from Paddington in a single day no less than twenty tons of
letters and parcels.
He had not been without his adventures. ‘We had a very sad accident,’ he
says, ‘with that mail on one occasion, between Whitchurch and Andover.
The coach used to start from Piccadilly, where all the passengers and
baggage were taken up. On this occasion the bags were brought up in a
cart, as usual, and we were off in a few seconds. My coachman had been
having a drinking bout with a friend that day, and when we had got a few
miles on the road, I discovered that he was the worse for drink and that
it was not safe for him to drive. So when we reached Hounslow I made him
get off the box-seat; and after securing the mail-bags and putting him
in my seat and strapping him in, I took the ribbons. At Whitchurch the
coachman unstrapped himself and exchanged places with me, but we had not
proceeded more than three miles when, the coach giving a jolt over a
heap of stones, he fell between the horses, and the wheels of the coach
ran over him, killing him on the spot. The horses, having no driver,
broke into a full gallop, so, as there was no front passenger, I climbed
over the roof, to gather up the reins, when I found that they had fallen
among the horses’ feet and were trodden to bits. Returning over the
roof, I missed my hold and fell into the road, but fortunately with no
worse accident than some bruises and a sprained ankle. The horses kept
on till they reached Andover, where they pulled up at the usual spot.
Strange to say, no damage was done to the coach, though there was a very
steep hill to go down. The “Old Exeter Mail,” which came behind our
coach, found the body of my coachman on the road, and, a mile farther,
picked me up.’
VI
[Sidenote: _THE SHORT STAGES_]
Suppose, instead of taking one of the fast mails to Exeter, and
journeying straight away, we book a seat in one of the ‘short stages’
which were the only popular means of being conveyed between London and
the suburbs in the days before railways, omnibuses, and tramways
existed. We will take the stage to Brentford, because that is on our
way.