This ebook was transcribed by Les Bowler
[Picture: Book cover]
[Picture: Starting from G.P.O. in Lombard Street]
_The_
GREAT NORTH ROAD
The Old Mail Road to Scotland
_By_ CHARLES G. HARPER
* * * * *
LONDON TO YORK
* * * * *
_Illustrated by the Author_, _and from old-time_
_Prints and Pictures_
[Picture: Title Figure (man on bicycle)]
LONDON:
CECIL PALMER
OAKLEY HOUSE, BLOOMSBURY STREET, W.C. 1
* * * * *
_First published in_ 1901
_Second and Revised edition_, 1922
* * * * *
Printed in Great Britain by C. TINLING & Co., LTD.,
53, Victoria Street, Liverpool
and 187, Fleet Street, London.
* * * * *
IN LOVING MEMORY
OF
HERMAN MORONEY
“_I expect to pass through this world but once_. _Any good_,
_therefore_, _I can do_, _or any kindness that I can show to any
fellow-creature_, _let me do it now_. _Let me not defer or neglect
it_, _for I shall not pass this way again_.”
_Attributed to_ WILLIAM PENN.
PREFACE.
[Picture: Preface heading]
_WHEN the original edition of the_ “GREAT NORTH ROAD” _was published—in_
1901—_the motorcar was yet a new thing_. _It had_, _in November_, 1896,
_been given by Act of Parliament the freedom of the roads_; _but_, _so
far_, _the character of the nation’s traffic had been comparatively
little changed_. _People would still turn and gaze_, _interested_, _at a
mechanically-propelled vehicle_; _and few were those folk who had
journeyed the entire distance between London and Edinburgh in one of
them_. _For motor-cars were still_, _really_, _in more or less of an
experimental stage_; _and on any long journey you were never sure of
finishing by car what you had begun_. _Also_, _the speed possible was
not great enough to render such a long __journey exhilarating to modern
ideas_. _It is true that_, _the year before_, _the_ “_Automobile Club of
Great Britain and Ireland_,” _not yet become the_ “_Royal Automobile
Club_,” _had in its now forgotten role of a_ “_Society of Encouragement_”
_planned and carried out a_ “_Thousand Miles Tour_,” _which had Edinburgh
as its most northern point_; _but it was a very special effort_. _Those
who took part in it are not likely to forget the occasion_.
* * * * *
_To-day_, _all that is changed_. _Every summer_, _every autumn_, _sees
large numbers of touring automobiles on the way to Scotland and the
moors_, _filled with those who prefer the road_, _on such terms_, _to the
railway_. _From being something in the nature of a lonely highway_, _the
Great North Road has thus become a very much travelled one_. _In this
way_, _some of its circumstances have changed remarkably_, _and old-time
comfortable wayside inns that seemed to have been ruined for all time
with the coming of railways and the passing of the coaches have wakened
to a newer life_. _Chief among these is the_ “_Bell_” _on Barnby Moor_,
_just north of Retford_. _The story of its revival is a romance_.
_Closed about_ 1845, _and converted into a farm-house_, _no one would
have cared to predict its revival as an inn_. _But as such it was
reopened_, _chiefly for the use of motorists_, _in_ 1906, _and there it
is to-day_.
_But_, _apart from the tarred and asphalted condition of the actual
roadway in these times_, _the route_, _all the way between London_, _York
and Edinburgh_, _looks much the same as it did_. _Only_, _where perhaps
one person might then know it thoroughly_, _from end to end_, _a hundred
are well acquainted with the way and its features_. _It is for those
many who now know the Great North Road that this new edition is
prepared_, _giving the story of the long highway between the two
capitals_.
CHARLES G. HARPER.
_April_, 1922.
THE GREAT NORTH ROAD
LONDON TO YORK
MILES
Islington (the “Angel”) 1¼
Highgate Archway 4¼
East End, Finchley 5¾
Brown’s Wells, Finchley Common (“Green Man”) 7
Whetstone 9¼
Greenhill Cross 10¼
Barnet 11¼
Hadley Green 12
Ganwick Corner (“Duke of York”) 13
Potter’s Bar 14¼
Little Heath Lane 15¼
Bell Bar (“Swan”) 17¼
Hatfield 19¾
Stanborough 21½
Lemsford Mills (cross River Lea) 22¼
Digswell Hill (cross River Mimram) 23¼
Welwyn 25¼
Woolmer Green 27¼
Broadwater 29½
Stevenage 31½
Graveley 33½
Baldock 37½
Biggleswade (cross River Ivel) 45¼
Lower Codicote 46¾
Beeston Cross (cross River Ivel) 48¼
Girlford 49¼
Tempsford (cross River Ouse) 51
Wyboston 54
Eaton Socon 55¼
Cross Hall 56¾
Diddington 60
Buckden 61¼
Brampton Hut 63¾
Alconbury 66¼
Alconbury Weston 67
Alconbury Hill (“Wheatsheaf”) 68
Sawtry St. Andrews 71½
Stilton 75½
Norman Cross 76
Kate’s Cabin 79½
Water Newton 81¼
Sibson 82
Stibbington (cross River Nene) 83¾
Wansford 84
Stamford Baron (cross River Welland) 89
Stamford 89½
Great Casterton 91½
Stretton 96
Greetham (“New Inn”) 97½
North Witham (“Black Bull”) 100½
Colsterworth 102½
Great Ponton 106¾
Spitalgate Hill 109¾
Grantham 110¼
Great Gonerby 112
Foston 116
Long Bennington 118¼
Shire Bridge (cross Shire Dyke) 120½
Balderton (cross River Devon) 122¼
Newark (cross River Trent) 124½
South Muskham 127
North Muskham 128
Cromwell 130
Carlton-on-Trent 131½
Sutton-on-Trent 133
Weston 134¾
Scarthing Moor 135½
Tuxford 137¾
West Markham 139½
Markham Moor 140½
Gamston (cross Chesterfield Canal) 141½
Retford (cross River Idle) 145
Barnby Moor 148
Torworth 149½
Ranskill 150¼
Scrooby 152
Bawtry 153½
Rossington Bridge (cross River Tome) 157¾
Tophall 158¾
Doncaster (cross River Don) 162¼
Bentley 164
Owston 167¾
Askerne (cross River Went) 169¼
Whitley (cross Knottingley and Goole Canal) 174
Whitley Bridge 175
Chapel Haddlesey (cross River Aire) 175½
Burn (cross Selby Canal) 179¼
Brayton 180¾
Selby (cross River Ouse) 182¼
Barlby 183¾
Riccall 186
Escrick 189¼
Deighton 190½
Gate Fulford 195
York 196¾
CONTENTS.
I Various Notes On Roads In General. 1
II Road Construction And Makers. 10
III Makers Of Coaches: G.P.O. Mails. 13
IV Post Office History. 26
V Stage Coach Timings. 33
VI Travel Expenses And Difficulties. 39
VII Journey Stages: Islington: Holloway. 49
VIII Highgate: Dick Whittington. 53
IX Highgate: Archway. 57
X Highgate: Footpads. 61
XI Finchley: Tally-Ho Corner And Common. 65
XII Whetstone: Building Of New Road. 72
XIII Barnet: Prize-Fighting. 75
XIV Hadley Green: Potter’s Bar: Hatfield. 80
XV Digswell Hill: Welwyn: Knebworth. 87
XVI Stevenage: Posting Charges. 96
XVII Baldock: Biggleswade: Tempsford. 101
XVIII Some Cycling Records. Eaton Socon. 109
XIX Buckden: Brampton: Matcham’s Bridge. 113
XX Alconbury Hill: Stilton. 121
XXI Norman Cross: Wansford: Burghley. 129
XXII Stamford: Daniel Lambert. 145
XXIII Stretton: Bloody Oaks: Ram-Jam Inn. 154
XXIV Travellers. Some Road History. 164
XXV Coming Of The Railways. 171
XXVI Witham Common: Great Ponton. 175
XXVII Grantham. 180
XXVIII Oliver Cromwell: Gonerby Hill. 188
XXIX Newark: Ringing For Gofer. 193
XXX North And South Muskham. 203
XXXI Retford. 210
XXXII Barnby Moor: Scrooby. 213
XXXIII Bawtry: Rossington Bridge. 222
XXXIV Tophall: Doncaster: St. Leger. 226
XXXV Askerne: Brayton: Selby. 235
XXXVI Riccall: Invaders: York. 242
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
To the North in the Days of Old: Mails starting Frontispiece
from the General Post Office, Lombard Street
Old and New Swan Nicks: Vintners’ Company 16
Modern Sign of the “Swan with Two Necks” 17
The “Spread Eagle,” Gracechurch Street 19
The “Saracen’s Head,” Snow Hill 23
The Mails starting from the General Post Office, 27
1832
The “Louth Mail” stopped by the snow 43
Entrance to London from Islington, 1809 47
Islington Green, 1820 50
Old Highgate Archway, demolished 1897 63
The Great Common of Finchley: A Parlous Place 67
Turpin’s Oak 70
“The Whetstone” 72
High Street, Barnet 77
Hadley Green: Site of the Battle of Barnet 81
Old Toll House, Potter’s Bar 82
Ganwick Corner 83
Bell Bar 84
Welwyn 89
The “Six Hills,” Stevenage 95
Trigg’s Coffin 102
At the 39th Mile 106
Biggleswade 108
Buckden 115
Matcham’s Bridge 119
Alconbury Hill: Junction of the Great North Road 123
and the North Road
The “Bell,” Stilton 127
Norman Cross 129
French Prisoners of War Monument, Norman Cross 132
Sculptured Figure, Water Newton Church 133
Water Newton Church 134
Edmund Boulter’s Milestone 135
The “Haycock,” Wansford 137
Sign of the “Haycock” 138
Wansford Bridge 139
Burghley House, by Stamford Town 143
Entrance to Stamford 147
Stamford 151
Daniel Lambert 152
The “Highflyer,” 1840 155
Bloody Oaks 157
Interior of a Village Inn 159
House, formerly the “Black Bull,” Witham Common 163
Foster Powell 168
Great Ponton 177
Great Ponton Church 179
The “Angel,” Grantham 182
The “Wondrous Sign” 187
Newark Castle 195
Market Place, Newark 199
Newark Castle 201
Jockey House 210
An Old Postboy: John Blagg 212
Scrooby Church 216
Scrooby Manor House 217
The Stables, Scrooby Manor House 220
The “Crown,” Bawtry 224
Coach passing Doncaster Racecourse 229
Brayton Church 237
Market Place, Selby 239
Micklegate Bar 245
Micklegate Bar: Present Day 246
[Picture: Old steam train]
I.
THERE was once an American who, with cheap wit, expressed a fear of
travelling in the little island of Great Britain, lest he should
accidentally fall over the edge of so small a place. It is quite evident
that he never travelled the road from London to York and Edinburgh.
You have to perform that journey to realise that this is, after all, not
so very small an island. It is not enough to have been wafted between
London and Edinburgh by express train—even although the wafting itself
takes seven hours and a half—for one to gain a good idea of the distance.
We will not take into consideration the total mileage between Dover and
Cape Wrath, which tots up to the formidable figure of eight hundred miles
or so, but will confine ourselves in these pages to the great road
between London and Edinburgh: to the Great North Road, in fact, which
measures, by way of York, three hundred and ninety-three miles.
There are a North Road and a Great North Road. Like different forms of
religious belief, by which their several adherents all devoutly hope to
win to that one place where we all would be, these two roads eventually
lead to one goal, although they approach it by independent ways. The
North Road is the oldest, based as it is partly on the old Roman Ermine
Way which led to Lincoln. It is measured from Shoreditch Church, and
goes by Kingsland to Tottenham and Enfield, and so by Waltham Cross to
Cheshunt, Ware, and Royston, eventually meeting the Great North Road
after passing through Caxton and climbing Alconbury Hill, sixty-eight
miles from London.
The Great North Road takes a very different route out of London. It was
measured from Hicks’s Hall, Smithfield, and, passing the “Angel” at
Islington, pursued a straight and continually ascending course for
Holloway and Highgate, going thence to Barnet, Hatfield, Welwyn,
Stevenage, Biggleswade, and Buckden to Alconbury; where, as just
remarked, the North Road merged into it. From London to Hadley Green,
just beyond Barnet, the Great North Road and the Holyhead Road are
identical.
In these volumes we shall consistently keep to the Great North Road;
starting, however, as the record-making cyclists of late years have done,
from the General Post-office in St. Martin’s-le-Grand, to or from which,
or the neighbouring old inns, the coaches of the historic past came and
went.
We travel with a light heart: our forbears with dismal forebodings,
leaving duly-executed and attested wills behind them. In the
comparatively settled times of from a hundred to two hundred years ago,
they duly returned, after many days: in earlier periods the home-coming
was not so sure a thing.
These considerations serve to explain to the tourist and the cyclist, who
travel for the love of change and the desire for beautiful scenery, why
no one in the Middle Ages travelled from choice. From the highest to the
lowest, from the king in his palace to the peasant in his wattled hut,
every one who could do so stayed at home, and only faced the roads from
sheer necessity. No one appreciated scenery in those days; nor are our
ancestors to be blamed for their shortcomings in this respect, for
outside every man’s door lurked some danger or another, and when a man’s
own fireside is the only safe place he knows of, it is apt to appear to
him the most beautiful and the most desirable of spots.
We cannot say whether the Romans appreciated scenery. If a love of the
wildly beautiful in nature is dependent upon the safety of those who
behold it, and upon the ease with which those scenes are visited, perhaps
only the later generations of Roman colonists could have possessed this
sense. The earlier Romans who made their splendid system of roads were,
doubtless, only military men, and, well aware of their dangers, found
nothing beautiful in mountain ranges. Their successors, however, during
four hundred years had leisure and plentiful opportunities of cultivating
taste, and travel was highly organised among them. A milliare, or
milestone, was placed at every Roman mile—4854 English feet—and
“mansiones,” or posting-stations, at distances varying from seven to
twenty miles.
Roman roads were scientifically constructed. The following was the
formula:—
I. Pavimentum, or foundation. Fine earth, hard beaten in.
II. Statumen, or bed of the road. Composed of large stones,
sometimes mixed with mortar.
III. Ruderatio. Small stones, well mixed with mortar.
IV. Nucleus. Formed by mixing lime, chalk, pounded brick, or
tile; or gravel, sand, and lime mixed with clay.
V. Summum Dorsum. Surface of the paved road.
So thoroughly well was the work done that remains of these roads are even
now discovered, in a perfect condition, although buried from six to
fifteen feet, or even deeper, beneath the present surface of the land,
owing to the hundreds of years of neglect which followed the abandonment
of Britain, and the decay of Roman civilisation; a neglect which allowed
storms and the gradual effects of the weather to accumulate deposits of
earth upon these paved ways until they were made to disappear as
effectually as Pompeii and Herculaneum under the hail of ashes and lava
that hid those cities from view for eighteen hundred years.
When that great people, the Romans, perished off the face of the earth,
and none succeeded them, their roads began to decay, their bridges and
paved fords were broken down or carried away by floods, and the rulers of
the nation were for over five hundred years too busily engaged in
subduing rebellions at home or in prosecuting wars abroad to attend to
the keeping of communications in proper repair. Social disorder, too,
destroyed roads and bridges that had survived natural decay and the
stress of the elements. Even those roads which existed in otherwise good
condition were only fair-weather highways. They were innocent of
culverts, and consequently the storm-water, which nowadays is carried off
beneath them, swept across the surface, and either carried it away or
remained in vast lakes on whose shores wayfarers shivered until the
floods had abated. Thieves and murderers were the commonplaces of the
roads, and signposts were not; so that guides—who at the best were
expensive, and at the worst were the accomplices of cutthroats, and lured
the traveller to their haunts—were absolutely necessary.
To the relief of travellers in those times came the Church, for the civil
and secular power had not begun even to dream of road-making. The Church
did some very important things for travellers, praying for them, and
adjuring the devout to include them in their prayers for prisoners and
captives, the sick, and others in any way distressed. The very word
“travel” derives from _travail_, meaning labour or hardship. This alone
shows how much to be pitied were those whose business took them from
their own firesides.
But to pray for them alone would not perhaps have been so very admirable,
and so the Church took the care of the roads on itself in a very special
sense. It granted indulgences to those who by their gifts or their
bodily labour helped to repair the highways, and licensed hermits to
receive tolls and alms from travellers over roads and bridges constructed
by the brethren, those revenues going towards the upkeep of the ways.
Benefactors to the Church frequently left lands and houses, whose
proceeds were to be applied for the same purpose; and for many years this
trust was respected, and all the road and bridge building and repairing
was done by the religious. By degrees, however, this trust was, if not
betrayed, allowed to gradually fall into neglect. False hermits set up
in remote places, away from the eyes of the bishops, and living idle and
dissolute lives on the alms they received, allowed roads and bridges
alike to fall into decay. These vicious, unlicensed hermits were great
stumbling-blocks to the godly in those times. They were often peasants
or workmen, who had observed how fat and idle a living was that gained by
those among the licensed who had betrayed their trust and fared
sumptuously on alms unearned, and so went and set up in the eremitical
profession for themselves. They fared well on bacon, had “fat chekus,”
toasted themselves before roaring fires in their too comfortable cells,
and lived “in ydelnesse and ese,” frequenting ale-houses and even worse
places. Accordingly many of them were eventually removed, or suffered
various punishments, and the neighbouring monasteries placed others in
their stead.
By this time, however, the bishops and abbots, whose broad acres had
often come to them in trust for the welfare of the traveller, began to
forget their obligations. It was, of course, a natural process: the
possessions of the religious houses had grown enormously, but so also had
their hospitality to all and sundry. Travellers had increased, and as it
was a rule of conduct with the great abbeys to not only relieve the poor,
but also to entertain the great in those days before the rise of the
roadside hostelry, their resources must have been well exercised.
Meanwhile the statutes of the country had gradually been imposing the
care of the roads upon the laity, and at the time when the greater and
lesser monasteries were dissolved, in the reign of Henry the Eighth,
parishes and landowners were chiefly concerned in endeavouring to comply
with their new and strange obligations in keeping their ways passable.
Of course they did not succeed, and equally of course, because it was
impossible that they could, the pains and penalties threatened for foul
and dangerous roads were not enforced.
A curious pamphlet on the condition of the roads in the seventeenth
century is that written by Thomas Mace, one of the “clerks” of Trinity
College, Cambridge, and published in 1675. Mace, there is no doubt, was
a man born out of his time. Had circumstances been propitious, he might
have become another and an earlier Macadam. His pamphlet, written both
in prose and verse, and addressed to the king, is styled _The Profit_,
_Conveniency_, _and Pleasure for the Whole Nation_, and is “a Discourse
lately presented to His Majesty concerning the Highways of England; their
badness, the causes thereof, the reasons of these causes, the
impossibility of ever having them well mended according to the old way of
mending; but may most certainly be done, and for ever so maintained
(according to this New Way) substantially, and with very much ease.”
We find here, as in other publications until the mid-eighteenth century
was well past, that the country was for the most part unenclosed, so that
when the traffic had worn the old tracks into deep ruts, or when mud had
rendered them impassable, the wagons, carts, and laden horses were taken
round by the nearest firm spots. “Much ground,” says our author, “is now
spoiled and trampled down in all wide roads, where coaches and carts take
liberty to pick and chuse for their best advantages; besides, such
sprawling and straggling of coaches and carts utterly confound the road
in all wide places, so that it is not only unpleasurable, but extremely
perplexing and cumbersome both to themselves and to all horse
travellers.”
These pickings and choosings were the original cause of the still
existing twists and turns in many of our roads. When we see an old road
winding snake-like through a flat country, with no hills or other obvious
reasons for its circuitous course, we may, in most cases, safely
attribute this apparent indecision and infirmity of purpose to these
ancient difficulties, thus perpetuated.
This ancient state of things occasioned many disputes and even fatal
affrays between the packhorse men, who carried goods slung across their
horses’ backs from one part of the country to the other, and between the
market-folk and those who travelled on horseback and coaches. Mace would
himself seem to have experienced some of these contentions as to who
should take the clean and who the muddy part of the road, for he writes
with great bitterness about “these disturbances, daily committed by
uncivil, refractory, and rude, Russianlike rake-shames, in contesting for
the way.”
“Hundreds of pack-horses,” he continues, “panniers, whifflers, coaches,
wagons, wains, carts, or whatsoever others,” fought and schemed for
precedence; and a horseman, his horse already exhausted by a long and
tedious journey, might, at the entrance to a town, especially on market
day, be compelled to go out of his way twenty times in one mile, owing to
the peevishness of these whifflers and market-folk. “I have often known
many travellers,” he continues, “and myself very often, to have been
necessitated to stand stock still behind a standing cart or wagon, on
most beastly and unsufferable wet wayes, to the great endangering of our
horses and neglect of public business: nor durst we adventure to stirr
(for most imminent danger of those deep rutts and unreasonable ridges)
till it has pleased Mr. Carter to jog on, which we have taken very
kindly.”
His plan was to once get the roads in good repair, and then, he says,
with the employment of “day men” to every five miles or so, they could be
easily kept in order. The prospect induces him to rise to poetry:
“First, let the ways be regularly brought
To artificial form, and truly wrought;
So that we can suppose them firmly mended,
And in all needful points, the work well ended,
That not a stone’s amiss; but all complete,
All lying smooth, round, firm, and wondrous neat.”
So far good. But then comes the heavy traffic to destroy the good work:
“Then comes a gang of heavy-laden wains
Of carts and wagons, spoiling all our pains.”
But he is ready for this. His proposed “day men” by at once filling up
the ruts would make the damage good. All these things he commends to the
notice of his Majesty with the concluding lines:
“There’s only one thing yet worth thinking on,
Which is, to put this work in execution.”
That it was _not_ “put into execution” is a matter of history.
We have seen that Mace calls the road to Scotland a “highway,” and the
terms “highroad” or “highway” are common enough; but what really is a
highroad? or rather, how did the term originate? Such a road is usually
understood to be a main artery of traffic between important towns, but
that was not precisely the original meaning, which indicated the physical
character of the road rather than its geographical status. “High roads”
were originally in fact, causeways constructed across, and above the
level of, marshes and low-lying lands, and the term was therefore
excellently descriptive. The changed meaning no doubt arose from the
fact that, as it would scarcely ever have been worth while to build
embanked roads for the purpose of connecting obscure villages out of the
way of trade, consequently the “high ways” and the “high roads” only came
into existence between important centres. But this highly specialised
meaning was destroyed when Turnpike Acts and Highway Acts began to be
passed. The first Turnpike Act, one relating to the road to the North,
referred to the Shoreditch, Stamford Hill, Ware, and Royston route, which
joined the Great North Road at Alconbury Hill. It was passed in 1663,
and authorised a toll-gate at Stilton, among other places. In the
preamble to this Act we find the road spoken of as “the ancient highway
and post-road leading from London to York and so into Scotland.” Later
Acts providing for the collection of tolls on the main roads and for the
formation of Turnpike Trusts, whose business it was to collect those
tolls and with them keep the “turnpike” roads in repair, named them
“turnpike roads”; while other legislation, culminating in the General
Highway Act of William the Fourth, perpetrated a delightful paradox by
especially designating by-roads “highways.” The cardinal difference, in
the eyes of the law, was that a turnpike road was a main line of
communication, to be maintained in proper order throughout its length by
taxes collected from the users of the road; while highways were only
local roads for local use and to be maintained by the respective parishes
in which they were situated. The ways in which these parish roads were
kept in repair were sufficiently curious. “Statute labour” preceded
highway rates, and was so called from a statute of Philip and Mary
providing for parish road-surveyors, and for men, horses, carts, and
materials to be supplied by the farmers at their orders, for repairs.
“Statute labour” survived in a fashion until the passing of the General
Highway Act of 1835, when it was wholly superseded by rates. In later
days parishes united and formed Highway Boards, just as they formed Poor
Law Unions; and choosing a surveyor, levied a common highway rate. These
surveyors were not always, nor often, competent men. They were, in fact,
generally elected by the Boards or the Vestries from some necessitous
inhabitants little above the status of the broken-down old men who were
paid a trifle to break or spread stones in order to keep them from being
burdens to the parish in the workhouse. These surveyors were appointed
and work done in fear of the parishes being indicted and heavily fined
for the dangerous condition of their roads, but it is obvious that they
must have been very badly repaired in those times. Nowadays the roads
are all highways, since the turnpikes have been abolished, and their
repair, outside the boroughs, is the business of the County Councils.
II
BEFORE Macadam and Telford appeared upon the scene, the office of
road-surveyor was very generally looked down upon. No self-respecting
engineer, before the time of these great men, condescended to have
anything to do with roads. It is true that a forerunner of Macadam and
Telford had appeared in Yorkshire in 1765, when “Blind Jack of
Knaresborough” began the construction of the Boroughbridge and Harrogate
road, the first of the long series for which he contracted; but he was
not an official road-surveyor, nor by profession an engineer. He was, in
fact, an engineer born and wholly untaught.
John Metcalf, the famous blind roadmaker, was born in 1717, and lost his
eyesight at six years of age. A native of Knaresborough, he filled in
his time many parts; being fiddler, huckster, soldier, carrier,
proprietor of the first stage-wagon between York and Knaresborough, and
road and bridge maker and contractor by turns. The marvellous instinct
which served him instead of sight is scarce credible, but is well
authenticated. He joined Thornton’s company of Yorkshire volunteers
raised at Boroughbridge to meet the Scots rebels in the ’45, and marched
with them and played them into action at Falkirk. His marvellous
adventures have no place here, but his solitary walk from London to
Harrogate in 1741 concerns the Great North Road. Being in London, and
returning at the same time, Colonel Liddell of Harrogate offered Blind
Jack a seat behind his carriage, which Metcalf declined, saying that he
could easily walk as far in a day as the colonel could go in his carriage
with post-horses. This incidentally shows us how utterly vile the roads
were at the time. Metcalf, although blind and unused to the road, having
travelled up to London by sea, walked back, and easily reached Harrogate
before the colonel, who posted all the way.
Liddell, who had an escort of sixteen mounted servants, started an hour
later than Metcalf. It had been arranged that they should meet that
night at Welwyn, but, a little beyond Barnet, on Hadley Green, where the
roads divide, Metcalf took the left hand, or Holyhead, road by mistake
and went a long distance before he discovered his mistake. Still he
arrived at Welwyn first. The next day he was balked at Biggleswade by
the river, which was in flood, and with no bridge to cross by.
Fortunately, after wandering some distance along the banks, he met a
stranger who led the way across a plank bridge. When they had crossed,
Metcalf offered him some pence for a glass of beer, which his guide
declined, saying he was welcome. Metcalf, however, pressed it upon him.
“Pray, can you see very well?” asked the stranger.
“Not very well,” replied Blind Jack.
“God forbid I should tithe you,” said his guide. “I am the rector of
this parish; so God bless you, and I wish you a good journey.”
In the end, Metcalf reached Harrogate two days before the colonel.
Metcalf made many roads around Knaresborough and in different parts of
Yorkshire, but none actually on the Great North Road. He died, aged
ninety-three, in 1810, five years before Macadam and Telford began their
work upon the roads. Like them, he rather preferred boggy ground for
road-making, and forestalled both them and Stephenson in adopting fagots
as foundations over mires. At that time the ignorant surveyors of roads
repaired them with dirt scraped from ditches and water-courses, in which
they embedded the first cartloads of stones which came to hand; stone of
all kinds and all sizes. This done, their “repairs” were completed, with
the result that the roads were frequently as bad as ever and constantly
in the most rugged condition. Roads—it may be news to the
uninstructed—cannot be made with dirt. In fact, a good road through
anything but rock is generally excavated, and the native earth being
removed, its place is taken by coarse-broken granite or rock; this in its
turn receiving a layer of “macadam,” or smaller broken granite or
whinstone, which is finally bound together by a sprinkling of red gravel,
of the kind known by builders as “hoggin,” whose binding qualities are
caused by a slight natural admixture of clay. In his insistence upon
broken stones, Macadam proved a power of observation not possessed by the
generality of road-makers, whose method was the haphazard one of strewing
any kind upon the road and trusting in the traffic to pack them. With
rounded pebbles or gravel stones thus chafing against one another, they
never packed into a solid mass, but remained for all time as unstable as
a shingly beach. Generations of road-making had not taught wisdom, but
Macadam perceived the readiness of the angularities in broken stones to
unite and form a homogeneous mass, and in introducing his system proved
himself unwittingly a man of science, for science has in these later days
discovered that ice is compacted by the action of ice-crystals uniting in
exactly this manner.
A great scheme for laying out the whole of the Great North Road between
London and Edinburgh on a scientific basis was in progress when the
successful trial of the competing locomotives at Rainhill, near
Liverpool, cast a warning shadow over the arrangements, and finally led
to the project being entirely abandoned. Had the work been done, it is
quite possible that the railways to the north would have taken another
direction; that, in fact, instead of land having to be surveyed and
purchased for them, the new, straight, and level road would have been
given up to and largely used by the railways. Telford was the engineer
chosen by the Government to execute this work, of which the portion
between Morpeth and Edinburgh was actually constructed. The survey of
the road between London, York, and Morpeth was begun as early as 1825,
and had been not only completed, but the works on the eve of being
started, when the Rainhill trials in 1829 stopped them short, and caused
the utter waste of the public money spent in the surveying.
III
IT were vain, nowadays, to seek any of the old starting-points from
London. The late Mr. Frederick Locker-Lampson asked in 1896, “Are ‘The
Bull and Mouth,’ ‘The Spread Eagle,’ The Swan with Two Necks,’ and ‘The
Green Man and Still,’ yet in existence?” With some little research he
would have discovered that—with the sole exception of the last-named—they
are not. The “Bull and Mouth” in later years became the “Queen’s Hotel,”
and was demolished only when the site was required for an extension of
the General Post Office in 1887. At the same time as the “Queen’s”
disappeared, the street at the side of it, called from the old inn “Bull
and Mouth Street,” was stopped up. In this street was the entrance to
the famous old coaching-stables which were in the last years of their
existence used as a railway receiving-office for goods. On their being
pulled down, the grotesque plaster sign, representing a giant face with
yawning mouth in which stood a bull, was removed to the Guildhall Museum,
where it may still be seen, together with the yet larger and more
elaborate sign which decorated the frontage of the “Queen’s.” This also
included a mouth and a bull, set amidst a frame of plaster fruits and
flowers, with the inscription:—
“Milo the Cretonian,
An ox slew with his fist,
And ate it up at one meal,
Ye gods! what a glorious twist.”
The origin, however, of the curious sign had nothing to do with this
hungry person. Precisely what was that origin is never likely to be
known; for although the legend that it derived from the capture of
“Boulogne Mouth”—_i.e._ Boulogne Harbour—in the reign of Henry the Eighth
is in general acceptation, it has been shrewdly suspected that this was a
tale wickedly invented by George Steevens, a literary practical joker,
who palmed off many similar stories upon unsuspecting antiquaries at the
end of last century. A perhaps more likely story is that the sign was
originally the “Bowl and Mouth.”
Under Sherman’s rule the “Bull and Mouth” became a mighty resort of
coaches to and from all parts, but more especially the north, and his
underground stables formed one of the sights of London.
Edward Sherman was a man of many parts, and had a varied career.
Originally a stockbroker, he followed Willans at the “Bull and Mouth” in
1823, and rebuilt it as the “Queen’s” in 1830, continuing the stables
under the old name, and eventually reconstructing them. The money for
these enterprises came from three old and wealthy ladies whom he married
in succession. If the stranger, unversed in the build and colour of
coaches, could not pick out the somewhat old-fashioned, bright-yellow
vehicles as Sherman’s, he was helped in identifying them by the pictorial
sign of the inn painted on the panels—rather a startling one, by the way,
to the rustics. Sherman, however, had not the prescience of Chaplin or
of Horne, who clearly foresaw the success of railways, and he kept his
coaches on the roads for some time after they were opened to their
destinations. He was sufficiently ill-advised not to come to terms with
the railway companies, and actually attempted, with the “Red Rover,” to
run the Manchester trains off. Of course this could not last very long,
and Sherman withdrew after having lost seven thousand pounds in a
gallant, but futile, competition with steam.
In its prime the “Bull and Mouth” sent forth the Edinburgh and Aberdeen
Royal Mail by York; the Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen coach by
Ferry-bridge to Newcastle, where the Glasgow passengers changed; the
Glasgow and Carlisle Royal Mail; the Newcastle “Wellington”; Shrewsbury
and Holyhead “Union” and “Oxonian”; Birmingham “Old Post Coach” and
“Aurora”; Leeds Royal Mail and “Express”; and Leicester “Union Post
Coach.”
The site of the “Swan with Two Necks” is now occupied by the London and
North-Western and South-Western Joint Goods Depot, in Gresham Street.
Modern sculptured keystones may be seen over the entrances, bearing the
effigy of a double-headed swan. This sign, like that of the “Bull and
Mouth,” is a corruption of a widely different term; originally, indeed,
the “Swan with Two Nicks,” from the particular “nicks” with which the
bills of the swans belonging to the Vintners’ Company on the Thames were
marked. The City Companies each had their swans on the river, and even
nowadays they are maintained on the upper reaches. The young cygnets
were marked at the annual festival of “swan-upping,” at which the City
magnates used hugely to enjoy themselves. The old and the new “nicks” of
the Vintners’ Company are pictured here.
[Picture: Old And New Swan Nicks] So far back as 1556, the “Swane with ij
Nekes at Mylke Street End” was known, and was then the property of the
Vintners. In the coaching era it is best remembered as the headquarters
of the great William Chaplin’s huge coaching business. Chaplin succeeded
William Waterhouse, who had established himself here in 1792, issuing a
curious token bearing the representation of a mail-coach on one side and
that of the Double-Necked Swan on the other, with the legend, “Speed,
Regularity, and Security. Payable at the Mail Coach Office, Lad Lane,
London, W.W.”
Lad Lane was until recent years the name by which this part of Gresham
Street was known, while the inn itself was generally called by the
coaching fraternity the “Wonderful Bird.”
Chaplin had in early days been a coachman himself. His career would have
delighted that sturdy moralist, Hogarth, painter of the successful career
of the Industrious Apprentice, for from that useful but humble position
he rose to be the largest coach-proprietor in England, Deputy-Chairman of
the London and Southampton (now London and South-Western) Railway, and
Member of Parliament for Salisbury. He is said to have accumulated half
a million of money. Twenty-seven mails left London every night, and of
these Chaplin horsed fourteen for various distances. Very many
stage-coaches were in his hands, and at the height of the coaching era he
is said to have owned nearly two thousand horses. He was an entirely
level-headed man, and, seeing at an early stage that railways must
succeed, threw in his lot with them. Railway directors were exceedingly
anxious to win over the coaching proprietors, and to induce them to
withdraw from the road, so that with no coaches running the public should
of necessity, whether they liked it or not, be compelled to travel by
rail. Chaplin sold off his stock before the oncoming railways
depreciated it, and, joining Benjamin Worthy Horne, of the “Golden
Cross,” Charing Cross, founded the great carrying firm of Chaplin and
Horne, which enjoyed the exclusive agency for the London and Birmingham
Railway. There can be little doubt, although it was denied by the early
officials of that line, that Chaplin and Horne were really bought off the
road, and the sum of £10,000 has been mentioned as the price of their
withdrawal. Before that time had come, coaches issued from Chaplin’s
yard for many places on the north-western roads: the Carlisle Royal Mail;
the Birmingham Royal Mail, “Courier,” and “Balloon Post Coach”; the
Chester “New Coach”; Coventry “Light Post Coach”; Liverpool Royal Mail;
Holyhead “New Mail” and a stage-coach without any particular name; and
the Manchester Royal Mail, “Defiance,” “Regulator,” and “Prince
Saxe-Cobourg.” The “Spread Eagle” in Gracechurch Street has also
disappeared. It was at one time a house of Chaplin’s, and was afterwards
owned in succession, together with the “Cross Keys” next door, by Mrs.
Nelson and Mrs. Mountain.
[Picture: Modern sign of the “Swan with Two Necks”]
The “Green Man and Still,” the last of the quartet of inns inquired after
by Mr. Locker-Lampson, is the only one now standing, and may be seen at
the corner of Oxford and Argyll Streets, close by Oxford Circus. It was
not a coaching hostelry in the fullest sense, being only a place of call
for the Oxford “Age,” and for the Harrow and other north-westerly “short
stages,” running between London and the suburbs. It is now a railway
receiving-office. This curious sign probably alludes to the old
profession of the “herb-doctors,” who distilled medicines from wild or
cultivated herbs. There were other inns whence Great North Road coaches
set out, but they have all vanished. The “George and Blue Boar,”
Holborn, whence the famous “Stamford Regent” started, has long since been
pulled down, and the “Inns of Court Hotel” stood on its site. The hotel
building remains, but about 1912 it ceased to be a hotel, and has since
been converted into offices for an Insurance Company. The “Regent”
originally left London at six o’clock in the evening, but in 1822 the
hour was altered to six in the morning, an unearthly time for those who
had to go some distance to reach Holborn, and necessitating, perhaps,
getting up at three o’clock. The announcement by the proprietors that
this alteration was for the “more perfect convenience” of their patrons
seems ironical:—
SIX O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING
From London.
* * * * *
THE PROPRIETORS OF
THE REGENT COACH
Respectfully inform the public and their friends in particular, that,
for their more perfect convenience, and to keep pace with the daily
improvements in travelling, the hour of its leaving London will be
altered on Monday, the 13th of May (and continued during the summer
months),
TO SIX O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING,
_Instead of Night_.
The arrangements that are forming in furtherance of this long-desired
alteration will ensure a steady and punctual conveyance of Passengers
to Stamford by a Quarter before Six o’clock, and to Melton by a
Quarter before Nine o’clock in the Evening.
The hours of leaving Melton and Stamford will NOT be altered.
The proprietors take this opportunity to acknowledge their sense of
the decided patronage shown to the REGENT COACH under their several
regulations, and to repeat their promise that no exertion shall be
wanting to make it one of the most desirable conveyances to and from
London.
Passengers and Parcels booked at Mr. Weldon’s, and the Bull and Swan
Inn, Stamford; and at Mr. Sharp’s, Bell Inn, Melton.—_Stamford_,
_May_ 1, 1822.
[Picture: The “Spread Eagle,” Gracechurch Street]
The “Saracen’s Head,” Snow Hill, which must not he confounded with the
other and equally celebrated “Saracen’s Head” in Aldgate High Street, was
another very notable coaching establishment, and a galleried inn of
picturesqueness and antiquity. Alas! that it has long since disappeared.
Its history went back beyond the fifteenth century, and a reference made
to it in 1522, when the suite of the Emperor Charles the Fifth lay here,
speaks of the house as of some importance:—“The signe of the Sersyns hed:
xxx beddes, a stable for xl horses.”
The sign, of course deriving from the Crusades, itself gives the inn a
very high antiquity. It was a sign of a gruesome and savage aspect, and
had its origin in the pictures the returning Crusaders drew of their
adversaries. As Selden says:—“Our countrymen pictured them with huge,
big, terrible faces, when in truth they were like other men. But this,”
he adds slyly, “they did for their own credits.” The inn owed its later
celebrity to Dickens, who made it the London inn of Mr. Squeers. Thus he
describes it:—“Near to the jail, and by consequence near to Smithfield,
on that particular part of Snow Hill where omnibus horses going eastward
seriously think of falling down on purpose, and where horses in hackney
cabriolets going westward not unfrequently fall by accident, is the
coachyard of the Saracen’s Head Inn; its portal guarded by two Saracens’
heads and shoulders frowning upon you from each side of the gateway. The
inn itself, garnished with another Saracen’s head, frowns upon you from
the top of the yard. When you walk up this yard you will see the
booking-office on your left and the tower of St. Sepulchre’s Church
darting abruptly up into the sky on your right, and a gallery of bedrooms
upon both sides.”
There is a “Saracen’s Head” on Snow Hill to this day, but it is a modern
building. From the old house went the “Lord Nelson,” York, Newcastle,
and Edinburgh coach; the “Post,” despite its name, a slow-coach, for
Carlisle and Penrith, by Doncaster, Ferrybridge, and Greta Bridge,
doubtless the one by which Mr. Wackford Squeers took his “dear pupils” to
Dotheboys Hall; and coaches to Hull, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham,
and Shrewsbury, besides others for the western roads. The “Saracen’s
Head” was kept by Mrs. Mountain, in succession to her husband and her
husband’s father. Her son, Peter, managed the business for her, but it
must not be supposed that she took no active part in it. To the
contrary, Mrs. Sarah Ann Mountain, like her contemporary, Mrs. Nelson, of
the “Bull,” Aldgate, possessed the most brilliant business capacity. She
built coaches, as well as horsing them, and earned a profit by charging
her partners down the road the mileage which in the usual course of
business would have been paid over to a coach-builder. There was no more
expressive sight in the London of the beginning of the nineteenth century
than the simultaneous starting of the mails every evening from the
General Post Office. Londoners and country-cousins alike were never
weary of the spectacle of the smart coaches, the business-like coachmen,
and the resplendent, scarlet-coated guards preparing to travel through
the night, north, south, east, or west, with his Majesty’s mails. Even
the passengers shone with a reflected glory, and felt important as, one
after the other, the twenty-seven mails began at the stroke of eight
o’clock to move off from the double file that lined the street.
[Picture: The “Saracen’s Head,” Snow Hill]
That street was not the broad thoroughfare of St. Martin’s-le-Grand, but
the narrow one of Lombard Street, in which the General Post Office was
situated for many years, until 1829, when what is now called the “old”
General Post Office, but was then the newly completed building of
Smirke’s, was occupied. The old headquarters can still be seen, in the
Lombard Street Post Office of to-day. It is from here that the picture
of the mails starting, forming the frontispiece of this volume, was
taken. To our eyes, accustomed to the crowded thoroughfare of modern
times, the street appears supremely dull and desolate, but that is only a
retrospective way of looking at it.