THE CAMBRIDGE, ELY, AND
KING'S LYNN 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 Exeter Road=: The Story of the West of England Highway.
=The Great North Road=: The Old Mail Road to Scotland. Two Vols.
=The Norwich Road=: An East Anglian Highway.
=The Holyhead Road=: The Mail-Coach Road to Dublin. Two Vols.
=Cycle Rides Round London.=
=The Oxford, Gloucester, and Milford Haven Road.= [_In the Press._
[Illustration: THE "CAMBRIDGE TELEGRAPH" STARTING FROM THE WHITE HORSE,
FETTER LANE.
[_From a Print after J. Pollard._]]
=THE CAMBRIDGE
ELY AND KING'S
LYNN ROAD= THE
GREAT FENLAND HIGHWAY
BY CHARLES G. HARPER
AUTHOR OF "THE BRIGHTON ROAD" "THE PORTSMOUTH
ROAD" "THE DOVER ROAD" "THE BATH ROAD"
"THE EXETER ROAD" "THE GREAT NORTH ROAD"
"THE NORWICH ROAD" "THE HOLYHEAD ROAD" AND
"CYCLE RIDES ROUND LONDON"
[Illustration]
_ILLUSTRATED BY THE AUTHOR, AND FROM OLD-TIME PRINTS
AND PICTURES_
LONDON: CHAPMAN & HALL LTD. 1902.
(_All Rights Reserved_)
[Illustration: Preface]
_IN the course of an eloquent passage in an eulogy of the old posting
and coaching days, as opposed to railway times, Ruskin regretfully
looks back upon "the happiness of the evening hours when, from the top
of the last hill he had surmounted, the traveller beheld the quiet
village where he was to rest, scattered among the meadows, beside
its valley stream." It is a pretty, backward picture, viewed through
the diminishing-glass of time, and possesses a certain specious
attractiveness that cloaks much of the very real discomfort attending
the old road-faring era. For not always did the traveller behold the
quiet village under conditions so ideal. There were such things as
tempests, keen frosts, and bitter winds to make his faring highly
uncomfortable; to say little of the snowstorms that half smothered
him and prevented his reaching his destination until his very vitals
were almost frozen. Then there were_ MESSIEURS _the highwaymen, always
to be reckoned with, and it cannot too strongly be insisted upon that
until the nineteenth century had well dawned they were always to be
confidently expected at the next lonely bend of the road. But, assuming
good weather and a complete absence of those old pests of society,
there can be no doubt that a journey down one of the old coaching
highways must have been altogether delightful._
_In the old days of the road, the traveller saw his destination afar
off, and--town or city or village--it disclosed itself by degrees to
his appreciative or critical eyes. He saw it, seated sheltered in its
vale, or, perched on its hilltop, the sport of the elements; and so
came, with a continuous panorama of country in his mind's eye, to his
inn. By rail the present-day traveller has many comforts denied to his
grandfather, but there is no blinking the fact that he is conveyed very
much in the manner of a parcel or a bale of goods, and is delivered
at his journeys end oppressed with a sense of detachment never felt
by one who travelled the road in days of old, or even by the cyclist
in the present age. The railway traveller is set down out of the void
in a strange place, many leagues from his base; the country between
a blank and the place to which he has come an unknown quantity. In so
travelling he has missed much._
_The old roads and their romance are the heritage of the modern
tourist, by whatever method he likes to explore them. Countless
generations of men have built up the highways, the cities, towns,
villages and hamlets along their course, and have lived and loved,
have laboured, fought and died through the centuries. Will you not
halt awhile and listen to their story--fierce, pitiful, lovable,
hateful, tender or terrible, just as you may hap upon it; flashing
forth as changefully out of the past as do the rays from the facets of
a diamond? A battle was fought here, an historic murder wrought there.
This way came such an one to seek his fortune and find it; that way
went another, to lose life and fortune both. In yon house was born
the Man of his Age, for whom that age was ripe; on yonder hillock an
olden malefactor, whom modern times would call a reformer, expiated the
crime of being born too early--there is no cynic more consistent in his
cynicism than Time._
_All these have lived and wrought and thought to this one
unpremeditated end--that the tourist travels smoothly and safely along
roads once rough and dangerous beyond belief, and that as he goes
every place has a story to tell, for him to hear if he will. If he
have no ears for such, so much the worse for him, and by so much the
poorer his faring._
CHARLES G. HARPER.
PETERSHAM, SURREY,
_October 1902_.
[Illustration: LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS]
SEPARATE PLATES
PAGE
THE "CAMBRIDGE TELEGRAPH" STARTING FROM THE WHITE
HORSE, FETTER LANE _Frontispiece_
_From a Print after J. Pollard._
THE "STAR OF CAMBRIDGE" STARTING FROM THE BELLE
SAUVAGE YARD, LUDGATE HILL, 1816 17
_From a Print after T. Young._
"KNEE-DEEP": THE "LYNN AND WELLS MAIL" IN A SNOWSTORM 23
_From a Print after C. Cooper Henderson._
A LONDON SUBURB IN 1816: TOTTENHAM 39
_From a Drawing by Rowlandson._
WALTHAM CROSS 61
THE "HULL MAIL" AT WALTHAM CROSS 65
_From a Print after J. Pollard._
CHESHUNT GREAT HOUSE 77
HODDESDON 83
WARE 89
BARLEY 105
FOWLMERE: A TYPICAL CAMBRIDGESHIRE VILLAGE 113
MELBOURN 129
TRUMPINGTON MILL 137
TRUMPINGTON STREET, CAMBRIDGE 145
HOBSON, THE CAMBRIDGE CARRIER 159
A WET DAY IN THE FENS 203
ALDRETH CAUSEWAY 219
A FENLAND ROAD: THE AKEMAN STREET NEAR STRETHAM
BRIDGE 245
STRETHAM BRIDGE 249
ELY CATHEDRAL 271
_After J. M. W. Turner, R.A._
ELY, FROM THE OUSE 277
JOSEPH BEETON IN THE CONDEMNED CELL 311
THE TOWN AND HARBOUR OF LYNN, FROM WEST LYNN 317
"CLIFTON'S HOUSE" 320
THE CUSTOM-HOUSE, LYNN 323
THE FERRY INN, LYNN 327
ILLUSTRATIONS IN TEXT
PAGE
VIGNETTE: EEL-SPEARING _Title-page_
PREFACE vii
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS: TAKING TOLL xi
THE CAMBRIDGE, ELY, AND KING'S LYNN ROAD 1
THE GREEN DRAGON, BISHOPSGATE STREET, 1856 8
_From a Drawing by T. Hosmer Shepherd._
THE FOUR SWANS, BISHOPSGATE STREET, 1855 9
_From a Drawing by T. Hosmer Shepherd._
TOTTENHAM CROSS 38
BALTHAZAR SANCHEZ' ALMSHOUSES, TOTTENHAM 41
WALTHAM CROSS A HUNDRED YEARS AGO 59
THE ROMAN URN, CHESHUNT 76
CHARLES THE FIRST'S ROCKING-HORSE 79
CLARKSON'S MONUMENT 99
A MONUMENTAL MILESTONE 111
THE CHEQUERS, FOWLMERE 115
WEST MILL 118
A QUAINT CORNER IN ROYSTON 125
CAXTON GIBBET 127
THE FIRST MILESTONE FROM CAMBRIDGE 139
HOBSON'S CONDUIT 141
HOBSON 162
_From a Painting in Cambridge Guildhall._
MARKET HILL, CAMBRIDGE 167
THE FALCON, CAMBRIDGE 168
INTERIOR OF ST. SEPULCHRE'S CHURCH 169
CAMBRIDGE CASTLE A HUNDRED YEARS AGO 171
LANDBEACH 181
THE FENS 191
_After Dugdale._
THE ISLE OF ELY AND DISTRICT 215
ALDRETH CAUSEWAY AND THE ISLE OF ELY 218
UPWARE INN 237
WICKEN FEN 241
HODDEN SPADE AND BECKET 248
STRETHAM 254
THE WEST FRONT, ELY CATHEDRAL 265
ELY CATHEDRAL, FROM THE LITTLEPORT ROAD 289
LITTLEPORT 291
THE RIVER ROAD, LITTLEPORT 293
THE OUSE 295
SOUTHERY FERRY 296
KETT'S OAK 300
DENVER HALL 301
THE CROWN, DOWNHAM MARKET 302
THE CASTLE, DOWNHAM MARKET 303
HOGGE'S BRIDGE, STOW BARDOLPH 305
THE LYNN ARMS, SETCHEY 306
THE SOUTH GATES, LYNN 308
THE GUILDHALL, LYNN 314
THE DUKE'S HEAD, LYNN 321
ISLINGTON 329
THE ROAD TO CAMBRIDGE, ELY, AND KING'S LYNN
London (Shoreditch Church) to-- MILES
Kingsland 1½
Stoke Newington 2½
Stamford Hill 3¼
Tottenham High Cross 4¼
Tottenham 5¼
Upper Edmonton 6
Lower Edmonton 6¾
Ponder's End 8½
Enfield Highway 9¼
Enfield Wash 10
Waltham Cross 11½
Crossbrook Street 12
Turner's Hill 13
Cheshunt 13¼
Cheshunt Wash 13¾
Turnford 14
Wormley (cross New River) 14¾
Broxbourne 15¾
Hoddesdon 17
Great Amwell (cross New River and the Lea) 19¼
Ware 21
Wade's Mill (cross River Rib) 23
High Cross 23½
Collier's End 25
Puckeridge (cross River Rib) 26¾
Braughing 27¾
Quinbury 28¾
Hare Street 30¾
Barkway 35
Barley 36¾
Fowlmere 42
Newton 44¼
Hauxton (cross River Granta) 47¾
Trumpington 48½
Cambridge (Market Hill) 50¾
To Cambridge, through Royston--
Puckeridge (cross River Rib) 26¾
West Mill 29¾
Buntingford 31
Chipping 32½
Buckland 33¾
Royston 37¾
Melbourn 41¼
Shepreth 43¼
Foxton Station and Level Crossing 44
Harston 45½
Hauxton (cross River Granta) 46½
Trumpington 48¾
Cambridge (Market Hill) 51
Milton 54
Landbeach 54¾
Denny Abbey 58
Chittering 58¾
Stretham Bridge (cross Great Ouse River) 61¾
Stretham 63¼
Thetford Level Crossing 64½
Ely 67½
Chettisham Station and Level Crossing 69½
Littleport 72½
Littleport Bridge (cross Great Ouse River) 73½
Brandon Creek (cross Little Ouse River) 76¾
Southery 78¾
Modney Bridge (cross Sams Cut Drain) 80¼
Hilgay (cross Wissey River) 81¾
Fordham 82¾
Denver 84
Downham Market 85¼
Wimbotsham 86½
Stow Bardolph 87¼
South Runcton (cross River Nar) 89¼
Setchey 92¼
West Winch 93¾
Hardwick Bridge 95¼
King's Lynn 97¼
[Illustration:
THE
CAMBRIDGE
ELY
AND
KING'S LYNN ROAD]
I
"SISTER ANNE, Sister Anne, do you see anyone coming?" asks Fatima in
the story of Bluebeard. Clio, the Muse of History, shall be my Sister
Anne. I hereby set her down in the beginnings of the Cambridge Road,
bid her be retrospective, and ask her what she sees.
"I see," she says dreamily, like some medium or clairvoyant,--"I see
a forest track leading from the marshy valley of the Thames to the
still more marshy valley of the Lea. The tribes who inhabit the land
are at once fierce and warlike, and greedy for trading with merchants
from over the narrow channel that separates Britain from Gaul. They
are fair-haired and blue-eyed, they are dressed in the skins of wild
animals, and their chieftains wear many ornaments of red gold." Then
she is silent, for Clio, like her eight sisters, is a very ancient
personage, and like the aged, although she knows much, cannot recall
sights and scenes without a deal of mental fumbling.
"And what else do you see?"
"There comes along the forest track a great concourse of soldiers.
Never before were such seen in the land. They form the advance-guard of
an invading army, and the tribes presently fly from them, for these are
the conquering Romans, whose fame has come before them. There are none
who can withstand those soldiers."
"Many a tall Roman warrior, doubtless, sleeps where he fell, slain by
wounds or disease in that advance?"
Clio is indignant and corrective. "The Romans," she says, "were not
a race of tall men. They were undersized, but well built and of a
generous chest-development. They are, as I see them, imposing as they
march, for they advance in solid phalanx, and their bright armour,
their shields and swords, flash like silver in the sun.
"I see next," she says, "these foreign soldiers as conquerors, settled
in the land. They have an armed camp in a clearing of the forest, where
a company of them keep watch and ward, while many more toil at the work
of making the forest track a broad and firm military way. Among them,
chained together like beasts, and kept to their work by the whips and
blows of taskmasters, are gangs of natives, who perform the roughest
and the most unskilled of the labour.
"And after that I see four hundred years of Roman power and
civilisation fade like a dream, and then a dim space of anarchy, lit up
by the fitful glare of fire, and stained and running red with blood.
Many strange and heathen peoples come and go in this period along the
road, once so broad and flat and straight, but now grown neglected.
The strange peoples call themselves by many names,--Saxons, Vikings,
Picts, and Scots and Danes,--but their aim is alike: to plunder and
to slay. Six hundred years pass before they bring back something of
that civilisation the Romans planted, and the land obtains a settled
Christianity and an approach to rest. And then, when things have come
to this pass, there comes a stronger race to make the land its own. It
is the coming of the Normans.
"I see the Conqueror, lord of all this land but the Isle of Ely,
coming to vanquish the English remnant. I see him, his knights and
men-at-arms, his standard-bearers and his bowmen, marching where the
Romans marched a thousand years before, and in three years I see the
shrunken remains of his army return, victorious, but decimated by those
conquered English and their allies, the agues and fevers, the mires and
mists of the Fens."
"And then--what of the Roman Road, the Saxon 'Ermine Street'? tell me,
why does it lie deserted and forgot?"
But Clio is silent. She does not know; it is a question rather for
archæology, for which there is no Muse at all. Nor can she tell much
of the history of the road, apart from the larger national concerns in
which it has a part. She is like a wholesale trader, and deals only in
bulk. Let us in these pages seek to recover something from the past to
illustrate the description of these many miles.
II
THE coach-road to Cambridge, Ely, and King's Lynn--the modern
highway--follows in general direction, and is in places identical
with, two distinct Roman roads. From Shoreditch Church, whence it is
measured, to Royston, it is on the line of the Ermine Street, the great
direct Roman road to Lincoln and the north of England, which, under
the names of the "North Road" and the "Old North Road," goes straight
ahead, past Caxton, to Alconbury Hill, sixty-eight miles from London,
where it becomes identical with our own Great North Road, as far as
Stamford and Casterton.
From Royston to Cambridge there would seem never to have been any
direct route, and the Romans apparently reached Cambridge either by
pursuing the Ermine Street five miles farther, and thence turning to
the right at Arrington Bridge; or else by Colchester, Sudbury, and
Linton. Those, at anyrate, are the ways obvious enough on modern maps,
or in the Antonine Itinerary, that Roman road-book made about A.D.
200-250. We have, however, only to exercise our own observation to
find that the Antonine Itinerary is a very inaccurate piece of work,
and that the Romans almost certainly journeyed to _Camboricum_, their
Cambridge, by way of Epping, Bishop's Stortford, and Great Chesterford,
a route taken by several coaches sixty years ago.
From Cambridge to Ely and King's Lynn the coach-road follows with more
or less exactness the Akeman Street, a Roman way in the nature of an
elevated causeway above the fens.
The Ermine Street between London and Lincoln is not noted by the
Antonine Itinerary, which takes the traveller to that city by two very
indirect routes: the one along the Watling Street as far as High Cross,
in Warwickshire, and thence to the right, along the Fosse Way past
Leicester; the other by Colchester. The Ermine Street, leading direct
to Lincoln, is therefore generally supposed to be a Roman road of much
later date.
We are not to suppose that the Romans knew these roads by the names
they now bear; names really given by the Saxons. Ermine Street
enshrines the name of Eorman, some forgotten hero or divinity of that
people; and the Akeman Street, running from the Norfolk coast, in a
south-westerly direction through England, to Cirencester and Bath,
is generally said to have obtained its name from invalids making
pilgrimage to the Bath waters, there to ease them of their aches and
pains. But a more reasonable theory is that which finds the origin of
that name in a corruption of _Aquæ Solis_, the name of Bath.
No reasonable explanation has ever been advanced of the abandonment of
the Ermine Street between Lower Edmonton and Ware, and the choosing
of the present route, running roughly parallel with it at distances
ranging from half a mile to a mile, and by a low-lying course much more
likely to be flooded than the old Roman highway. The change must have
been made at an early period, far beyond the time when history dawns on
the road, for it is always by the existing route that travellers are
found coming and going.
Few know that the Roman road and the coaching road are distinct; and
yet, with the aid of a large-scale Ordnance map, the course of the
Ermine Street can be distinctly traced. Not only so, but a day's
exploration of it, as far as its present condition, obstructed and
diverted in places, will allow, is of absorbing interest.
It makes eleven miles of, in places, rough walking, and often gives
only the satisfaction of being close to the actual site, and not
actually on it. A straight line drawn from where the modern road
swerves slightly to the right at Northumberland Park, Edmonton, to
Ware, gives the direction the ancient road pursued.
The exact spot where the modern road leaves the Roman way is found
at Lower Edmonton, where a Congregational Church stands in an open
space, and the houses on the left hand are seen curving back to
face a lane that branches off at this point. This, bearing the
significantly ancient name of "Langhedge Lane," goes exactly on the
line of the Ermine Street; but it cannot be followed for more than
about a hundred yards, for it is cut through by railways and modern
buildings, and quite obliterated for some distance. Where lanes are
found near Edmonton Rectory on the site of the ancient way, names that
are eloquent of an antiquity closely allied with Roman times begin
to appear. "Bury Hall," and, half a mile beyond it, "Bury Farm,"
neighboured by an ancient moat, are examples. "Bury" is a corruption of
a Saxon word meaning anything, from a fortified camp to a settlement,
or a hillock; and when found beside a Roman road generally signifies
(like that constantly recurring name "Coldharbour") that the Saxons
found deserted Roman villas by the wayside. Beyond Bury Farm the
cutting of the New River in the seventeenth century obscured some
length of the Ermine Street. A long straight lane from Forty Hill Park,
past Bull's Cross, to Theobalds, represents it pretty accurately, as
does the next length, by Bury Green and Cheshunt Great House. Cold
Hall and Cold Hall Green mark its passing by, even though, just here,
it is utterly diverted or stopped up. "Elbow Lane" is the name of it
from the neighbourhood of Hoddesdon to Little Amwell. Beyond that point
it plunges into narrower lanes, and thence into pastures and woods,
descending steeply therefrom into the valley of the Lea by Ware. In
those hillside pastures, and in an occasional wheatfield, a dry summer
will disclose, in a long line of dried-up grass or corn, the route of
that ancient paved way below the surface. A sepulchral barrow in one
of these fields, called by the rustics "Penny loaf Hill," is probably
the last resting-place of some prehistoric traveller along this way.
A quarter of a mile from Ware the Ermine Street crossed the Lea to
"Bury Field," now a brickfield, where many Roman coins have been found.
Thenceforward it is one with the present highway to Royston.
III
[Illustration: THE GREEN DRAGON, BISHOPSGATE STREET, 1856.
[_From a Drawing by T. Hosmer Shepherd_]]
ALTHOUGH Shoreditch Church marks the beginning of the Cambridge Road,
of the old road to the North, and of the highways into Lincolnshire, it
was always to and from a point somewhat nearer the City of London that
the traffic along these various ways came and went. Bishopsgate Street
was of old the great centre for coaches and vans, and until quite
modern times--until, in fact, after railways had come--those ancient
inns, the Four Swans, the Vine, the Bull, the Green Dragon, and many
another, still faced upon the street, as for many centuries they had
done. Coaches were promptly withdrawn on the opening of the railways,
but the lumbering old road-waggons, with their vast tilts, broad
wheels, swinging horn-lanterns, and long teams of horses, survived for
some years later. Now everything is changed; inns, coaches, waggons
are all gone. You will look in vain for them; and of the most famous
inn of all--the Bull, in Bishopsgate Street Within--the slightest
memory survives. On its site rises that towering block of commercial
offices called "Palmerston House," crawling abundantly, like some
maggoty cheese, with companies and secretaries, clerks and office-boys,
who seem, like mites, to writhe out of the interstices of the stone
and plaster. Overhead, on the dizzy roof, are the clustered strands
of the telegraph-wires, resembling the meshes of some spider's web,
exquisitely typical of much that goes forward in those little cribs and
hutches of offices within. It is a sorry change from the old Bull--the
Black Bull, as it was originally named--with its cobble-stoned
courtyard and surrounding galleries, whence audiences looked down
upon the plays of Shakespeare and others of the Elizabethans, and
so continued until the Puritans came and stage-plays were put under
interdict. When plays were not being enacted in that old courtyard,
it was crowded with the carriers' vans out of Cambridgeshire and the
Eastern Counties generally. "The Black Bull," we read in a publication
dated 1633, "is still looking towards Shoreditch, to see if he can spy
the carriers coming from Cambridge." Would that it still looked towards
Shoreditch!
[Illustration: THE FOUR SWANS, BISHOPSGATE STREET, 1855.
[_From a Drawing by T. Hosmer Shepherd._]]
It was to the Bull that old Hobson, the Cambridge carrier of such
great renown, drove on his regular journeys, between 1570 and 1631.
Hobson was the precursor, the grand original, of all the Pickfords and
Carter Patersons of this crowded age, and lives immortal, though his
body be long resolved to dust, as the originator of a proverb. That is
immortality indeed! No deed of chivalry, no great achievement in the
arts of peace and war, shall so surely render your name imperishable
as the linking of it with some proverb or popular saying. Who has not
heard of "Hobson's Choice"? Have you never been confronted with that
"take it or leave it" offer yourself? For, in truth, Hobson's Choice
is no choice at all; and is, and ever was, "that or none." The saying
arose from the livery-stable business carried on by Thomas Hobson at
Cambridge, in addition to his carrying trade. He is, indeed, rightly
or wrongly, said to have been the first who made a business of letting
out saddle-horses. His practice, invariably followed, was to refuse
to allow any horse in his stables to be taken out of its proper turn.
"That or none" was his unfailing formula, when the Cambridge students,
eager to pick and choose, would have selected their own fancy in
horseflesh. Every customer was thus served alike, without favour.
Hobson's fame, instead of flickering out, has endured. Many versified
about him at his death, but one of the best rhymed descriptions of his
stable practice was written in 1734, a hundred and three years later,
by Charles Waterton, as a translation from the Latin of Vincent Bourne--
"In his long stable, Cambridge, you are told,
Hobson kept studs for hire in days of old,
On this condition only--that the horse
Nearest the door should start the first on course,
Then next to him, or none: so that each beast
Might have its turn of labour and of rest;
This granted, no one yet, in college dress,
Was ever known this compact to transgress.
Next to the door--next to the work; say, why
Should such a law, so just, be doomed to die?
Remember then this compact to restore,
And let it govern as it did before.
This done, O happy Cambridge! you will see,
Your Hobson's stud just as it ought to be."
IV
WHO was that man, or who those associated adventurers, to first
establish a coach between London and Cambridge, and when was the custom
first introduced of travelling by coach, instead of on horseback, along
this road? No one can say. We can see now that he who first set up a
Cambridge coach must of necessity have been great and forceful: as
great a man as Hobson, in whose time people were well content to hire
horses and ride them; but although University wits have sung the fame
of Hobson, the greater innovator and the date of his innovation alike
remain unknown. It is vaguely said that the first Cambridge coach was
started in the reign of Charles the Second, but Pepys, who might have
been trusted to mention so striking a novelty, does not refer to such
a thing, and, as on many other roads, we hear nothing definite until
1750, when a Cambridge coach went up and down twice a week, taking two
whole days each way, staying the night at Barkway going, and at Epping
returning. The same team of horses dragged the coach the whole way.
There was in this year a coach through to Lynn, once a week, setting
out on Fridays in summer and Thursdays in winter.
In 1753 a newer era dawned. There were then two conveyances for
Cambridge, from the Bull and the Green Dragon in Bishopsgate: one
leaving Tuesdays and Fridays, the other Wednesdays and Saturdays,
reaching the Blue Boar and the Red Lion, Cambridge, the same night and
returning the following day, when that day did not happen to be Sunday.
Each of these stage-coaches carried six passengers, all inside, and the
fares were about twopence-halfpenny a mile in summer and threepence in
winter. The cost of a coach journey between London and Cambridge was
then, therefore, about twelve shillings.
Hobson's successors in the carrying business had by this time increased
to three carriers, owning two waggons each. There were thus six waggons
continually going back and forth in the mid-eighteenth century. They
took two and a half days to perform the fifty-one miles, and "inned" at
such places as Hoddesdon, Ware, Royston, and Barkway, where they would
be drawn up in the coachyards of the inns at night, and those poor
folk who travelled by them at the rate of three-halfpence a mile would
obtain an inexpensive supper, with a shakedown in loft or barn.
The coaches at this period did by much effort succeed in performing
the journey in one day, but it was a long day. They started early and
came late to their journey's end; setting out at four o'clock in the
morning, and coming to their destination at seven in the evening; a
pace of little more than three miles an hour.
In 1763, owing partly to the improvements that had taken place along
the road, and more perhaps to the growing system of providing more
changes of horses and shorter stages, the "London and Cambridge
Diligence" is found making the journey daily, in eight hours, by way
of Royston, "performed by J. Roberts of the White Horse, Fetter Lane;
Thomas Watson's, the Red Lyon, Royston; and Jacob Brittain, the Sun,
Cambridge." The "Diligence" ran light, carrying three passengers only,
at a fare of thirteen shillings and sixpence. There were in this same
year two other coaches; the "Fly," daily, from the Queen's Head, Gray's
Inn Lane, by way of Epping and Chesterford, to the Rose on the Market
Hill, Cambridge, at a fare of twelve shillings; and the "Stage," daily,
to the Red Lion, Petty Cury, carrying four passengers at ten shillings
each.
We hear little at this period of coaches or waggons on to Ely and
King's Lynn. Cambridgeshire and Norfolk roads were only just being made
good, after many centuries of neglect, and Cambridge town was still,
as it always had been (strange though it may now seem), something of
a port. The best and safest way was to take boat or barge by Cam and
Ouse, rather than face the terrors of roads almost constantly flooded.
Gillam's, Burleigh's, and Salmon's waggons, which at this time were
advertised to ply between London and Cambridge, transferred their
loads on to barges at the quays by Great Bridge. Indeed it was not
until railways came that Cambridge ceased to depend largely upon the
rivers, and the coals burnt, the wine drank, and the timber used were
water-borne to the very last. Hence we find the town always in the
old days peculiarly distressed in severe winters when the waterways
were frozen; and hence, too, the remonstrance made by the Mayor and
Corporation when Denver Sluice was rebuilt in 1745, "to the hindering
of the navigation to King's Lynn."
In 1796, the roads now moderately safe, a stage-coach is found
plying from Cambridge to Ely and back in one day, replacing the old
"passage-boats"; but Lynn, as far as extant publications tell us, was
still chiefly approachable by water. In this year Cambridge enjoyed
a service of six coaches between the town and London, four of them
daily; the remaining two running three times a week. The Mail, on the
road ten years past, started at eight o'clock every night from the
Bull and Mouth, London, and, going by Royston, arrived at the Sun,
Cambridge, at 3.30 the following morning. The old "Diligence," which
thirty-three years before had performed the journey in eight hours,
now is found to take nine, and to have raised its fares from thirteen
shillings and sixpence to one guinea, going to the Hoop instead of
the Sun. The "Fly," still by Epping and Great Chesterford, has raised
its fares from twelve shillings to eighteen shillings, and now takes
"outsides" at nine shillings. It does not, however, fly very swiftly,
consuming ten hours on the way. "Prior's Stage" is one of the new
concerns, leaving the Bull, Bishopsgate Street, at eight in the morning
on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, and, going by Barkway, arriving
at some unnamed hour at the Red Lion, Petty Cury. It conveys six
passengers at fifteen shillings inside and eight shillings out, like
its competitor, "Hobson's Stage," setting out on Mondays, Wednesdays,
and Saturdays from the Green Dragon, Bishopsgate Street, for the Blue
Boar, Cambridge. "Hobson's" is another new-comer, merely trading on the
glamour of the old name. The "Night Post Coach" of this year, starting
from the Golden Cross, Charing Cross, every afternoon at 5.30, went by
Epping and Great Chesterford. It carried only four passengers inside,
at fifteen shillings each, and a like number outside at nine shillings.
Travelling all night, and through the dangerous glades of Epping
Forest, the old advertisement especially mentions it to be "guarded."
Passing through many nocturnal terrors, the "Night Post Coach" finally
drew up in the courtyard of the still-existing Eagle and Child (now
called the Eagle) at Cambridge, at three o'clock in the morning.
The next change seems to have been in 1804, when the "Telegraph" was
advertised to cover the fifty-one miles in seven hours,--and made
the promise good. People said it was all very well, but shook their
heads and were of opinion that it would not last. In 1821, however,
we find the "Telegraph" still running, and actually in six hours,
starting every morning at nine o'clock from the White Horse in Fetter
Lane, going by Barkway, and arriving at the Sun at Cambridge at 3 p.m.
This is the coach shown in Pollard's picture in the act of leaving
the White Horse. In the meanwhile, however, in 1816 another and even
faster coach, the "Star of Cambridge," was established, and, if we
may go so far as to believe the statement made on the rare old print
showing it leaving the Belle Sauvage Yard on Ludgate Hill in that
year, it performed the journey in four hours and a half! Allowing for
necessary stops for changing on the way, this would give a pace of over
eleven miles an hour; and we may perhaps, in view of what both the
roads and coaching enterprise were like at that time, be excused from
believing that, apart from the special effort of any one particular
day, it ever did anything of the kind; even in 1821, five years later,
as already shown, the "Telegraph," the crack coach of the period on
this road, took six hours!
[Illustration: THE "STAR OF CAMBRIDGE" STARTING FROM THE BELLE SAUVAGE
YARD, LUDGATE HILL, 1816.
[_From a Print after T. Young._]]
Let us see what others there were in 1821. To Cambridge went the
"Safety," every day, from the Boar and Castle, Oxford Street, and the
Bull, Aldgate, leaving the Bull at 3 p.m. and arriving at Cambridge, by
way of Royston, in six hours; the "Tally Ho," from the Bull, Holborn,
every afternoon at two o'clock, by the same route in the same time; the
"Royal Regulator," daily, from the New Inn, Old Bailey, in the like
time, by Epping and Great Chesterford; the old "Fly," daily, from the
George and Blue Boar, Holborn and the Green Dragon, Bishopsgate, at 9
a.m., by the same route, in seven hours; the "Cambridge Union," daily,
from the White Horse, Fetter Lane and the Cross Keys, Wood Street, at
8 a.m., by Royston, in eight hours, to the Blue Boar, Cambridge; the
"Cambridge New Royal Patent Mail," still by Royston, arriving at the
Bull, Cambridge, in seven and a half hours; the "Cambridge and Ely"
coach, every evening at 6 p.m., from the Golden Cross and the White
Horse, arriving at the Eagle and Child, Cambridge, in ten hours; and
the "Cambridge Auxiliary Mail," and two other coaches, which do not
appear to have borne any distinctive names, the duration of whose
pilgrimage is not specified.
Cambridge was therefore provided in 1821 with no fewer than twelve
coaches a day, starting from London at all hours, from a quarter to
eight in the morning until half-past six in the afternoon. There
were also the "Lynn and Wells Mail," every evening, reaching Lynn in
twelve hours thirty-three minutes; and the "Lynn Post Coach," through
Cambridge, starting every morning from the Golden Cross, Charing Cross,
and reaching Lynn in thirteen hours. The "Lynn Union" ran three days a
week, in thirteen and a half hours, through Barkway. Other Lynn stages
were the "Lord Nelson," "Lynn and Fakenham Post Coach," and two not
dignified by specific names.
By 1828 the average speed was greatly improved, for although no coach
reached Cambridge in less than six hours, there was, on the other hand,
only one that took so long a time as seven hours and a half. The Mail
had been accelerated by one hour, throughout to Lynn, and was, before
driven off the road, further quickened, the post-office schedule of
time for the London, Cambridge, King's Lynn, and Wells Mail in 1845
standing as under:--
London (G.P.O.) 8.0 p.m.
Wade's Mill 10.32 "
Buckland 11.43 "
Melbourn 12.32 a.m.
Cambridge 1.36 "
Ely 3.31 "
Brandon Creek 4.27 "
Downham Market 5.21 "
Lynn 6.33 "
Wells 10.43 "
In the 'forties, up to 1846 and 1847, the last years of coaching
on this road, the number of coaches does not seem to have greatly
increased. The "Star" was still, meteor-like, making its swift daily
journey to the Hoop at Cambridge, and the "Telegraph," "Regulator,"
"Times," and "Fly," and the "Mail," of course, were old-established
favourites; but new names are not many. The "Regulator," indeed,--the
daily "Royal Regulator" of years before,--is found going only three
times weekly. The "Red Rover," however, was a new-comer, between London
and Lynn daily; with the "Norfolk Hero" (which was probably another
name for Nelson) three days a week between London, Cambridge, Ely,
Lynn, and Wells. Recently added Cambridge coaches were the Tuesday,
Thursday, and Saturday "Bee Hive," and the daily "Rocket"; while one
daily and two triweekly coaches through Cambridge to Wisbeach--the
daily "Rapid"; the Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday "Day"; and the
Monday, Wednesday, and Friday "Defiance," make their appearance.
How do those numbers compare with the number of trains run daily to
Cambridge in our own time? It is not altogether a fair comparison,
because the capacities of a coach and of a railway train are so
radically different. Twenty-nine trains run by all routes from London
to Cambridge, day by day, and they probably, on an average, set down
five hundred passengers between them at the joint station. Taking
the average way-bill of a coach to contain ten passengers, the daily
arrivals at Cambridge were a hundred and sixty, or, adding twenty
post-chaises daily with two passengers each, a hundred and eighty.
These are only speculative figures, but, unsupported by exact data
though they must be, they give an approximation to an idea of the
growth of traffic between those times and these. The imagination
refuses to picture this daily host being conveyed by road. It would
have meant some thirty-five coaches, fully laden, and as for goods and
general merchandise, the roads could not possibly have sufficed for the
carrying of them.
V
COACHING on the road from London to Lynn has found some literary
expression in the _Autobiography of a Stage Coachman_, the work of
Thomas Cross, published in 1861. Cross was a remarkable man. Born in
1791, he may fairly be said to have been born to the box-seat, his
father, John Cross, having been a mail-contractor and stage-coach
proprietor established at the Golden Cross, Charing Cross. The Cross
family, towards the end of the eighteenth century, claimed to rank
with the county families of Hampshire, and John Cross was himself a
man of wealth. He had inherited some, and had made more by fetching
and carrying for the Government along the old Portsmouth Road in
the romantic days of our long wars with France. He not only had his
establishment in London and a town house in Portsmouth, but also
the three separate and distinct country seats of Freeland House and
Stodham, near Petersfield, and the house and grounds of Qualletes,
at Horndean, purchased in after years by Admiral Sir Charles Napier,
and renamed by him "Merchistoun." John Cross was always headstrong and
reckless, and made much money--and lost much. The story of how he would
fill his pockets with gold at his bank at Portsmouth and then ride the
lonely twenty miles thence to Horndean explains his making and his
losing. No cautious traveller in those times went alone by that road,
and the highwaymen tried often to bag this particularly well-known man,
who carried such wealth on him. "Many a shot I've had at old John Cross
of Stodham," said one of these gentry when lying, cast for execution,
in Portsmouth Gaol; adding regretfully, "but I couldn't hit him: he
rode like the devil."
[Illustration: "KNEE-DEEP": THE "LYNN AND WELLS MAIL" IN A SNOWSTORM.
[_From a Print after C. Cooper Henderson._]]
This fine reckless character lived to dissipate everything in
ill-judged speculations, and misfortunes of all kinds visited the
family. We are told but little of them in the pages of his son's book,
but it was entirely owing to one of these visitations that Thomas Cross
found his whole career changed. Destined by his father for the Navy,
he was entered as a midshipman, but he had been subject from his birth
to fits, and coming home on one occasion and going into the cellars of
a wine business his father had in the meanwhile taken, he was seized
by one of these attacks, and falling on a number of wine-bottles,
was so seriously injured that the profession of the Navy had to be
abandoned. We afterwards find him as a farmer in Hampshire, and then,
involved in the financial disasters that overtook the family, reduced
to seeking an engagement as coachman in the very yard his father had
once owned. It is curious that, either intentionally or by accident,
he does not mention the name of the coach he drove between London and
Lynn, but calls it always "the Lynn coach." There were changes on the
road between 1821, when he first drove along it, and 1847, when he was
driven off, but he is chiefly to be remembered as the driver of the
"Lynn Union." He tells how he came to the box-seat, how miserably he
was shuttlecocked from one to the other when in search of employment,
and how, when the whip who drove the "Lynn coach" on its stage between
Cambridge and London had taken an inn and was about to relinquish his
seat, he could obtain no certain information that the post would be
vacant. The bookkeeper of the coach-office said it would; the coachman
himself told a lie and said he was not going to give up the job. In
this condition of affairs Cross did not know what to do, until a kindly
acquaintance gave him the date upon which the lying Jehu must take
possession of his inn and of necessity give up coaching, and advised
him to journey down to Cambridge, meet the up coach there as it drove
into the Bull yard, and present himself as the coachman come to take it
up to London. Cross scrupulously carried out this suggestion, and when
he made his appearance, with whip and in approved coaching costume,
at the Bull, and was asked who he was and what he wanted, replied as
his friend had indicated. No one offered any objection, and no other
coachman had appeared by the time he drove away, punctual to the
very second we may be quite sure. An old resident of Lynn, who has
written his recollections of bygone times in that town, tells us that
Thomas Cross "was not much of a whip," a criticism that seems to be
doubly underscored in Cross's own description of this first journey to
London, when he drove straight into the double turnpike gates that then
stretched across the Kingsland Road, giving everyone a good shaking,
and cause, in many bruises, to remember his maiden effort.
Cross had a long and varied experience, extending to twenty-eight
years, of this road. At different times he drove between London and
Cambridge, on the middle ground between Cambridge and Ely, and for
a while took the whole distance between Ely and Lynn. He drove in
his time all sorts and conditions of men, and instances some of his
experiences. Perhaps the most amusing was that occasion when he drove
into Cambridge with a choleric retired Admiral on the box-seat. The old
sea-dog was come to Cambridge to inquire into the trouble into which
a scapegrace son had managed to place himself. He confided the whole
story to the coachman. By this it seemed that the Admiral had two sons.
One he had designed to make a sailor; the other was being educated
for the Church. It was the embryo parson who had got into trouble:
very serious trouble, too, for he had knocked down a Proctor, and was
rusticated for that offence. The Admiral, in fact, had made a very
grave error of judgment. His sons had very opposite characters: the
one was wild and high-spirited, and the other was meek and mild to the
last degree of inoffensiveness. Unfortunately it was this good young
man whom he had sent to sea, while his devil's cub he had put in the
way of reading for Holy Orders.
"I have committed a great mistake, sir," he said. "I ought to have made
a sailor of him and a parson of the other, who is a meek, unassuming
youth aboard ship, with nothing to say for himself; while this, sir,
would knock the devil down, let alone a Proctor, if he offended him."
The Admiral was a study in the mingled moods of offended dignity and
of parental pride in this chip of the old block; breathing implacable
vengeance one moment and admiration of a "d----d high-spirited fellow"
the next. When Thomas Cross set out on his return journey to London, he
saw the Admiral and his peccant son together, the best of friends.
Cross was in his prime when railways came and spoiled his career. In
1840, when the Northern and Eastern line was opened to Broxbourne,
and thence, shortly after, to Bishop Stortford, he had to give up the
London and Cambridge stage and retire before the invading locomotive
to the Cambridge and Lynn journey. In 1847, when the Ely to Lynn line
was opened, his occupation was wholly gone, and all attempts to find
employment on the railway failed. They would not have him, even to
ring the bell when the trains were about to start. Then, like many
another poor fellow at that time, he presented an engrossed petition to
Parliament, setting forth how hardly circumstances had dealt with him,
and hoping that "your honourable House" would do something or another.
The House, however, was largely composed of members highly interested
in railways, and ordered his petition, with many another, to lie on the
table: an evasive but well-recognised way of utterly ignoring him and
it and all such troublesome and inconvenient things and persons. Alas!
poor Thomas! He had better have saved the money he expended on that
engrossing.
What became of him? I will tell you. For some years he benefited by
the doles of his old patrons on the "Union," sorry both for him and
for the old days of the road, gone for ever. He then wrote a history
of coaching, a work that disappeared--type, manuscript, proofs
and all--in the bankruptcy proceedings in which his printers were
presently involved. Then he wrote his _Autobiography_. He was, you must
understand, a gentleman by birth and education, and if he had little
literary talent, had at least some culture. Therefore the story of his
career, as told by himself, although discursive, is interesting. He had
some Greek and more Latin, and thought himself a poet. I have, however,
read his epic, _The Pauliad_, and find that in this respect he was
mistaken. That exercise in blank verse was published in 1863, and was
his last work. Two years later he found a place in Huggens' College, a
charitable foundation at Northfleet, near Gravesend; and died in 1877,
in his eighty-sixth year, after twelve years' residence in that secure
retreat. He lies in Northfleet churchyard, far away from that place
where he would be,--the little churchyard of Catherington beside the
Portsmouth Road, where his father and many of his people rest.
VI
FEW and fragmentary are the recollections of the old coachmen of
the Cambridge Road. A coloured etching exists, the work of Dighton,
purporting to show the driver of the "Telegraph" in 1809; but whether
this represents that Richard Vaughan of the same coach, praised in
the book on coaching by Lord William Pitt-Lennox as "scientific
in horseflesh, unequalled in driving," is doubtful, for the hero
of Dighton's picture seems to belong to an earlier generation.
Among drivers of the "Telegraph" were "Old Quaker Will" and George
Elliott, just mentioned by Thomas Cross; himself not much given to
enlarging upon other coachmen and their professional skill. Poor Tommy
necessarily moved in their circle; but although with them, he was not
of them, and nursed a pride both of his family and of his own superior
education that grew more arrogant as his misfortunes increased. As for
Tommy himself, we have already heard much of him and his _Autobiography
of a Stage Coachman_. The "Lynn Union," however, the coach he drove
down part of the road one day and up the next, was by no means one of
the crack "double" coaches, but started from either end only three
times a week, and although upset every now and again, was a jogtrot
affair that averaged but seven miles an hour, including stops. That
the "Lynn Union" commonly carried a consignment of shrimps one way
and the returned empty baskets another was long one of Cross's minor
martyrdoms. He drove along the road, his head full of poetry and noble
thoughts, and yearning for cultured talk, while the shrimp-baskets
diffused a penetrating odour around, highly offensive to those cultured
folk for whose society his soul longed. People with a nice sense of
smell avoided the "Lynn Union" while the shrimp-carrying continued.
Contemporary with Cross was Jo Walton, of the "Safety," and later of
the "Star." He was perhaps one of the finest coachmen who ever drove on
the Cambridge Road, and it was possibly the knowledge of this skill,
and the daring to which it led, that brought so many mishaps to the
"Star" while he wielded the reins. He has been described as "a man
who swore like a trooper and went regularly to church," with a temper
like an emperor and a grip like steel. This fine picturesque character
was the very antithesis of the peaceful and dreamy Cross, and thought
nothing of double-thonging a nodding waggoner who blocked the road with
his sleepy team. Twice at least he upset the "Star" between Royston
and Buntingford when attempting to pass another coach. He, at last,
was cut short by the railway, and his final journeys were between
Broxbourne and Cambridge. "Here," he would say bitterly, as the train
came steaming into Broxbourne Station, "here comes old Hell-in-Harness!"
Of James Reynolds, of Pryor, who drove the "Rocket," of many another,
their attributes are lost and only their names survive. That William
Clark, who drove the "Bee Hive," should have been widely known as "the
civil coachman" is at once a testimonial to him and a reproach to the
others; and that memories of Briggs at Lynn should be restricted to
the facts that he was discontented and quarrelsome is a post-mortem
certificate of character that gains in significance when even the name
of the coach he drove cannot be recovered.
VII