[Illustration: SCOLE WHITE HART.]
=THE NORWICH
ROAD=: AN EAST
ANGLIAN HIGHWAY
By CHARLES G. HARPER
Author of "_The Brighton Road_," "_The Portsmouth
Road_," "_The Dover Road_," "_The Bath Road_,"
"_The Exeter Road_," _and_ "_The Great North Road_."
_Illustrated by the Author, and from
Old-Time Prints and Pictures._
[Illustration]
LONDON: CHAPMAN & HALL LTD. 1901
[_All Rights reserved._]
[Illustration]
PREFACE
_The author of a little book published in 1818, called_ A JOURNEY TO
LONDON, _which is nearly all "London" with very little "journey,"
remarks that "it is as uncommon for a book to go into the world without
a preface, as a man without a hat. They are both convenient coverings."
Here, then, is the customary covering._
_Introducing this, the seventh in a series of books telling the story
of our great highways, it may perhaps be as well to re-state the
methods used, and objects aimed at. The chief intention is to provide a
readable book which shall avoid the style either of a Guide-Book or a
History. It is the better fortune to be in the reader's hands than in
the dusty seclusion of those formidable works, the County Histories;
or disregarded among the guide-books of forgotten holidays. To the
antiquary it will, of course, be obvious that this and other volumes
of the series "contain many omissions," as the Irish reviewer said;
but such things as find no place here have, as a general rule, been
disregarded because they not only do not help the Story of the Road
along, but rather hinder its progression._
_The_ NORWICH ROAD, _in its one hundred and twelve miles, passes by
many an historic site and through districts distinguished for their
quiet pastoral beauty. In being historic it is not singular, for, as
Oliver Wendell Holmes very truly said, "England is one vast museum,"
and the old road would be remarkable indeed, that, like Canning's_
"NEEDY KNIFE GRINDER," _had no story to tell. It is, however, in the
especial characteristics of East Anglian scenery, speech, customs, and
architecture that this road stands apart and is highly individualised.
"East Anglia" is no merely arbitrary and meaningless term, as those who
travel it, if only on the highway, will speedily find._
_But this shall be no trumpet-blast; nor indeed do the charms of
Eastern England require such a fanfare, for who has not yet heard
of that lovely valley of the Stour, so widely known as "Constable's
Country," by whose exquisite water-meadows and shady lanes the old
turnpike passes? Scenery such as this; windmills, cornfields, tall
elms, winding rivers, and commons populous with geese and turkeys, are
typical of the_ NORWICH ROAD, _which may, with this introduction, now
be left to recommend itself_.
CHARLES G. HARPER.
PETERSHAM, SURREY,
_October 1901_.
[Illustration: LIST
OF
ILLUSTRATIONS]
SEPARATE PLATES
SCOLE WHITE HART _Frontispiece_
PAGE
ALDGATE PUMP. (_From a drawing by T. Hosmer Shepherd_,
1854) 9
ALDGATE, 1820 21
THE "OLD RED LION," WHITECHAPEL, WHERE TURPIN SHOT
MATTHEW KING. (_From a drawing by T. Hosmer
Shepherd_, 1854) 59
WHITECHAPEL ROAD IN THE COACHING AGE 65
MILE END TURNPIKE, 1813. (_After Rowlandson_) 71
ROMFORD 91
MOUNTNESSING WINDMILL 103
INGATESTONE IN COACHING DAYS. (_From an Old Print_) 107
NEW HALL LODGES 125
CHIPPING HILL 133
"THREE BLIND 'UNS AND A BOLTER." (_From a Print
after H. Alken_) 145
COLCHESTER 215
THE VALE OF DEDHAM. (_After Constable_) 219
SPRING: SUFFOLK PLOUGHLANDS. (_After Constable_) 229
THE CORNFIELD. (_After Constable_) 233
THE OLD SIGN OF SCOLE WHITE HART 265
STAIRCASE IN THE "WHITE HART" 269
DICKLEBURGH 279
A DISPUTED PASTURAGE 289
LONG STRATTON 293
NEWTON FLOTMAN 299
NORWICH, FROM MOUSEHOLD HEATH 311
NORWICH MARKET PLACE 315
ILLUSTRATIONS IN TEXT
Vignette _Title Page_
PAGE
Preface vii
List of Illustrations: London Stone ix
The Runaway 'Prentice 1
Yard of the "Bull," Leadenhall Street. (_From a drawing
by T. Hosmer Shepherd_, 1854) 12
Front of the "Saracen's Head," Aldgate: Present Day 14
Yard of the "Saracen's Head" in Coaching Days. (_From
a drawing by T. Hosmer Shepherd_, 1854) 16
Yard of the "Saracen's Head": Present Day 18
The Yard of the "Bull," Whitechapel, in Coaching Days 27
The Norwich Coach at Christmastide. (_After Robert
Seymour_, 1835) 38
Whitechapel Old Church 63
Bow 76
Seven Kings 84
Whalebone House 87
Entrance to Romford 89
Old Toll-house, Puttels Bridge 93
The "Fleece," Brook Street 94
The Martyr's Tree, Brentwood 95
Yard of the "White Hart," Brentwood 98
Shenfield 100
Mountnessing Church 102
The Gatehouse, Ingatestone Hall 106
At Margaretting 111
The "Good Woman" Sign 113
The Bridge: Entrance to Chelmsford 115
The Conduit, Chelmsford 116
Tindal's Statue 117
The "Three Cups" Sign 122
Springfield Church 123
Boreham 128
The "Angel," Kelvedon 141
Birthplace of Spurgeon 151
Near Mark's Tey 176
Lexden 180
The Grand Staircase, Colchester Castle 199
Old Man Trap, Colchester Castle 205
Colchester Castle 207
Gun Hill 221
Old Toll-house, Stratford Bridge 222
Wolsey's Gateway 242
The "Lion and Lamb," Angel Lane 244
Sparrowe's House 246
The "Great White Horse" 248
Mockbeggar Hall 253
"Stonham Pie" 256
Near Brockford 257
"Thwaite Low House" 259
The "Cock," Thwaite 260
Long Stratton 295
Tasburgh 297
The Old Brick Pound 301
Caistor Camp 303
Norwich Snap 318
Norfolk Turkey, on his way to Leadenhall Market 320
THE ROAD TO NORWICH
MILES
London (Whitechapel Church) to Mile End 1
Stratford-le-Bow (Bow Church) 2½
(Cross River Lea).
Stratford (Broadway) 4
Forest Gate 5
Manor Park 6
Ilford 6½
(Cross River Roding).
Seven Kings 7½
(Cross "Seven Kings' Watering," or Fillebrook).
Chadwell Heath 9
Romford 12
Hare Street 13
Puttels Bridge 15½
(Cross Weald Brook).
Brook Street 16½
Brentwood 18
Shenfield 19
Mountnessing Street 21
Ingatestone 23
Margaretting Street 25
Widford 27½
(Cross River Wid or Ash).
Moulsham 28¼
(Cross River Chelmer).
Chelmsford 29
Springfield 29½
Boreham 32¾
(Cross River Ter).
Hatfield Peverel 34¾
(Cross River Witham).
Witham 37½
Rivenhall End 39½
Kelvedon 41
(Cross River Blackwater).
Gore Pit 42
Mark's Tey 45¾
Copford 46¼
Stanway 47
Lexden Heath 48
Lexden 49
Colchester 51
(Cross River Colne).
Dilbridge 52½
Stratford Bridge 57¾
(Cross River Stour).
Stratford St Mary 58½
Capel Railway Crossing. Capel Station. Capel
St Mary. 63½
Copdock 65½
Washbrook 66
(Cross Wash Brook).
Ipswich 69¼
(Cross River Orwell)
Whitton Street 71¾
Claydon 72¾
Creeting All Saints 76¾
Stonham Earls 79
Little Stonham 79¾
Brockford 83¾
Thwaite 84½
Stoke Ash 86¼
Yaxley 88¼
Brome 90¼
(Cross River Waveney).
Scole 92
Dickleburgh 94½
Tivetshall Level Crossing 97¼
Wacton 100
Long Stratton 101½
Tasburgh 102¾
(Cross River Tase).
Newton Flotman 104½
(Cross River Tase).
Hartford Bridge 109¼
(Cross River Yare).
Norwich (Market Place) 111½
[Illustration: The NORWICH ROAD]
I
IN the days before railways came, robbing the exits from London of
all dignity and purpose, the runaway 'prentice lads of the familiar
legends, who were always half starved and continually beaten, revolting
at length from their uncomfortable beds under the shop counters
and their daily stripes and scorpions, were wont, according to the
story-books, to steal at night out of their houses of bondage and make
for the roads. Such an one, making in those days for Norwich, and
standing at Aldgate in the grey of the morning, looking across the
threshold of London, would have seen, in the long broad road stretching
before him, the only means of escape. The shilling or so of which he
would be the owner would scarce serve him for two or three days' keep;
and so, although he might have longed for a place on the coach he
could see starting from the "Spread Eagle," in Gracechurch Street, at
4 a.m., there would have been for such as he no choice but to start
afoot, with as light a heart as possible, and chance the offer of a
lift on some waggon returning into Essex. Had he, in leaving Aldgate
behind, asked some passer-by the way to Norwich, he might have been
seized for what he was, a runaway; but, if he escaped suspicion, would
have been answered readily enough, for everyone in those times knew
the way to lie along the Whitechapel Road and by Mile End Turnpike.
Has anyone in these enlightened and highly-educated times courage
sufficient to ask his way to Norwich from Aldgate? and, assuming that
dauntless courage, is it conceivable that anyone in that crowded street
could tell him?
There are no apprentices and no tyrannical masters of the old kind left
now, and the only runaways of these days are the bad boys of precocious
wits who would not think of tramping the highway while they could raise
a railway fare or "lift" a bicycle. But the way still lies open to the
explorer from Aldgate, and the old Norwich Road yet follows the line of
the Roman way into the country of the Iceni.
Between the era of our imaginary truant and that of the Romans, who
originally constructed this road, there yawns a vast gulf of time;
certainly not less than eighteen hundred years. The history of the
road during that space has largely been forgotten; but, worst of all,
we know perhaps less of it and its life in the times of Charles the
First, onward to those of William and Mary, than we can recover from
Roman historians; and certainly its coaching history is in tatters and
fragments, for those who made it did not live in the bright glow of
publicity that surrounded the coachmen of roads north, south or west,
and died unexploited by the sporting writers of the Coaching Age.
II
NEARLY seventeen centuries have passed since, in the great _Antonine
Itinerary_ of the Roman Empire, the first guide-book to the roads was
compiled, and almost eighty years since Cary and Paterson--the rival
Bradshaws and A.B.C.'s of the Coaching Age--issued the last editions of
their _Travellers Companions_, which now, instead of being constantly
in the travellers' hands, are treasured on the shelves of collectors
interested in relics of days before railways.
The _Antonine Itinerary_ was compiled, A.D. 200-300. Among other roads
of which it purports to give an account is the road to Venta Icenorum;
the Norwich Road, as we should say. Its statement is brief and to the
point, if requiring no little explanation after this lapse of time:--
Iter a Venta Icenorum Londinio _m.p._ cxxviii _sic._
Sitomago xxxii
Combretonio xxii
Ad Ansam xv
Camuloduno vii
Canonio viiii
Cæsaromago xii
Durolito xvi
Londinio xv
A hundred and twenty-eight miles, that is to say, between Venta and
London. The Romans, of course, calculated all their mileages in Britain
from that hoary relic, the still existing "London Stone," which, from
behind its modern iron grating in the wall of St Swithin's Church,
still turns a battered face towards the heedless, hurrying crowds in
Cannon Street, in the City of London.
In coaching days the Norwich Road, in common with most East Anglian
routes, was measured from Whitechapel Church, and the distance from
that landmark to Norwich given as 111½ miles. The apparent wide
difference between those measurements of classic and modern times is
very nearly reconciled when we add a mile for the distance between
London Stone and Whitechapel Church to the 111½ miles, and when we
reduce the Roman miles to English. An English mile measures 5280 feet,
while a Roman mile runs only to 4842 feet, this fact accounting, along
the road to Norwich, for some 13 miles of the discrepancy, and bringing
the difference to the insignificant one of 3½ miles; or, assuming the
Roman ruins at Caistor, 3 miles short of Norwich, to mark the site of
Venta Icenorum, 6½ miles; no very wide margin of error.
The compiler of that ancient itinerary is unknown. He, or they (for
a survey of the Roman Empire cannot have been made by one man), are
quite hidden and lost to sight under the title of "Antonine," which
was given in honour of the Emperors Septimius Severus and Caracalla,
father and son, who both owned the name Antoninus. By similarly
honorary titles we are accustomed to christen our public buildings.
Thus, in coming ages, when such earthworms as engineers and architects
are forgotten, the "Victoria" Embankment, "Victoria" Station, the
"Victoria and Albert" Museum, and the thousand and one other things
thus entitled will serve to hand a Sovereign down to futurity, while
the names of those who created them, good or ill, will have perished,
like the leaves of autumn. Customs change, and fashions cease to be,
but snobbery is more enduring than brass or marble, and outlasts the
mummies of the Pharaohs.
The compiler who drew up the list of places on the road between
Londinium and Venta has chosen to reckon backwards. The "_m. p._" is
the abbreviation for _mille passus_, or paced Roman miles; the figures
after the first line giving the distance from the place last mentioned.
Setting out from London, we find "Durolitum" to be identified with the
Roman earthworks of Uphall, near Romford; "Cæsaromagus" to be identical
with Writtle, near Chelmsford; "Canonium" to stand for Kelvedon;
"Camulodunum" for Colchester; and "Ad Ansam" for Stratford St Mary;
while "Combretonium" and "Sitomagus" still puzzle antiquaries, who are
reduced to the extremity of suggesting the opposite alternatives of
Brettenham or Burgh for the one, and Dunwich or Thetford for the other;
names with a specious resemblance, and on circuitous routes east or
west of the direct road which would more than account for the Roman
surveyor's overplus of miles. The direct road, however, is unmistakably
Roman, and those who will may seek for the elusive "Sitomagus" and
"Combretonium" along it. Haply they may discover them at Scole,
Dickleburgh or Long Stratton.
But along the whole length of the road, from London to Norwich, the
wayfarer receives impressions of its true Roman character, whether
in its appearance or in the place-names on the way. Old Ford and
Stratford-at-Bow, where the Roman paved fords crossed the River Lea;
that other "old ford" at Ilford, across the River Roding, which was
already ancient when the Saxons came and so named it, "Eald Ford,"
leaving it for later times to corrupt the name into "Ilford" and
for uninstructed historians to explain the meaning to have been
that it was an "ill ford"; to which condition, indeed, many had
descended in mediæval times: these are examples. Others are found at
Ingatestone, the Saxon "Ing-atte-stone" = the "meadow at the stone,"
a Roman milestone that stood by the wayside; in the names of Stanway,
Colchester, Stratford St Mary. Little Stonham, Tivetshall, and Long
Stratton, places to be more particularly mentioned later in these pages.
It has been aptly pointed out by East Anglian antiquaries that the
circuitous route eastward or westward of the straight road between
Stratford St Mary and Norwich, on which Sitomagus and Combretonium
may have been situated, may probably have been an early Roman way,
constructed shortly after the conquest of the Iceni, along an old
native trackway, and superseded in later and more settled times by
the direct road, overlooked by the Antonine compilers who, working at
Rome, the very centre of the Empire, may not have been fully informed
of changes in countries like Britain, on the edge of the Unknown.
This view, when we consider the long period stretching between the
conquest of this part of the country and the final break up of the
Romano-British civilisation, about A.D. 450, has much to recommend it.
A period of some three hundred and eighty years of colonisation and
development, equalling, for example, the great gulf of time between
our own day and that of Henry the Eighth, the changes in its course
must have rivalled, if not have surpassed, those in our roads between
the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. During those eras, between the
first and the fifth centuries, many of the original winding tracks
must have been straightened, or left to the secondary position of
byways, while new and straight roads were engineered across country
formerly, for one reason or another, avoided. Meanwhile, the Antonine
Itinerary-makers must have relied for their surveys upon old and
out-of-date information, just as, in our own time, we find many recent
maps, printed from the Ordnance Survey of a hundred years ago, still
indicating winding roads that have been non-existent for generations,
and ignoring the direct highways made by Telford and others just before
the opening of the Railway Era.
III
LONDON made no remarkable growth between the Roman and mediæval
periods, but this road had in that time slightly altered its course
from its starting-point, and, instead of going from Cannon Street
to Shoreditch, Bethnal Green and Old Ford, left the City by way of
Leadenhall Street and Aldgate, continuing down the Mile End and Bow
Roads to Stratford.
The traveller of Chaucer's day, coming to Ald Gate, in the City wall,
had reached the country. That gate spanned the road at a point marked
nowadays by the house, No 2 Aldgate High Street, standing at the
boundary of the parishes of St Katharine Cree and St Botolph. In 1374
Chaucer took from the Corporation of London a lease for the remainder
of his life of the rooms in this gate, which was pulled down and
succeeded by another, built in 1606, which in its turn disappeared in
1761.
From his windows commanding the road Chaucer must often have seen that
dainty gentlewoman, the Prioress of St Leonard's, Stratford, riding to
or from London, escorted by a numerous train, and from her must have
drawn that portrait of the prioress who spoke French with a Cockney
accent:--
"After the scole of Stratford-attè-Bowe,
For French of Parys was to hire unknowe."
In Chaucer's day they probably taught French, of sorts, at the Priory
schools.
[Illustration: ALDGATE PUMP. _From a Drawing by T. Hosmer Shepherd_,
1854.]
At that time it was no little journey to Stratford, although by
measurement less than four miles, and the lady went strongly escorted,
as, indeed, did all of consequence, or those who had aught to lose.
For the more common wayfarers who went alone on this desperate eastern
trail there stood the Chapel and the Holy Well of St Michael the
Archangel within the City, where the otherwise unprotected might seek
the aid of the Saint's strong arm before leaving the walled City behind
on their perilous faring. This chapel stood where Leadenhall Street,
Fenchurch Street and Aldgate meet, on a site thrown into the roadway
in 1876, when the street was widened. Until that year the crypt of
this shrine had filled the prosaic functions of a cellar in the corner
house, itself demolished, together with the beautiful Early English
arches on which it stood. Adjoining was "Aldgate Pump," which had long
before unromantically taken the place of the sanctified spring. That
celebrated civic monument is seen in the accompanying illustration,
taken in 1854. Many City wits have exercised their satirical powers
upon it, and the expression long current of "a draft on Aldgate Pump,"
a once popular mercantile phrase for a bad note, goes back so far as
the days of Fielding. Oddly enough, the water of the pump retained some
repute until 1876, when, on being analysed, it was found impure, and
the supply closed. The pump, however, is still in existence, rebuilt
of its original stones, a few feet away from the old site, and yields
water again; not, however, from the old saintly source, but from the
strictly secular filter-beds of the New River Water Company.
[Illustration: YARD OF THE "BULL," LEADENHALL STREET. _From a Drawing
by T. Hosmer Shepherd_, 1854.]
Having implored the protection of St Michael, travellers of old
went, heartened, upon their way down what is now Whitechapel High
Street, which Strype, writing in the time of James the First, calls
a "spacious fair street," with "sweet and wholesome air." Past
hedgerows of elm trees and rustic stiles and bridges, those old
wayfarers went, and onward down the Whitechapel Road, where the
country was a lovely solitude, with "nothing but the bounteous gifts
of Nature and saint-like tokens of innocency," which, according to Sir
Thomas More, in 1504, characterised the charming fields of Mile End,
Shadwell, Stepney and Limehouse. This, it will be allowed, is scarcely
descriptive of those places to-day, whatever they may become when the
People's Palace and the University Settlements have done their work.
Thus far for sake of contrast. Let us return to Aldgate for a while,
and, without following its fortunes throughout the centuries, glance at
it in the Coaching Age, before the squalor of modern Whitechapel had
invaded it from the east, or the extension of City business had come to
destroy most of that picturesque assemblage of old inns and mediæval
gabled houses, to replace them with the giant warehouses and "imposing"
offices of modern London.
IV
ALTHOUGH, as we have seen, the East Anglian roads were, in coaching
days, measured from Whitechapel Church, the great actual starting-place
was Aldgate, where many of the old inns were situated, as, in like
manner, the ancient hostelries of the Borough clustered at the
beginning of the road to Canterbury and Dover. Aldgate occupies a
position midway between London Stone, the Roman starting-point in
Cannon Street, and Whitechapel Church, and to and from this spot came
and went the stage-coaches, post-chaises and waggons in the palmy days
of the road. The mail-coaches, of course, had a starting-point of their
own, and set out from the old General Post-Office in Lombard Street,
or, in the last years of coaching, from St Martin's-le-Grand.
[Illustration: FRONT OF THE "SARACEN'S HEAD," ALDGATE: PRESENT DAY.]
It is true that one might have taken coach from many other and more
central inns for Colchester, Ipswich and Norwich:--from the "Spread
Eagle," in Gracechurch Street, a fine old galleried inn demolished at
the close of 1865; from the "Cross Keys," in the same street; from the
"Swan with Two Necks," in Lad Lane, anciently Lady Lane (that is to
say, the Lane of Our Lady, the Blessed Virgin), now Gresham Street;
or from the "Bull," 151 Leadenhall Street, which must by no means be
confounded with its namesake in Aldgate High Street. Exactly what
that Leadenhall Street hostelry was like let the picture of its old
galleried courtyard show.
There was also "another way" to Norwich; out of Bishopsgate, by way
of Newmarket, Bury and Thetford. Taking this route, which, although
2½ miles shorter, no true sportsman considered to be the real Norwich
Road, one started from the "Golden Cross," Charing Cross; from the
"White Horse," in Fetter Lane (improved away in 1898); from the
"Flower Pot," in Bishopsgate Street; from yet another "Bull," also in
Bishopsgate Street; or from the "Bull and Mouth," St Martin's-le-Grand.
But when all these places have been duly set forth, it is to Aldgate
that we must turn as the real starting-point.
[Illustration: YARD OF THE "SARACEN'S HEAD" IN COACHING DAYS. _From a
Drawing by T. Hosmer Shepherd_, 1854.]
Aldgate in the days before railways was quite unlike the Aldgate of
to-day. Certain of the old buildings remain, but the "note" of the
place is entirely altered. It is now a noisy, distracting ante-room to
the City, in which tinkling tram-cars and costermongers' barrows jostle
with elephantine railway goods vans; where the Jewish second-hand
clothes shop rubs a greasy shoulder with the "merchant tailor's" vulgar
show of electric light, plate glass and wax models; and where the East
End, in the person of the aproned, ringleted and ostrich-feathered
factory girl, meets the West, in the shape of some City clerk strayed
beyond his mercantile or financial frontiers, each regarding the other
as a curiosity in these social marches. It is as the meeting of salt
water and fresh, this mingling of the tides of City and East End, and
to the observant not a little curious. Nothing like it--nothing so
marked--is to be seen on any other of the borders of the City. There
is, too, a smack of the sea, a certain air of romance, in the street,
coming, perhaps, from the windows of the nautical instrument-makers,
where the binoculars, the quadrants, the sextants and the sea-faring
tackle in general hint of distant climes and the coral reefs of South
Pacific isles.
These mariners' emporia were here and in the Minories before railways
came, and so also were many fine old inns. For Aldgate, difficult
though it may be to realise it to-day, was not only the place whence
many of the Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk coaches set out, but was also
the resting-place of travellers to London; and its inns were quite
as well-appointed as those of the more central ones in the City,
or those of Charing Cross, or the West End. As travellers by rail
to London in modern times resort to the railway hotels, so did our
great-grandfathers find rest at the coaching inns at whose thresholds
they were set down at their journey's end.
[Illustration: YARD OF THE "SARACEN'S HEAD": PRESENT DAY.]
The fragments merely of the last of Aldgate's old hostelries remain, in
the bold front of Nos. 6 and 7, forming two-thirds of the old frontage
of the "Saracen's Head." No. 5, the other third, has been destroyed,
and so also has the old appearance of the galleried courtyard, still
named "Saracen's Head Yard," but now surrounded by warehouses. The old
coach archway remains, and the gables at the back of the buildings
are quaint reminiscences of other times. Coaches plied between the
"Saracen's Head" and Norwich so far back as 1681, and Strype, the
antiquary, born in the neighbourhood, in a court whose name now flaunts
the horrid travesty of "Tripe Court," referring to the inn, speaks of
it as "very large and of a considerable trade." The existing fragment,
with its handsome architectural elevation of richly-moulded plaster in
the Renaissance style of the late seventeenth century, is part of the
building mentioned by him. Small shops now occupy the ground floor,
and the upper rooms are let as tenements.
But the "Bull" was perhaps the most famous of these old inns. From it
Mr Pickwick set out for Ipswich, and from Sam Weller's remark on that
occasion, "Take care o' the archway, gen'l'men," as the coach started,
it is evident that the "Bull" possessed a courtyard. At that palmy time
of inns and coaches, the opening of the nineteenth century, the "Bull"
was, and long had been, in the Nelson family, a noted race of inn and
coach proprietors. At that particular time Mrs Ann Nelson, widow of the
late host, who died about 1812, was the presiding genius. Associated
with her was her son John. Another son, Robert, had a business of his
own, and was long proprietor of the "Belle Sauvage," on Ludgate Hill,
and partner with others in many coaches. A third son, George, drove the
Exeter "Defiance," horsed by his mother out of London.
But to return to the "Bull" and Mrs Nelson, who had, as her husband
had, and his father before him, some sort of interest in many coaches
running into Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk, on main or bye-roads. She
also at one time leased the "Spread Eagle," in Gracechurch Street,
and extended her energies so far as to horse the Exeter "Telegraph"
and the "Quicksilver" Devonport Mail out of London, together with
the Exeter "Defiance" night coach, the Manchester "Telegraph," the
Oxford "Defiance," Brighton "Red Rover," and the Leeds "Courier." In
their coaching speculations the Nelson family were associated with
a pastrycook whose little shop adjoined the gateway of the "Bull."
Occasionally a new hand on one of the coaches would send his leaders'
noses through the shop front, for that gateway was very narrow and Mrs
Nelson's coachmen anything but deliberate. On the other side of the
gateway was a whip-maker's shop, kept by one James Johnson, who throve
mightily on the custom of the coachmen and others who frequented the
"Bull."
This most energetic of landladies and Napoleonic of coach proprietors
developed and managed her extensive coaching interests long before her
husband died. He, good, easy-going man, had been a fair whip in earlier
days, but had long left the box, and had no head for business, although
a very fine taste in wines and spirits: the lack of the first probably
a corollary of the second. She spared neither herself nor her servants.
Rising considerably before the lark, she saw the owls to bed, and was
a martinet to her coachmen. Left a widow while in the prime of life,
she still wore in old age the dress of her youth. The sketch of her in
the picture of the "Bull" yard in coaching days shows exactly what her
costume was like. A short skirt revealed high-heeled shoes with large
buckles, the heels painted red. Black velvet was her winter wear, and
fancy apron, lace neckerchief and frilled cap invariable items. Up to
her seventieth year she was the last up at night, scouring the house
to see that all was safe; and the first up in the morning, looking
after the stable people and seeing that the horses had their feeds and
were properly cared for. Inside and outside the house, and down the
eastern roads, her influence was despotic and would brook no defiance.
Her "Ipswich Blues" had long been famous when an opposition coach was
started. Opposition could not be allowed to live, and so the fares
were reduced from eight shillings inside and sixteen shillings out, by
regular stages until the point was reached when passengers were not
only carried for nothing, but were presented with an excellent dinner
at Witham. At that point the rivals discreetly retired, when fares rose
again to their old level.
[Illustration: ALDGATE, 1820.]
Mrs Nelson insisted on the most rigid punctuality. Did the coachman
of one of her crack coaches or one of her still more famous
"Oppositions" bring his team down her yard five minutes over time,
he was reprimanded; ten minutes, and he was fined half-a-crown; a
quarter of an hour, and he stood a good chance of being dismissed. She
ran a Southend "Opposition" every afternoon by Romford, Brentwood,
Billericay, Wickford, Raleigh and Rochford, along Essex roads of a
feather-bed softness of mud; but time must be kept. She provided good
horses and would not hear of excuses. One day, when the roads were
particularly heavy, the "Opposition" came in half an hour late from
Southend. The coachman, after the manner of his kind, on driving into
the yard and pulling up at the coffee-room door, threw his whip across
the wheelers' backs. Mrs Nelson had long been watching the clock, and,
coming out, took the whip and hung it up, with the quiet remark, "That
whip is no longer yours, Philpot--half an hour behind."
"But the roads are so bad, ma'am," remonstrated poor Toby. "I'm sure,
ma'am, the gentlemen knew I did my best; but I felt bound to spare the
cattle."
"_I_ find the cattle and employ you to drive them," replied the
inexorable landlady; "_you_ have nothing to do but to keep time. Draw
your wages and leave the yard."
Under this iron rule it is no wonder that her coachmen were sometimes
"pulled up" for furious driving. On one of these occasions she appeared
in court in defence of her man. "I understand, Mrs Nelson," blandly
remarked the Chairman of the Bench, "that you give your coachmen
instructions to race the rival coach."
"Not exactly," replied the lady; "my orders to them are simply that
they are to get the road and keep it."
But if a very dragon of strictness, she treated coachmen and guards
very well. They had their especial room, and dined as well there, at
reduced prices, as any of her coffee-room customers. This especial
consideration reflected itself in those functionaries, who jealously
preserved the privacy of their room; the amateur coachman who secured
the invitation to join them (and to pay out of his own pocket for
their wine and spirits) feeling himself greatly honoured.
In other respects, the "Bull" was a model to other houses. No damp
sheets in any one of its hundred and fifty beds, no drunken brawlers;
nothing a minute out of time, or an inch out of place. Mrs Nelson's
fine house was, indeed, nothing less than an institution. In later
years her son John took more of the management upon his shoulders, and
the business seemed likely to long outlast his time.
V
BUT a whisper of coming changes disturbed the air as early as 1830.
Coachmen and travellers talked in the stableyard and the cosy rooms of
the "Bull" of men with strange instruments encountered along the road;
"chaps with telescopes on three sticks, and other chaps with chains
and things, measuring the fields." It was thus that they described
the surveyors, with their theodolites and their staff of men, who
were setting out the proposed route of the projected Eastern Counties
Railway that was to run all the way from London to Colchester, Norwich
and Yarmouth.
John Nelson was too confident in the existing order of things to
believe that a few pounds of coal and some boiling water would ever
be a match for his horses, or that a time would presently come when
those passengers of his who now derided the railways would desert the
coaches. The "Bull" had been in his family for more than a hundred and
twelve years, as an inn and a coaching house, and he could as soon have
imagined the end of the world as a day coming when the Essex, Suffolk
and Norfolk coaches should no longer enter or leave his yard. It was a
good joke for a while, when the coaches came in, to ask "How they were
getting on with that railway?" but when the surveys were completed and
the prospectus of the "Grand Eastern Counties Railway" was issued in
1834, it was seen that the railway men meant business. The original
proposal of the directors was to follow the road closely and to bring
the line into Aldgate. When it was seen that the railway was really to
be made, Nelson raised an opposition against the Aldgate terminus, and
was successful in driving the Company into an out-of-the-way site in
Shoreditch, where for many years that terminus remained.
[Illustration: THE YARD OF THE "BULL," WHITECHAPEL, IN COACHING DAYS.]
The Eastern Counties Railway was opened as far as Chelmsford in 1839,
to Colchester in 1842, and communication to Norwich was opened up in
1845. From the day of the first opening, the "Bull" declined. Old
customers still found their way from the slums of Shoreditch to its
hospitable door, but were not reinforced by the newer generation of
travellers, to whom the road and its end in Aldgate were alike unknown.
They went to the City inns, and later to the more central hotels,
leaving the "Bull" to slowly sink into neglect. John Nelson made a big
bid for success in another line, and ran the "Wellington" omnibuses
with success from 1855 until his death, at the age of seventy-four, in
June 1868. He had long resided in the West End, and was a man of ample
fortune, so that the end of the "Bull's" coaching career hurt him only
in sentiment. His mother, that most autocratic and business-like of
women, had died ten years before, active almost to the last, although
she had reached the age of eighty-five years. Towards the close of
1868 the old inn ended its long career. Its substantial, old-fashioned
silver-plate and massive furniture were sold by auction, with the stock
of rare old wines, laid in many years before, for that old generation
of travellers who delighted in port and sherry, and plenty of both.
The very site of the "Bull" is now sought with pains and labour, and
only to be discovered with difficulty by the present generation. It
was numbered 25 Aldgate High Street, and stood where Aldgate Avenue, a
modern alley rich in offices of "commission agents," and curious things
of that kind, now cuts its way through where the old yard used to be.
Close by the "Bull" was another old coaching inn, the "Blue Boar,"
now quite vanished, kept for a time by John Thorogood. The Thorogoods
were in those days, and in these times of amateur coaching are still,
a family of coachmen. "Old John," who owned the "Norwich Times," and
actually drove it for two years without missing a journey the whole of
that time, clearly deserved his patronymic, in thus handling the reins
along a hundred and twelve miles of road for seven hundred and thirty
consecutive days.
It was to the "Blue Boar" that little David Copperfield came, on his
miserable journey from Yarmouth:--"We approached London by degrees, and
got, in due time, to the inn, in the Whitechapel district, I forget
whether it was the 'Blue Bull' or the 'Blue Boar,' but I know it was
the Blue Something, and that its likeness was painted upon the back
of the coach." The sculptured effigy of a boar, with gilded tusks and
hoofs, built into the wall of a tobacco factory, marks the site of the
inn.
Among other noted inns, the "Three Nuns" must be named. From it set
out the short stages to Ilford, Epping, Romford and Woodford, together
with coaches for several of the Essex by-roads. The house owes its
name to the Minoresses, or nuns, of St Clare, from whose religious
establishment the Minories obtains its title. The inn was rebuilt in
1877, and is now nothing more than a huge public-house.
Many other inns of consequence in their day have left nothing but
their yards behind them to show where they stood:--George Yard, Spread
Eagle Yard, Black Horse Yard, Boar's Head Yard, White Swan Yard, Half
Moon Passage, and Kent and Essex Yard are such relics, bordering High
Street, Whitechapel, where one curious sign survives, that of an inn
called the "Horse and Leaping Bar."
VI
ONE decided advantage the Chelmsford, Colchester and Ipswich route
to Norwich possessed in old times over that by way of Newmarket and
Thetford. Neither could have been considered safe in the bad old
days, but while the traveller across the wild heaths of Newmarket and
Thetford was almost certain to be "held up" on his lonely course, the
other way, through Essex, passed by few such wildernesses, and had more
towns and villages along its course, to give a sense of security.
Briefly, robbery on one route was a probability, and on the other was
regarded as certain. Margaret Paston, writing from Norfolk to her
husband in London, so long ago as the fifteenth century, certainly
gives even the way through Essex a bad name, for she asks him to pay
a debt for one of their friends, because it was not safe, "on account
of the robbers," to send money up from the country; but at the very
same time the Thetford route had a much more sinister reputation, and
travellers versed in the gossip of the road avoided it if possible,
or went in company and well armed, for in that era a certain William
Cratfield, Rector of Wrotham, "a common and notorious thief and lurker
on the roads, and murderer and slayer," lurked and robbed and slew on
Newmarket Heath, in company with a certain "Thomas Tapyrtone, hosyer."
He was at last laid by the heels, in 1416, and charged with robbing
a Londoner of £12. This distinguished ornament of the Church died in
Newgate, but of the villainous hosier we hear no more. Perhaps he had
realised a fortune in the business and retired to enjoy the fruits of
his industry. With the disappearance of this worthy couple, travellers
breathed more freely, but for surety's sake continued to patronise the
Essex route, and so by way of Ipswich to come to the City of Orchards,
as Norwich was called of old.
As time went on, a certain degree of security was found in the
coaches that began to make an appearance with the second half of the
seventeenth century. They travelled at first no more quickly than
a man could walk, but they provided company, which was, under the
circumstances, highly desirable. Soon, however, they found it possible
to do the journey in two days. Strype, we have already seen mentions
the "Saracen's Head" in Aldgate as the centre of a considerable trade,
and to it in 1681 a Norwich coach was running; an innovation which
aroused the indignation of innkeepers on the way to almost as great a
height as that of their descendants when, two hundred and forty years
later, railways were depopulating the roads. When travellers began to
go by coach instead of on horseback, and to reach London or Norwich in
two days instead of three or four, those antique tapsters thought they
saw their living going, and, strange to say, there were not wanting men
who raised their voices against the innovation of being carried on a
journey, instead of riding; although, for the most part, their outcry
was the result only of innate conservatism.
"Travelling in these coaches," said an anonymous pamphleteer, "can
neither prove advantageous to men's health or business. For what
advantage is it to men's health to be called out of their beds into
these coaches an hour before day in the morning, to be hurried in
them from place to place, till one hour, two, or three within night;
insomuch that after sitting all day in the summer time stifled with
heat, and choked with the dust, or the winter time starving and
freezing with cold or choked with filthy fogs, they are often brought
into their inns by torchlight, when it is too late to sit up to get
supper; and next morning they are forced into the coach so early that
they can get no breakfast. What addition is this to men's health or
business? to ride all day with strangers, oftentimes sick, ancient,
diseased persons, or young children crying; to whose humours they are
obliged to be subject, forced to bear with, and many times are poisoned
with their nasty scents, and crippled by the crowd of the boxes and
bundles."
Yet "these coaches" (one can almost hear the intonation of contempt in
that phrase) were from the first a success. The greater that success
the louder for a time was the outcry against them. Taylor, the Water
Poet, was one of those who wrote vehemently against the new methods
of travel. To him a coach was "a close hypocrite; for it hath a cover
for knavery and curtains to vaile and shadow any wickedness. Besides,
like a perpetual cheater, it wears two bootes, and no spurs, sometimes
having two pairs of legs to one boote, and oftentimes (against nature)
it makes faire ladies weare the boote; and if you note, they are
carried back to back, like people surprised by pyrats, to be tyed in
that miserable manner and thrown overboard into the sea. Moreover, it
makes people imitate sea-crabs, in being drawn sideways as they are
when they sit in the boot of the coach; and it is a dangerous kind of
carriage for the commonwealth, if it be considered."
The boot of which he speaks so contemptuously, was a method of packing
the "outsides," of which we still find a survival in the Irish
jaunting-car. There are those who trace the origin of the term from the
French "_boîte_," a box. Even now the coachman's seat is "the box," and
the modern fore-boot is under it.
Writers of that time seem almost unanimously to have taken sides
against coaching; with, however, no effect; for, somewhat later than
Taylor, that doughty Conservative, John Cresset, is found exclaiming
furiously against the multitude of them. He favoured the suppression
of all, or, at least--counsels of moderation prevailing--of most. They
were, he said, mischievous to the public, destructive to trade and
prejudicial to the land. Not only did they injure the breed of horses,
but also that of watermen; which last objection goes further than the
complaints of Taylor himself, who, writing at the same time, does not
speak of his breed being debased, but only of his trade being crippled.
Cresset thought the stage-coaches tempted the country gentry to London
too often, and he accordingly proposed that these conveyances should be
limited to one for every county town in England, to go backwards and
forwards once a week.
Vain hope! Coaches of sorts must already have appeared on the road to
Norwich by the middle of the seventeenth century, for in a proclamation
of July 20th in the plague year, 1665, when all places were dreading
infected London, it is ordained, that "from this daie all ye passage
coaches shall be prohibited to goe from ye city to London and come
from thence hither, and also ye common carts and wagons." Already,
in 1696, the "Confatharrat" coach was a well-known conveyance between
London and Norwich, and the name of Suggate, the London and East
Anglian carrier, a household word. Unhappily, nothing can be gathered
as to when Suggate first began to jog along the road, or when the
"Confatharrat" started to ply between Norwich and the "Four Swans,"
Bishopsgate Street. All particulars are lost. The odd name of that
coach was probably a seventeenth-century way of spelling the word
"confederate," and the selection of such a name proves both that it was
carried on by an alliance or co-partnership, and that "confederate" had
not then acquired its sinister modern connotation. Besides these aids
to travel, a stage-waggon began to ply from the "Popinjay," Tombland,
Norwich, at an early date; and another from the "Angel," in the Market
Place, to the "Blossoms" Inn, Laurence Lane, London, was advertised in
the _Norwich Mercury_, of March 29th, 1729, to "now go regularly every
Thursday night," setting out on the following Wednesday from London,
on the return journey. It will thus be seen that it was a five or six
days' journey for those primitive affairs, and that they apparently did
not run at regular intervals until that year.
A London and Beccles coach was running in 1707, but the first regular
Norwich coach of which particulars remain was the "Norwich Machine,"
which in 1762 set out for London three times a week from the "Maid's
Head," according to the advertisement still extant. There is nothing
in that old coaching bill to show that 1762 was the first season of
the "Norwich Machine." It may have been established some years before
that date.
_Norwich, March 26, 1762._
SUSAN NASMITH and JAMES KEITH,
Proprietors of the
NORWICH MACHINE,
Give Notice
that their Machine will set out from the MAID'S HEAD Inn, in St
Simon's Parish, in Norwich, on Monday, the 5th day of April next, at
half-past eleven in the forenoon, and on the Wednesday and Friday in
the same week, at the same time; and to be continued in like Manner,
on those Days weekly, for the carrying four inside Passengers, at
Twenty-five Shillings each, and outside at Twelve Shillings and
Sixpence each. The inside Passengers to be allowed twenty pound
Weight, and all above to be paid for at three half-pence per pound;
and to be in London on the Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday Evenings
weekly.
* * * * *
_N.B._--A Machine will set out on the same days, at the same time,
from the GREEN DRAGON, in Bishopsgate Street, London, for Norwich.
In the following year, the "Widow Nasmith" and James Keith advertised
that they had built large and commodious machines, to carry six
inside, and reduced the fares to twenty shillings and ten shillings
respectively; but they had apparently not succeeded in performing the
journey in less time than a day and a half, for no mention is made of
speed being accelerated. But a remarkable feature in that announcement
is the extraordinary cheapness of the fares, little over twopence and a
penny a mile for inside and outside passengers, at a time when prices
on other roads ruled from twenty-five to fifty per cent. higher. This
tells a tale of competition; but Time, the thief, has robbed us of all
knowledge of those competitors.
A year later the London and Ipswich Post Coaches were advertised to
set out every week-day, and to perform the 69¼ miles in ten hours, an
average pace of almost 7 miles an hour; a marvellous turn of speed
for that age. As to whether those Post Coaches ever _did_ cover that
distance in ten hours, we may reasonably express a doubt; but there
was the promise, and 011 the strength of it the proprietors charged
threepence a mile. As will be seen by the advertisement, these coaches
carried no outside passengers:--
_Ipswich, August 17th, 1764._
THE LONDON AND IPSWICH POST COACHES