<a href="https://susanaellisauthor.blog/" title="Susana&#039;s Parlour" rel="home">Susana&#039;s Parlour

4: The Bath Road: The Bear Inn at Devizes and the “Pictorial Chronicler of the Regency”

5: The Exeter Road: Flying Machines, Muddy Roads and Well-Mannered Highwaymen

6: The Exeter Road: A Foolish Coachman, a Dreadful Snowstorm and a Romance

7: The Exeter Road in 1823: A Myriad of Changes in Fifty Years

8: The Exeter Road: Basingstoke, Andover and Salisbury and the Events They Witnessed

9: The Exeter Road: The Weyhill Fair, Amesbury Abbey and the Extraordinary Duchess of Queensberry

10: The Exeter Road: Stonehenge, Dorchester and the Sad Story of the Monmouth Uprising

11: The Portsmouth Road: Royal Road or Road of Assassination?

12: The Brighton Road: “The Most Nearly Perfect, and Certainly the Most Fashionable of All”

13: The Dover Road: “Rich crowds of historical figures”

16: The Dover Road: William Clements, Gentleman Coachman

18: The York Road: Enfield Chase and the Gunpowder Treason Plot

19: The York Road: The Stamford Regent Faces the Peril of a Flood

22: The Holyhead Road: Three Notable Coaching Accidents

23: The Holyhead Road: Old Lal the Legless Man and His Extraordinary Flying Machine

24: The Holyhead Road: The Coachmen “More Celebrated Even Than the Most Celebrated of Their Rivals” (Part I)

25: The Holyhead Road: The Coachmen “More Celebrated Even Than the Most Celebrated of Their Rivals” (Part II)

26: Flying Machines and Waggons and What It Was Like To Travel in Them

1: The Bath Road: The (True) Legend of the Berkshire Lady

The Brighton Road: “The Most Nearly Perfect, and Certainly the Most Fashionable of All”

Sep22

The following post is the twelfth of a series based on information obtained from a fascinating book Susana recently obtained for research purposes. Coaching Days & Coaching Ways by W. Outram Tristram, first published in 1888, is chock full of commentary about travel and roads and social history told in an entertaining manner, along with a great many fabulous illustrations. A great find for anyone seriously interested in English history!

The Brighton Road, Mr. Tristram suggests, might be called the “Regent’s Road,” since it was the Prince who, once he determined the health benefits of the seaside city, saw to it that the road was made passable.

For before the Pavilion was, Brighton was about as easy to get at as the Cranmere Pool in the middle of Dartmoor, the moon, the North Pole, the special exits in case of fire at our principal theatres, or anything else on earth totally inaccessible.

It was in 1750 when Brighton was nothing but a small fishing village that Doctor Richard Russell visited and proclaimed that sea water was beneficial to health, which began the exodus of wealthy hypochondriacs to seaside resorts. At that time, however, our author suggests that oxen were required to cope with the deep ruts. “People got into coaches to go to Brighton and only got out of them when they were overturned.”

All these horrors of the Brighton Road the much abused George the Fourth did away, with a sweep as it were of his fat, bejewelled and august hand! He built the Pavilion, and people from all parts of the country came straightway to see it and him… the crowds soon found…that if they were to come to Brighton, and to court, they had better have some decent road to come upon. And from this simple bringing home of a plain truth came into existence the Brighton Road—“perhaps the most nearly perfect, and certainly the most fashionable of all.”

Brighton Pavilion

Cuckfield Park, Cuckfield, West Sussex

This sixteenth century manor is known for its ghost, said to be that of Anne Sergison, who, already afflicted with a somewhat combative nature, had to fight a long and sordid court battle to get it. It came to light after her brother’s death that the thirteen-year-old girl assumed to be his daughter was actually a “supposititious” (don’t you just love that word?) child imposed on him by his wife. No one knows what happened to the girl and her mother, but Anne’s ghost has been spotted in the corridors and the avenue leading to the house, and some say she particularly attended her granddaughter’s wedding in 1890. No rest for the wicked, so they say.

Cuckfield Park was the inspiration for William Harrison Ainsworth’s novel Rookwood.

Cuckfield Park

The Dorset Arms, East Grinstead

All distinguished travellers on the Brighton Road pulled up as a matter of course at the Dorset Arms. Amongst those whose names have been handed down as habitual visitors, was Lord Liverpool, who always stayed at the Dorset Arms when on his way to visit the Harcourt seat near Buxted… Another constant guest was Lord Seymour, who died, I believe, in 1837—mean, I am sorry to say…and yet not mean either one way, for if he didn’t eat and drink much, he possessed a passion for illumination which must have produced some respectable items in the bill—thirty wax candles or more burning in his bedroom all night. Spencer Perceval too (the Prime Minister remarkable for great ability and for having been shot in the lobby of the House of Commons in 1812 by John Bellingham) must have been a familiar figure at the Dorset Arms, for the house from which he was married in 1790 to Miss Jane Wilson stands just at the bottom of the Dorset Arms’ garden.

The Dorset Arms

The Clayton Arms, formerly the White Hart and currently the White Hart Barn, Godstone Green

It is said the that in 1815 the Regent, the Tsar of Russia, and many royal visitors stayed at the inn on their way to Blindley Heath, to be present at the fight for the championship of England…Blindley Heath was one of the most popular and celebrated of prize-fighting rendezvous.

“The Fancy were all upon the alert soon after breakfast” (I quote from Boxiana’s description of the Grand Pugilistic combat between Randall and Martin, at Crawley Down, thirty miles from London, on Tuesday, May 4, 1819 “on the Monday to ascertain the seat of action; and as soon as the important whisper had gone forth, that Crawley Down was likely to be the place, the toddlers were off in a twinkling… Between the hours of two and three o’clock in the afternoon upwards of a hundred gigs were counted passing through Croydon… Long before eight o’clock in the evening every bed belonging to the inns and public houses in Godstone, East Grinstead, Reigate, Bletchingley, &c., were doubly and some trebly occupied.”

“Those persons whose blunt enabled them to procure beds, could not obtain any sleep, for carriages of every description were passing through the above towns all night… The brilliants also left Brighton and Worthing at about the same period, and thus were the roads thronged in every direction… It is supposed if the carriages had all been placed in one line they would have reached from London to Crawley. The amateurs were of the highest distinction, and several noblemen and foreigners of rank were upon the ground.”

The White Hart Barn, now the village hall of Godstone Green

Regent and emperor putting up at a wayside inn to witness a fight for the championship!…The noblemen and foreigners of rank crowding round the twenty-four foot ring! What can give us a better idea of the Brighton Road in its prime than these facts? What paint more vividly what I call its “Regency flavour”, its slang, its coarseness, its virility—in a word, its “Corinthianism”?

Index to all the posts in this series

2: The Bath Road: Littlecote and Wild William Darrell

4: The Bath Road: The Bear Inn at Devizes and the “Pictorial Chronicler of the Regency”

5: The Exeter Road: Flying Machines, Muddy Roads and Well-Mannered Highwaymen

6: The Exeter Road: A Foolish Coachman, a Dreadful Snowstorm and a Romance

7: The Exeter Road in 1823: A Myriad of Changes in Fifty Years

8: The Exeter Road: Basingstoke, Andover and Salisbury and the Events They Witnessed

9: The Exeter Road: The Weyhill Fair, Amesbury Abbey and the Extraordinary Duchess of Queensberry

10: The Exeter Road: Stonehenge, Dorchester and the Sad Story of the Monmouth Uprising

11: The Portsmouth Road: Royal Road or Road of Assassination?

12: The Brighton Road: “The Most Nearly Perfect, and Certainly the Most Fashionable of All”

13: The Dover Road: “Rich crowds of historical figures”

16: The Dover Road: William Clements, Gentleman Coachman

18: The York Road: Enfield Chase and the Gunpowder Treason Plot

19: The York Road: The Stamford Regent Faces the Peril of a Flood

22: The Holyhead Road: Three Notable Coaching Accidents

23: The Holyhead Road: Old Lal the Legless Man and His Extraordinary Flying Machine

24: The Holyhead Road: The Coachmen “More Celebrated Even Than the Most Celebrated of Their Rivals” (Part I)

25: The Holyhead Road: The Coachmen “More Celebrated Even Than the Most Celebrated of Their Rivals” (Part II)

26: Flying Machines and Waggons and What It Was Like To Travel in Them

1: The Bath Road: The (True) Legend of the Berkshire Lady

The Portsmouth Road: Royal Road or Road of Assassination?

Sep18

The following post is the eleventh of a series based on information obtained from a fascinating book Susana recently obtained for research purposes. Coaching Days & Coaching Ways by W. Outram Tristram, first published in 1888, is chock full of commentary about travel and roads and social history told in an entertaining manner, along with a great many fabulous illustrations. A great find for anyone seriously interested in English history!

The Portsmouth Road has been described to me by one having authority as the Royal Road: and certainly kings and queens have passed up and down it, eaten and drunken in the Royal Rooms, still to be seen in some of the old inns; snored in the Royal Beds (also in places to be seen, but not slept in), and dreamed of ruts of bogs, and blasted heaths and impassable morasses, and all the sundry and other mild discomforts which our ancestors, whether kings or cobblers, had to put up with; or those among them at all events who travelled when the weather was rainy, and there were no real roads to travel upon.

To me however the Portsmouth Road—so called Royal—presents itself in a less august guise; so much so that if I were asked to give it a name whereby it might be especially distinguished, I should be inclined, I think, to call it the Road of Assassination. And it will be found to have claim to the title.

The Unknown Sailor

The Portsmouth Road after Godalming and Milford consisted of a “gravelly road” for five miles up Hindhead Hill that led them directly to a “silent memorial of murder,” a gravestone reminder

of a barbarous murder committed on the spot on the person of an unknown sailor (who lies buried in Thursley Churchyard, a few miles off); and airs also with some satisfaction the feeling then very prevalent (before Scotland Yard was), that murderers are a class who invariably fall into the hands of justice. We are perhaps not so credulous as this nowadays; but we put our trust in a large detective force when our throats have been cut, and hope for the best. The local police of 1786 however could have given many of our shining lights a lesson, it seems to me; for on the very afternoon of September the 4th in that year (which was the date of the murder) they apprehended three men named Lonegon, Casey, and Marshall, twelve miles further down the road…engaged in the unwise exercise of selling the murdered man’s clothes. For this, and previous indiscretions, they were presently hanged in chains on the top of Hindhead as a warning…

The ill-fated sailor, walking from London to rejoin his ship in Portsmouth, met up with three other sailors in Thursley and treated them to food and drinks before setting off again in their company. His reward was to be murdered and decapitated and thrown into a valley, where he was promptly discovered and the alarm raised. His murderers were apprehended that same day at the Sun Inn in Rake, rather unwisely selling off their victim’s clothing.

In memory of

A generous but unfortunate Sailor

Who was barbarously murder’d on Hindhead

On September 24th 1786

By three Villains

After he had liberally treated them

And promised them his farther assistance

On the road to Portsmouth.

The Murders by the Smugglers

All through the last century, then, it seems the country from Portsmouth…was infested by gangs of smugglers.

From time to time, after some unusually audacious outbreak against custom-house laws had taken place, violent reprisals were made; but on the whole the revenue officers seem to have had decidedly the worst of it, and the smugglers enjoyed an enviable immunity from the retribution of justice. The climax to this condition of affairs came on the 6th and 7th of October, 1747, when a gang of some sixty of these desperadoes assembled secretly in Charlton Forest; made a suddenly raid on Poole; broke open the custom, where a large quantity of tea which had been seized from one of their confederates, was lodged, and made off with the booty, without encountering any resistance from the surprised authorites.

Ye Smugglers breaking open ye King’s Custom House at Poole

The cocky smugglers made a “riotous procession” retreating with their booty, and one of them, a man named Diamond, recognized Daniel Chater, a shoemaker, in the crowd and threw him a bag of tea. The same Diamond was taken into custody at Chichester, and Chater, having been promised a reward, was persuaded to accompany a custom house officer, William Galley, to Chichester for the purpose of identifying said Diamond.

The pair made the unfortunate decision to stay at the White Hart, where the landlady, “friendly of course to smugglers and highwaymen”, suspecting that they meant harm to her friends, sent for seven of them to intervene. Galley and Chater “were prevailed upon with force to stay and drink more rum” and when unconscious, the letter Galley was carrying detailing their errand was intercepted, and the criminals debated whether or not to murder them. Two of the smugglers’ wives who had joined the party urged them to “Hang the dogs, for they came here to hang us.”

This view of the case seems to have in an instant turned men into monsters. A devilish fury possessed the whole company. Jackson rushed into the room where Chater and Galley were sleeping. He leaped upon the bed and awakened them by spurring them on the forehead. He flogged them about the head with a horsewhip till their faces poured with blood. Then they were taken out to the back yard, and both of them tied on to one horse, their four legs tied together, and these four legs tied under the horse’s belly.

They had not got a hundred yards from the house when Jackson, in one of those sudden accesses of fiendishness continually characteristic of the whole affair, and which seemed a veritable possession of the devil himself, yelled out—“Whip them! Cut them! Slash them! Damn them!” and in an instant the whole gang’s devilish fury was wreaked on their bound and helpless enemies.

Near Rake Hill, Galley fell off the horse and was presumed to be dead, so they buried him in a foxhole in Harting Coombe. When he was found, however, his hands were covering his eyes, presumably to protect them from the dirt, so he was, in effect, buried alive.

Chater did not find so fortunate a release from his torments. He was kept for over two days chained by the leg in an outhouse of the Red Lion at Rake, “in the most deplorable condition that man was ever in; his mind full of horrors, and his body all over pain and anguish with the blows and scourges they had given him.” All this while the smugglers were calmly debating as to how they should finally make an end of him. At length a decision was come to. Subjected all the way to treatment which I cannot describe, he was taken back to the same Harris Well where it had been originally proposed to murder Galley; and after an unsuccessful attempt at hanging him there, he was thrown down it, and an end put at last to his awful sufferings by heaving stones being thrown on top of him.

The heinousness of the crime demanded swift justice, and the gang was hanged at Chichester on 18th January 1749, except for one, who died of fright the night before the execution.

The unfortunate William Galley put by the Smugglers into the Ground … before he was quite Dead

Mr Galley and Mr Chater put by ye Smugglers on one Horse near Rowland Castle

The Assassination of the Duke of Buckingham

After all this, a simple assassination may strike you as a mere church picnic. But it was at the Spotted Dog Inn in 1628 that James I’s favorite (and some say lover) was assassinated by a discontented half-pay officer who had been turned down for promotion.

It remains for me to remark that the journey of Felton to London, where he was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn, was accomplished amidst scenes of extraordinary and many-sided excitement; and coming, as it does, before a similarly mournful expedition over the same ground on the part of the Duke of Monmouth, seems to me to cast a characteristic gloom over the annals of a road—not remarkable for coaching anecdotes or coaching records—which has been called Royal, and rightly perhaps enough,—but which has yet witnessed, so far as its historical side is concerned, and so far as my knowledge goes, gloomier and more tragic scenes than any other of the great thoroughfares out of London.

These days we have organized police forces and all sorts of high-tech devices and forensic methods to apprehend and prosecute criminals…and yet crime seems to be everywhere, even such horrific murders as described here. Are today’s criminals smarter, do you think, or were more crimes undetected back then?

Comment and enter to win Susana’s September Giveaway, a lovely necklace from London’s National Gallery (see photo at right).

Index to all the posts in this series

2: The Bath Road: Littlecote and Wild William Darrell

4: The Bath Road: The Bear Inn at Devizes and the “Pictorial Chronicler of the Regency”

5: The Exeter Road: Flying Machines, Muddy Roads and Well-Mannered Highwaymen

6: The Exeter Road: A Foolish Coachman, a Dreadful Snowstorm and a Romance

7: The Exeter Road in 1823: A Myriad of Changes in Fifty Years

8: The Exeter Road: Basingstoke, Andover and Salisbury and the Events They Witnessed

9: The Exeter Road: The Weyhill Fair, Amesbury Abbey and the Extraordinary Duchess of Queensberry

10: The Exeter Road: Stonehenge, Dorchester and the Sad Story of the Monmouth Uprising

11: The Portsmouth Road: Royal Road or Road of Assassination?

12: The Brighton Road: “The Most Nearly Perfect, and Certainly the Most Fashionable of All”

13: The Dover Road: “Rich crowds of historical figures”

16: The Dover Road: William Clements, Gentleman Coachman

18: The York Road: Enfield Chase and the Gunpowder Treason Plot

19: The York Road: The Stamford Regent Faces the Peril of a Flood

22: The Holyhead Road: Three Notable Coaching Accidents

23: The Holyhead Road: Old Lal the Legless Man and His Extraordinary Flying Machine

24: The Holyhead Road: The Coachmen “More Celebrated Even Than the Most Celebrated of Their Rivals” (Part I)

25: The Holyhead Road: The Coachmen “More Celebrated Even Than the Most Celebrated of Their Rivals” (Part II)

26: Flying Machines and Waggons and What It Was Like To Travel in Them

1: The Bath Road: The (True) Legend of the Berkshire Lady

The Exeter Road in 1823: A Myriad of Changes in Fifty Years

Aug7

The following post is the seventh of a series based on information obtained from a fascinating book Susana recently obtained for research purposes. Coaching Days & Coaching Ways by W. Outram Tristram, first published in 1888, is chock full of commentary about travel and roads and social history told in an entertaining manner, along with a great many fabulous illustrations. A great find for anyone seriously interested in English history!

Fifty Years Later

Mr. Tristram, our illustrious author, wants us to know that travel has undergone a great deal of change from 1773, so he tells us the story of our hero Mirabel (see previous posts) fifty years later, when he’s in his seventies, having lived most of his life overseas and now is returning to England to take the same route to Exeter. Dressed in much the same way he did then, he waits outside the Gloucester Coffee-house for the Exeter Fly, where the young bucks stare at his old-fashioned attire.

Perhaps Mirabel looks like Mr. Bennet from P&P?

The Comet

He expects to see the Exeter Fly—a trifle improved upon possibly—but still the Exeter Fly. And what does he see in its stead rapidly approaching? Why, a turn-out drawn by four spanking grays, which he takes to be a gentleman’s carriage, and which would do credit to a crowned head.

The Comet on the way to Brighton

It’s called the Comet and our friend Mirabel soon learns where its name came from. He mistakes the coachman, who is well-dressed and genteel (for he is also the proprietor of the coach) for a gentleman. The Hercules Pillars at Hyde Park Corner no longer exists (recall that Apsley House replaced it soon after our last trip to Exeter), and the roads are macadamized and therefore much smoother than when they were made with stone.

The Comet travels at ten miles an hour and arrives at Hounslow fifty-five minutes after leaving Hyde Park Corner, not stopping at Brentford at all. Mirabel is eager for some breakfast since being told that the coach would change horses there.

The proprietor, smiling superior, blandly tells him that they have changed horses while he was putting on his spectacles. “Only one minute allowed for it at Hounslow, sir, and it is often done in fifty seconds by those nimble-fingered horse-keepers.”

He then proceeds to urge the horses forward in such a way as to cause the coach to rock violently and alarm our valiant Mirabel (remember when he apprehended the highway back in 1773?). In response to his concerns, the proprietor says simply: “Oh, sir, we always ‘spring them’ over these six miles.”

He looks out and sees death and destruction before his eyes, the horses going at the rate of a mile in three minutes, and the coachman in the act of taking a pinch of snuff.

The King’s Arms at Bagshot

At Staines, the coach takes on a fine thoroughbred “with a twitch on his nose” and Mirabel feels queasy, but the proprietor says, “Let ’em go, and take care of yourselves.” Just as Mirabel expected, the thoroughbred takes off and soon the horses are galloping and the coach rocks unmercifully, but the proprietor manages to steady them, and when Mirabel descends from the Comet at Bagshot, he is grateful to be alive and determined to find a slower and safer coach to take for the remainder of the journey.

The Regulator

Assured that the Regulator will be there in hour, Mirabel finally gets his breakfast and is ready and waiting when the Regulator draws up to the King’s Arms.

He sees…that it is a strong, well-built drag, painted chocolate, bedaubed all over with gilt letters, a bull’s head on the doors, a Saracen’s head on the hind boot, and drawn by four strapping horses.

The inside being full, Mirabel rides on the outside, and is relieved when the Regulator travels at a steady pace for the first five miles out of Bagshot. Once they reach the Hartford Bridge Flats, however, the coachman “springs ’em” to a gallop, and they go so face they catch up to the Comet. In the words of the coachman:

“He [Mirabel] was seated with his back to the horses, his arms extended to each extremity of the guard irons, his teeth set grim as death, his eyes cast down towards the ground, thinking the less he saw of his danger the better;”

and in this state he arrived at Hartford Bridge. Here he dismounted from the Regulator with the alacrity of lightning. “I will walk into Devonshire,” he cries. Then he thinks better of this, and says he will post; then he is told that posting will cost him twenty pounds; and then he says that will never do, and asks whether the landlord of The White Lion can suggest no coach to his notice that does not carry luggage on the top.

The Quicksilver Mail (the Devonshire)

The landlord advises him to take the Quicksilver mail, which travels at night, well-armed, with lamps and guards, and when asked about the speed, demurs and doesn’t mention that the Quicksilver mail (the Devonshire) is the fastest coach in England and commonly called the miracle of the road. But it doesn’t have luggage on top, at least.

Mirabel loses his head, and in spite of the assurances of the passengers that all is right, thrusts it out of the window to see where the deuce they are going to, sees nothing but dust and whirling wheels, and loses his wig.

Alas, we never find out whether or not poor old Mirabel ever got to Exeter, just that the coach reached Basingstoke, and presumably left our elderly hero there.

At least it wasn’t snowing as it did the last time!

Index to all the posts in this series

2: The Bath Road: Littlecote and Wild William Darrell

4: The Bath Road: The Bear Inn at Devizes and the “Pictorial Chronicler of the Regency”

5: The Exeter Road: Flying Machines, Muddy Roads and Well-Mannered Highwaymen

6: The Exeter Road: A Foolish Coachman, a Dreadful Snowstorm and a Romance

7: The Exeter Road in 1823: A Myriad of Changes in Fifty Years

8: The Exeter Road: Basingstoke, Andover and Salisbury and the Events They Witnessed

9: The Exeter Road: The Weyhill Fair, Amesbury Abbey and the Extraordinary Duchess of Queensberry

10: The Exeter Road: Stonehenge, Dorchester and the Sad Story of the Monmouth Uprising

11: The Portsmouth Road: Royal Road or Road of Assassination?

12: The Brighton Road: “The Most Nearly Perfect, and Certainly the Most Fashionable of All”

13: The Dover Road: “Rich crowds of historical figures”

16: The Dover Road: William Clements, Gentleman Coachman

18: The York Road: Enfield Chase and the Gunpowder Treason Plot

19: The York Road: The Stamford Regent Faces the Peril of a Flood

22: The Holyhead Road: Three Notable Coaching Accidents

23: The Holyhead Road: Old Lal the Legless Man and His Extraordinary Flying Machine

24: The Holyhead Road: The Coachmen “More Celebrated Even Than the Most Celebrated of Their Rivals” (Part I)

25: The Holyhead Road: The Coachmen “More Celebrated Even Than the Most Celebrated of Their Rivals” (Part II)

26: Flying Machines and Waggons and What It Was Like To Travel in Them

1: The Bath Road: The (True) Legend of the Berkshire Lady

The Exeter Road: A Foolish Coachman, a Dreadful Snowstorm and a Romance

Aug4

The following post is the sixth of a series based on information obtained from a fascinating book Susana recently obtained for research purposes. Coaching Days & Coaching Ways by W. Outram Tristram, first published in 1888, is chock full of commentary about travel and roads and social history told in an entertaining manner, along with a great many fabulous illustrations. A great find for anyone seriously interested in English history!

Breakfast at The Three Pigeons Inn, Brentford

The Brentford Market and the Three Pigeons Inn

In the 17th and 18th centuries when Brentford was a thriving market and resort town, the Three Pigeons Inn was famous for its post-horses, of which it could stable up to one hundred. Its varied entertainments can be found in such literature as The Roaring Girle or Moll Cut-Purse (1611), She Stoops to Conquer (1773), The Merrie Conceited Jests of George Peele—The Jests of George Peele with Four of His Companions at Brainford (1607) and The Alchemist 1610).

Decisions! Decisions!

It’s snowing when our intrepid passengers are refreshed after their breakfast at The Three Pigeons. “…the coachman’s nose beams a benignant purple, and the ostler recommends another glass as an antidote to the weather, of which he presages the worst.”

Following their earlier adventure with the highway (see the previous post), the ladies are more concerned with the possibility of further encounters with outlaws. Mirabel, our gallant hero, squeezes the lovely Belinda’s hand in reassurance and they exchange “delicious looks.”

Upon reaching Hounslow, the coach begins to jolt and stops at The George Inn, where the landlord, who has six empty beds, warns them that the Bath Flying Machine has been snowed up at Colnbrook and that they had best stop for the night. “As sole answer to this appeal, the coachman, full of valour, calls for more brandy, and two more horses to take them over the heath…”

The first thing they encounter is the Salisbury Fly in a snowdrift.

The driver of the Exeter Fly observes this catastrophe, but he does not regard it, or regards it purely as a landmark, and majestically avoids the pit into which his unfortunate brother has fallen.

“The snow drives; the wind blows it full in their faces; the horses begin to show signs of suddenly capitulating.” The coachman whips them unmercifully, but they slow down to a walk. The passengers begin to believe they are lost, but then the snow relents, and the coach pulls in to The Bush at Staines. The landlord counsels them to stay for the night, and the passengers, if truth be told, would like to follow that advice.

Success, stimulant, and the lull in the snow storm have, however, made the coachman daring. He observes thickly that he is an Englishman, and declares his intention of inning at Bagshot for the night, whether the passengers leave the coach or stick to it. Upon this, the young captor of the highwayman [Mirabel] says, blushing with ingenuous shame, that he is willing to go on; upon which the lady [Belinda], blushing also, says that she is willing too. This necessitates the mother also putting her neck in jeopardy, and she, too, re-enters the coach.

A = Brentford, B = Bagshot

After this, the lawyer and the captain cannot honorably refuse, so the coach takes off with a full quota of passengers, and the snow begins to fall once more. Nerves on edge, the captain and the lawyer bicker, the guard, fearing highwaymen, takes out his blunderbuss, and the coachman tries to urge the horses to go faster as they approach Bagshot Heath. “…but highwaymen are not such fools as to be out in such weather, and the driver, who can see nothing at all, drives into a rut a yard deep.”

The gallant Mirabel takes the opportunity to rescue Belinda and her mother from the overturned coach, then turning to do the same with the rest of the motley crew. At that point he suggests that someone go on ahead to The King’s Arms at Bagshot to get help.

“The only answer to this appeal comes from the guard, who raises his blunderbuss gravely, and mistaking a too curious shepherd who approaches from behind a bush for a footpad, shoots him…”

The injured shepherd is given a bottle of brandy, and Mirabel, realizing he cannot be in two places at one time, confers the safety of the ladies to the lawyer, and takes off on one of the horses to get help. In under an hour, the rescuers approach, only to be shot at by the guard, who is drunk with power at having just shot the shepherd.

All’s Well That Ends Well

All the way to the King’s Arms he [the guard] babbles of the hundred pounds due him for ridding the heath of a footpad; the shepherd consults the lawyer meanwhile as to damages and as to how an action would lie…Mirabel gently presses Belinda’s hand and the pressure is ever so faintly returned…and the party arrive finally at The King’s Arms, Bagshot where a wonderful display of good cheer oppresses a groaning table—“Iris-tinted rounds of beef, marble-veined ribs, gelatinous veal pies, colossal hams, gallons of old ale, bins full of old port and burgundy.”

And here, in the midst of an old English plenty, my travellers are snowed up for nearly a week. And Mirabel proposes to Belinda, and is accepted; and the man of law drinks a congratulatory bottle of port with the fortunate wooer; and proposes himself to the widow next day, and is refused; and Mirabel drinks a bottle of port with him—a consolatory one this time; and the guard is forgiven by the shepherd; and the captain is rude to Betty the chambermaid, and gets his face slapped for his pains in a long oak corridor; and so in the old coaching days, when Exter was five days’ journey from London, and ladies wore hoops and farthingales, and gentlemen bag wigs and three-cornered hats, the old coaching world went round.

I love a happy ending. Don’t you?

BTW, today you could travel from Brentford to Bagshot in 36 minutes. But perhaps not in snowstorm.

Susana’s August Giveaway*

Susana brought back some lovely treasures from her trip to England, and she’d like to share them with you. This month she’s giving away a lovely mug (purchased at Chatsworth) illustrated with a famous painting of the Duchess of Devonshire.

Click on the image of the mug in the right column to enter the Rafflecopter. A runner-up will win “The Regency: Love’s Golden Age” mug. Enter every day if you wish! Good luck!

*International winners will receive the equivalent in gift cards.

Index to all the posts in this series

2: The Bath Road: Littlecote and Wild William Darrell

4: The Bath Road: The Bear Inn at Devizes and the “Pictorial Chronicler of the Regency”

5: The Exeter Road: Flying Machines, Muddy Roads and Well-Mannered Highwaymen

6: The Exeter Road: A Foolish Coachman, a Dreadful Snowstorm and a Romance

7: The Exeter Road in 1823: A Myriad of Changes in Fifty Years

8: The Exeter Road: Basingstoke, Andover and Salisbury and the Events They Witnessed

9: The Exeter Road: The Weyhill Fair, Amesbury Abbey and the Extraordinary Duchess of Queensberry

10: The Exeter Road: Stonehenge, Dorchester and the Sad Story of the Monmouth Uprising

11: The Portsmouth Road: Royal Road or Road of Assassination?

12: The Brighton Road: “The Most Nearly Perfect, and Certainly the Most Fashionable of All”

13: The Dover Road: “Rich crowds of historical figures”

16: The Dover Road: William Clements, Gentleman Coachman

18: The York Road: Enfield Chase and the Gunpowder Treason Plot

19: The York Road: The Stamford Regent Faces the Peril of a Flood

22: The Holyhead Road: Three Notable Coaching Accidents

23: The Holyhead Road: Old Lal the Legless Man and His Extraordinary Flying Machine

24: The Holyhead Road: The Coachmen “More Celebrated Even Than the Most Celebrated of Their Rivals” (Part I)

25: The Holyhead Road: The Coachmen “More Celebrated Even Than the Most Celebrated of Their Rivals” (Part II)

26: Flying Machines and Waggons and What It Was Like To Travel in Them

1: The Bath Road: The (True) Legend of the Berkshire Lady

The Exeter Road: Flying Machines, Muddy Roads and Well-Mannered Highwaymen

Jul31

The following post is the fifth of a series based on information obtained from a fascinating book Susana recently obtained for research purposes. Coaching Days & Coaching Ways by W. Outram Tristram, first published in 1888, is chock full of commentary about travel and roads and social history told in an entertaining manner, along with a great many fabulous illustrations. A great find for anyone seriously interested in English history!

Traveling in Style

When the elegant and accomplished Barry Lyndon, about the 17th of May, 1773, and shortly after his marriage with the widow of the late Right Honourable Sir Charles Lyndon, K.B., set out to visit his estates in the West of England, where he had never yet set foot, he and his Honoria and suite left London in three chariots, each with four horses; an outrider in livery went before and bespoke lodgings from town to town; the party lay in state at Andover, Ilminster and Exeter; and the fourth evening arrived in time for supper, “before that antique baronial mansion of which the gate was in an odious Gothic taste that would have set Mr. Walpole wild with pleasure.”

George III traveling from Windsor to London

The “Flying Machines”: “a slow form of lingering death”

For travelers who could not afford three carriages pulled by twelve horses and outriders, there were the “Flying Machines,” stagecoaches whose owners boasted could convey you to your destination in the shortest time possible. The following flyer is from around 1670:

“Flying Machine.

“All those desirous to pass from London to Bath, or any other Place on their Road, let them repair to the Belle Savage on Ludgate Hill in London and the White Lion at Bath, at both which places they may be received in a Stage Coach every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, which performs the whole journey in Three Days (if God permits), and sets forth at five in the Morning.

“Passengers to pay One Pound five Shillings each, who are allowed to carry fourteen Pounds Weight—for all above to pay three halfpence per Pound.”

You have noticed, of course, the disclaimer that should your journey take more than three days, the fault lies with God and not with stagecoach company itself. Our illustrious author, Mr. Tristram, seems to be of the opinion that such claims were exaggerated and that the travelers in Mr. Lyndon’s large retinue would not only arrive before the so-called “Flying Machines,” but in a great deal more comfort as well. Poor roads, snowdrifts and highwaymen were common hazards for all travelers, but Mr. Lyndon’s retinue was more prepared to deal with them than the vehicle that was described as “six cart horses harnessed to a diving bell.”

The Brighton Comet 1820

Hercules’ Pillars

Before Apsley House was constructed across from Hyde Park Corner by Robert Adam between 1771 and 1778, the site was occupied by an inn called Hercules’ Pillars, where coachmen would stop for a drink. Hercules’ Pillars played a prominent part in a very naughty book by Henry Fielding called The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling or simply Tom Jones. I suppose the drinks gave them courage to head into Knightsbridge, two furlongs away, which was known “as a place of bogs and highwaymen.”

Indeed, what better place for highwaymen to ply their trade than “a great impassable gulf of mud” as could be found in Knightsbridge!

An Amiable Outlaw Meets His Match

Into this great impassable gulf of mud the Exeter Fly presently descended, and after desperate flounderings which only made matters worse, stuck fast. To it, when thus safely anchored, entered a gentleman in a vizor and riding a dark chestnut mare, who good naturedly recommended the coachman to alight, and offered to relieve the passengers of their purses. The first to take advantage of this amiability and give up his purse was the [formerly boastful] warrior from Dettingen, who had been loud in his contempt for highwaymen ever since the Fly left the city, and had sketched, with an elaborate garnishing of oaths, the horrid fate to which any marauder would be subject who ventured to bar the way. He spoke no more now of Dettingen, and of the standard he had taken from the musketeer of the French guard. Far from it. He gave his little all to the gentleman who asked for it, counselled submission to his companions, and disappeared to eat straw in the bottom of the coach. The highwayman now asked the ladies to oblige, parenthetically observing that time pressed. The words were hardly out of his mouth when Mirabel [the name assigned by Tristram to the young man of the party], who had been biding his time, obliged him with a sudden blow on that jaw which he had somewhat ostentatiously intruded upon the company, and at the same moment jumped from coach and seized the bridle of the chestnut mare. The highwayman now said, “Zounds”! and discharged his pistol; but as the chestnut mare reared and fell back with him just as he was firing it, the aim was not so true as the intention; in point of fact, instead of shooting Mirabel through the head, he shot the guard through the hat, who announced in stentorian tones that he was a dead man, and left off his blunderbuss at the morning star. Meanwhile, the highwayman and Mirabel had closed and were wrestling in the mud, the ladies viewing the progress of the strife in a state of pleasing suppressed excitement, and the coachman flogging his horses with a view of driving off and leaving Mirabel and his antagonist to decide their interesting difference in solitude and peace. This genial intention was frustrated by the mud which held the coach fast and by the guard, who, mounting one of the leaders, succeeded in waking some watchmen, who, by way of performing their patrol between Kensington and Knightsbridge, were lying in graceful sleep at The Half-way Public House. They came upon the scene just as Mirabel was binding the highwayman’s hands behind his back, the man having yielded himself for worse when he felt eleven stone and a half kneeling on his chest and saw that the chestnut mare had run away. The watch now with great intrepidity took charge of the bound prisoner, helped the Exeter Fly out of the ditch, and Mirabel into the coach, who joined his companions in a somewhat mud-stained, flushed, and exhausted state, but not inwardly unpleased at what he had done.”

At the time, such stagecoach robberies were nearly a daily occurrence along that road.

The Half-way House

Half-way between Knightsbridge and Kensington (until it was demolished in 1846) a disreputable inn frequented by footpads and highwaymen. Needless to say, coachmen generally tended to scramble past it as quickly as possible rather than stopping for a pint.

The Half-way House

Index to all the posts in this series

2: The Bath Road: Littlecote and Wild William Darrell

4: The Bath Road: The Bear Inn at Devizes and the “Pictorial Chronicler of the Regency”

5: The Exeter Road: Flying Machines, Muddy Roads and Well-Mannered Highwaymen

6: The Exeter Road: A Foolish Coachman, a Dreadful Snowstorm and a Romance

7: The Exeter Road in 1823: A Myriad of Changes in Fifty Years

8: The Exeter Road: Basingstoke, Andover and Salisbury and the Events They Witnessed

9: The Exeter Road: The Weyhill Fair, Amesbury Abbey and the Extraordinary Duchess of Queensberry

10: The Exeter Road: Stonehenge, Dorchester and the Sad Story of the Monmouth Uprising

11: The Portsmouth Road: Royal Road or Road of Assassination?

12: The Brighton Road: “The Most Nearly Perfect, and Certainly the Most Fashionable of All”

13: The Dover Road: “Rich crowds of historical figures”

16: The Dover Road: William Clements, Gentleman Coachman

18: The York Road: Enfield Chase and the Gunpowder Treason Plot

19: The York Road: The Stamford Regent Faces the Peril of a Flood

22: The Holyhead Road: Three Notable Coaching Accidents

23: The Holyhead Road: Old Lal the Legless Man and His Extraordinary Flying Machine

24: The Holyhead Road: The Coachmen “More Celebrated Even Than the Most Celebrated of Their Rivals” (Part I)

25: The Holyhead Road: The Coachmen “More Celebrated Even Than the Most Celebrated of Their Rivals” (Part II)

26: Flying Machines and Waggons and What It Was Like To Travel in Them

1: The Bath Road: The (True) Legend of the Berkshire Lady

The Bath Road: The Bear Inn at Devizes and the “Pictorial Chronicler of the Regency”

Jul28

The following post is the fourth of a series based on information obtained from a fascinating book Susana recently obtained for research purposes. Coaching Days & Coaching Ways by W. Outram Tristram, first published in 1888, is chock full of commentary about travel and roads and social history told in an entertaining manner, along with a great many fabulous illustrations. A great find for anyone seriously interested in English history!

The Bear Inn

The Bear Inn (or Hotel) in Devizes was a popular stopping-off point for travelers headed for Bath. According to Mr. Tristram, author of Coaching Days & Coaching Ways, the Bear Inn was known for its fine stables. After Bath became a popular retreat for the wealthy elite, the roads also became targets for highwaymen, and many travelers abandoned the normal routes to take the one through Devizes. At its peak, the Bear was taking in up to 30 coaches a day.

Among its more prestigious guests were King George III and Queen Charlotte as well as the Duchess of Kent and Princess Victoria. In 1817, Queen Charlotte wrote that she had had an “elegant repast” at the Bear and that the landlord had put at her disposal “10 pairs of horses as fine as any were put to harness.”

Note: The Bear Hotel continues to be a hotel today. Rooms can be had for as little as 99 pounds. Click here for more information.

Miss Fanny Burney and Hester Thrale Make the Acquaintance of a Young Thomas Lawrence

Miss Fanny Burney

In April of 1780, Miss Fanny Burney, who later became a famous novelist (Evelina was published anonymously in 1778), was traveling to Bath with her friend and patron, Hester Thrale. While waiting for supper, the pair sat down to cards, but were soon interrupted by the sound of a pianoforte. Following the music, they found the musician to be “a very handsome girl with fine dark hair upon a finely-formed forehead”. Another girl welcomed them and found them chairs, and it was then that the visitors discovered that the girls were the daughters of the hostess of the inn. “Oh, what a surprise!”

“But though these pretty girls struck us much,” she writes, “the wonder of the family was yet to be produced. This was their brother, a most lovely boy of ten years of age, who seems to be not merely the wonder of their family, but of the times, for his astonishing skill at drawing. They protest he has never had any instruction, yet showed us some of his productions, that were really beautiful.”

Apparently, the father of the future Sir Thomas Lawrence was making good use of his son’s talents. Tristram says that:

Instead of offering lame excuses when the roast had gone wrong, or saying that a bad bottle of claret was simply “sick from a journey,” this original in the way of a host, used to simply to introduce his son to the malcontents, and in a moment where there had been disgust there was wonder. At the simple talisman, “Gentlemen, here’s my son; will you have him recite from the poets or take your portraits?” the most confirmed bald-headed grumbler ceased his monotonous drone, and the storm in the coffee-room fell before the smile of the young genius.

The Rise To Fame Of Sir Thomas Lawrence

Thomas Lawrence self-portrait in pastels

By the time the family moved to Bath soon after this encounter, young Thomas was supporting his family drawing portraits in pastel. Due to his talent, charm and good looks, Thomas became very popular about Bath society and was allowed to view private art collections. In 1787, at the age of not quite eighteen, he established a studio in London, settling his parents nearby. In 1788 he exhibited five portraits in pastel and one in oil. In 1789 he exhibited 13 portraits, mostly in oil, to critical acclaim. At age 20, he received his first royal commission, portraits of Queen Charlotte and Princess Amelia. After the death of Sir Joshua Reynolds in 1792, George III appointed him “painter-in-ordinary-to-his-majesty.” In 1794, he became a full member of the Royal Academy. He went on to paint many portraits of the elite, as well as important figures in the war with Napoleon, and even the Pope. In 1815 he was knighted, and in 1820 he became President of the Royal Academy.

Sir Thomas and the Siddons Sisters

Sally Siddons

Maria Siddons

Thomas fell in love with Sally Siddons, one of the daughters of the famous actress, Sarah Siddons. But then he fell in love with her sister Maria. But then he decided to go back with Sally. (Imagine the turmoil in that household!) But neither of the girls was healthy. Before Maria died in 1798, she got her sister to promise not to marry him. Sally did not, refusing to see him for the five years before she herself passed away.

Lawrence never married. His companions in later life were Elizabeth Croft (half-sister of Sir Richard Croft, the accoucheur who apparently botched the delivery of Princess Charlotte’s son and who committed suicide soon after) and Isabella Wolff, separated from her husband and whose son Herman may have been Lawrence’s.

Plagued With Financial Problems

One might expect that, with all the commissions pouring in and his prolific work ethic, Lawrence should be a wealthy man. On the contrary, he was constantly in debt, to the point where he seemed to be always on the brink of bankruptcy and had to be rescued by his friends, dying insolvent. Nobody is quite sure why this was, except for an assumption that he was unable to keep good accounts, and perhaps he was too generous with family and friends. He himself wrote:

“I have never been extravagant nor profligate in the use of money. Neither gaming, horses, curricles, expensive entertainments, nor secret sources of ruin from vulgar licentiousness have swept it from me.”

Legacy

The director of the National Portrait Gallery described Lawrence as “a huge figure. But a huge figure who we believe deserves a great deal more attention. He is one of the great painters of the last 250 years and one of the great stars of portraiture on a European stage.”

Queen Charlotte

George IV at his Coronation

Pinkie

Index to all the posts in this series

2: The Bath Road: Littlecote and Wild William Darrell

4: The Bath Road: The Bear Inn at Devizes and the “Pictorial Chronicler of the Regency”

5: The Exeter Road: Flying Machines, Muddy Roads and Well-Mannered Highwaymen

6: The Exeter Road: A Foolish Coachman, a Dreadful Snowstorm and a Romance

7: The Exeter Road in 1823: A Myriad of Changes in Fifty Years

8: The Exeter Road: Basingstoke, Andover and Salisbury and the Events They Witnessed

9: The Exeter Road: The Weyhill Fair, Amesbury Abbey and the Extraordinary Duchess of Queensberry

10: The Exeter Road: Stonehenge, Dorchester and the Sad Story of the Monmouth Uprising

11: The Portsmouth Road: Royal Road or Road of Assassination?

12: The Brighton Road: “The Most Nearly Perfect, and Certainly the Most Fashionable of All”

13: The Dover Road: “Rich crowds of historical figures”

16: The Dover Road: William Clements, Gentleman Coachman

18: The York Road: Enfield Chase and the Gunpowder Treason Plot

19: The York Road: The Stamford Regent Faces the Peril of a Flood

22: The Holyhead Road: Three Notable Coaching Accidents

23: The Holyhead Road: Old Lal the Legless Man and His Extraordinary Flying Machine

24: The Holyhead Road: The Coachmen “More Celebrated Even Than the Most Celebrated of Their Rivals” (Part I)

25: The Holyhead Road: The Coachmen “More Celebrated Even Than the Most Celebrated of Their Rivals” (Part II)

26: Flying Machines and Waggons and What It Was Like To Travel in Them

1: The Bath Road: The (True) Legend of the Berkshire Lady

The Bath Road: Littlecote and Wild William Darrell

Jul10

The following post is the second of a series based on information obtained from a fascinating book Susana recently obtained for research purposes. Coaching Days & Coaching Ways by W. Outram Tristram, first published in 1888, is chock full of commentary about travel and roads and social history told in an entertaining manner, along with a great many fabulous illustrations. A great find for anyone seriously interested in English history!

Littlecote House

Littlecote House, near Ramsbury, Wiltshire, was first a medieval mansion, built around 1290 by the de Calstone family. It fell into the hands of William Darrell in 1415 when he married Elizabeth de Calstone. The Tudor mansion was built in the mid-sixteenth century. Henry VIII courted his third wife Jane Seymour here; her grandmother was a Darrell. Elizabeth I, James I, Charles II and William of Orange stayed here.

Wild William Darrell (1539-89)

The last Darrell at Littlecote is best remembered for his contentiousness and scandals. His father having left Littlecote to his mistress, Mary Fortescue (who liked to call herself Lady Darrell), William set in motion a series of lawsuits to wrest it away from her. This was the first of countless lawsuits filed in his lifetime, which ended by draining him of his fortune and forcing him to mortgage or sell most of the 25 manors inherited from his father. Litigation with his mother’s family over one such manor lasted 20 years!

Not the sort of man you’d want as a neighbor!

Darrell was also known for his amorous exploits. The most famous was his affair with the wife of Sir Walter Hungerford, who was subsequently abandoned by her husband when she wrote this to Darrell:

“I, by the oath I have sworn upon the holy evangelist, do acknowledge that if Sir Walter Hungerford, my husband now living, do depart out of this life … I will take you to my husband.”

An Elizabethan Horror Story

Enjoy Mr. Tristram’s dramatic narration in Coaching Days & Coaching Ways:

The whole story would pass before us under a ghostly, shimmering, ghoul-like glamour: the midwife at Shefford, a village seven miles off, waked in the dead of night, with a promise of high pay for her office on condition that she should be blindfolded! the headlong ride through the wild weather behind the silent serving man! the arrival at a large house which was strange to her! the mounting of the long stairs, which the woman, shadowed already with some grim foreboding, counted carefully as she passed up them! the delivery in a gloomy, richly furnished room of a masked lady! the entrance of a tall man “of ferocious aspect”, who seized the newborn child, thrust it into the fire that was blazing on the hearth, ground it under his heavy boot till it was cinders! then the trembling departure of the pale spectator of the hideous scene, blindfolded as she had come, aghast, speechless, carrying a heavy bribe with her as the price of guilty silence, but carrying also a piece of the curtain which she had cut out of the bed—all this scene of horror how the author of The Dragon Volant would have described it for us! And all this horror is history!

The original deposition made on her death-bed by the midwife, whose name was Mrs. Barnes, and committed to writing by Mr. Bridges, magistrate of Great Shefford, is in existence to this day, and is proof beyond cavil. It is from this point that rumour begins. That rumour, backed in my opinion by damning circumstance, has for two hundred years connected the tragedy with Littlecote House and William Darrell, commonly called Wild Darrell, then its proprietor. It is alleged that the midwife’s depositions set justice on the murderer’s track, and that the fitting of the piece of curtain which Mrs. Barnes had taken away with her into a rent found in the curtain of the Haunted Room at Littlecote, marked the scene of the murder. Wild Darrell was tried for his life, it is said, but escaped by bribing the officers of the law with the reversion of his large estates. But—so runs the rumour—the memory of his crime pursued him. He was haunted by ghastly spectres which he tried to forget in wild excesses, but which no seas of claret would lay. Finally as he was riding recklessly down the steep downs, with the scene of his atrocity in sight, at headlong speed, the reins loose, his body swaying in the saddle, pale, wild-eyed, unkempt, the very picture of debauched and guilty recklessness, tearing from the Furies of the past, that past confronted him. The apparition of a babe burning in a flame barred his path. The horse reared violently at the supernatural sight. Darrell was violently thrown, and the wicked neck, which had escaped the halter by a bribe, was broken at last as it deserved to be.

…

Wild Darrell is remembered but as a name now, and as a name for all that is wicked. (Coaching Days & Coaching Ways, pp. 38-41)

Sir Walter Scott recounted this story in the notes to his narrative poem, Rokeby. (Free on Google, check out p. 400).

Littlecote House Hotel

Guess what? Not only can you visit Littlecote House, but you can stay overnight in the Tudor mansion, as Susana did recently at Chatsworth, Hever Castle, and Leeds Castle! Besides the house and gardens (and ghosts, perhaps?), there are remains of a Roman villa and a lovely mosaic as well. Check it out!

The Great Hall

The garden of Littlecote House Hotel in Wiltshire

The gardens

Roman mosaic

Ruins of Roman Villa

Index to all the posts in this series

2: The Bath Road: Littlecote and Wild William Darrell

4: The Bath Road: The Bear Inn at Devizes and the “Pictorial Chronicler of the Regency”

5: The Exeter Road: Flying Machines, Muddy Roads and Well-Mannered Highwaymen

6: The Exeter Road: A Foolish Coachman, a Dreadful Snowstorm and a Romance

7: The Exeter Road in 1823: A Myriad of Changes in Fifty Years

8: The Exeter Road: Basingstoke, Andover and Salisbury and the Events They Witnessed

9: The Exeter Road: The Weyhill Fair, Amesbury Abbey and the Extraordinary Duchess of Queensberry

10: The Exeter Road: Stonehenge, Dorchester and the Sad Story of the Monmouth Uprising

11: The Portsmouth Road: Royal Road or Road of Assassination?

12: The Brighton Road: “The Most Nearly Perfect, and Certainly the Most Fashionable of All”

13: The Dover Road: “Rich crowds of historical figures”

16: The Dover Road: William Clements, Gentleman Coachman

18: The York Road: Enfield Chase and the Gunpowder Treason Plot

19: The York Road: The Stamford Regent Faces the Peril of a Flood

22: The Holyhead Road: Three Notable Coaching Accidents

23: The Holyhead Road: Old Lal the Legless Man and His Extraordinary Flying Machine

24: The Holyhead Road: The Coachmen “More Celebrated Even Than the Most Celebrated of Their Rivals” (Part I)

25: The Holyhead Road: The Coachmen “More Celebrated Even Than the Most Celebrated of Their Rivals” (Part II)

26: Flying Machines and Waggons and What It Was Like To Travel in Them