The Bath Road - free ebook by Charles G. (Charles George) Harper

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The Bath Road

Charles G. (Charles George) Harper

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THE BATH ROAD

THE BATH ROAD

WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR. THE BRIGHTON ROAD: Old Times and New on a Classic Highway. THE PORTSMOUTH ROAD, and its Tributaries, To-day, and in Days of Old. THE DOVER ROAD: Annals of an Ancient Turnpike. THE EXETER ROAD: The Story of the West of England Highway. [ In the Press. GEORGE THE THIRD TRAVELLING FROM WINDSOR TO LONDON, 1806. ( After R. B. Davis. ) The BATH ROAD HISTORY, FASHION, &amp; FRIVOLITY ON AN OLD HIGHWAY By CHARLES G. HARPER Author of “The Brighton Road,” “The Portsmouth Ro

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I

I

The great main roads of England have each their especial and unmistakeable character, not only in the nature of the scenery through which they run, but also in their story and in the memories which cling about them. The history of the Brighton Road is an epitome of all that was dashing and dare-devil in the times of the Regency and the reign of George the Fourth; the Portsmouth Road is sea-salty and blood-boltered with horrid tales of smuggling days, almost to the exclusion of every other imagin

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II

II

The history of travelling, from the Creation to the present time, may be divided into four periods—those of no coaches, slow coaches, fast coaches, and railways. The “no-coach” period is a lengthy one, stretching, in fact, from the beginning of things, through the ages, down to the days of the Romans, and so on to the era when pack-horses conveyed travellers and goods along the uncertain tracks, which in the Middle Ages were all that remained of the highways built by that masterful race. The “sl

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III

III

Our forefathers of the coaching age were properly pious. Desirous, when they travelled, of a “happy issue out of all their afflictions,” as the Prayer-book has it—which in their case included such varied troubles as highwaymen’s attacks, being upset, or finding themselves snowed up, with the extreme likelihood in winter-time of being severely frostbitten—they made their wills, and fervently committed themselves to the protection of Providence before starting and putting themselves in the care of

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IV

IV

One of the most striking differences between the coaching age and these railway times lies in the altered relations between passenger and driver. No railway passenger ever thinks of the man who drives the engine. He, in fact, rarely sees him. The coachman, on the other hand, was very much in evidence, and was not only seen, but expected to be “remembered” as well. And “remembered” the old coachmen were, too: for half a crown each to driver and guard was the least one could do in those times. How

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V

V

A very swagger stage-coach, the “York House,” was started between Bath and London in 1815, followed by a rival, the “Beaufort Hunt.” The first-named started from the “York House Hotel” at Bath; the “Beaufort Hunt” from the “White Lion.” Both were fast day coaches; and, perhaps because of racing, the “Beaufort Hunt” was upset twice in a fortnight, soon after it had been put on the road. It was a sporting age, but not so sporting that passengers were prepared to risk life and limb in taking part i

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VI

VI

The Bath Road is measured from Hyde Park Corner, and is a hundred and five miles and six furlongs in length. The reasons for this being reckoned as the starting-point of this great highway are found in the fact that when coaches were in their prime, Hyde Park Corner was at the very western verge of London. Early in the eighteenth century Londoners would have considered it in the country; and, indeed, the turnpike gate which until 1721 crossed Piccadilly, opposite Berkeley Street, gave a quasi-of

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VII

VII

Let us see what kind of entrance to London this was in olden times. In Queen Mary’s day the idea of a road leading so far as Bath seems to have been considered too fantastic for common use, and this was accordingly known as the “waye to Reading.” In that reign, which was so reactionary that many were discontented with it, and roused up armed rebellions, the rebel Sir Thomas Wyatt brought his men thus far, having crossed the Thames at Kingston and struggled through the awful sloughs between that

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VIII

VIII

KENSINGTON HIGH STREET, SUMMER SUNSET. It may be as well to put on record in this place the Kensington of my own recollection. My reminiscences of Kensington by no means go so far back as the time when Leigh Hunt wrote his “Old Court Suburb,” a book which described what was then a village “near London;” but when I first knew that now bustling place it was, if not exactly to be described as rural, certainly by no stretch of imagination to be called urban. In those days the great shops, which

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IX

IX

The “Red Cow,” pulled down December, 1897, rejoiced once upon a time in the reputation of being a house of call for the peculiar gentry who infested the suburban reaches of the great western highways out of London. It was not by any means the resort of the aristocracy of the profession of highway robbery; but a place where the cly-fakers, the footpads, and the lower strata of thievery foregathered to learn the movements of travellers and retail them to the fine gentlemen who, mounted on the best

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X

X

Reminiscences are soon accumulated in these times. It needs not for the Londoner to be in the sere and yellow leaf for him to have known many and sweeping changes in the pleasant suburbs which used to bring the country to his doors, and the scent of the hawthorn through his open window with every recurring spring. For myself, I am not a lean and slippered pantaloon, on whose head the snows of many winters have fallen. The crow’s-feet have not yet gathered around the corners of my eyes; and yet I

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XI

XI

There are changes impending not far from here. Who that knows Kew Bridge has not an affection for that hump-backed old structure, although it presents many difficulties to the rider? Kew Bridge is doomed, and the powers that be are going to pull it down and build another in its stead—and one, it is almost unnecessary to add, not at all picturesque. Farewell, then, to the suburban delights of Kew. They are going to “improve” the river at Kew also—that river where, in summer time, the steamers get

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XII

XII

We will now press on to the Heath, for our friends the highwaymen are anxiously awaiting us. Right away from the seventeenth century this spot bore a bad repute, when one of the most daring exploits was performed on its gloomy expanse. This was no less a feat than the plundering of that warlike general, Fairfax, by Moll Cutpurse. The most capable soldier of the age robbed by a woman highwayman, if you will be pleased to excuse the Irishry of the expression! But, indeed, the Roaring Girl, as her

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XIII

XIII

One of the most diverting stories of Hounslow Heath, which serves to relieve its sombre repute, is that which the late Mr. James Payn tells, in one of his reminiscences. “The story goes,” he says, “that early in the century the landlord of Skindle’s, at Maidenhead, was a strong Radical, and could command a dozen votes; but his prosperity had a sad drawback in the person of his son, a good-for-naught. During a certain Berkshire election, a Tory solicitor was staying at this inn, and had occasion

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XIV

XIV

It is just beyond Cranford Bridge that the pumps which are so odd a feature of the Bath Road begin. They line the highway on the left-hand side going from London, and are all situated in the same position as shown in the illustration. They are of uniform pattern, and are placed at regular intervals. These pumps are relics of the coaching age, but are peculiar to the Bath and some stretches of the Exeter roads. Placed here for keeping the highway well watered in the old days of road-travel, they

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XV

XV

The times of the highwaymen are, fortunately for the wayfarer, if unhappily for romance, long since past, and many of the once-notorious haunts of Sixteen-string Jack, Claude du Vall, Dick Turpin, and their less-famed companions have disappeared before the ravages of time and the much more destructive onslaughts of the builder. A hundred years ago it would have been difficult to name a lonely suburban inn that was not more or less favoured and frequented by the “Knights of the Road.” Nowadays th

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XVI

XVI

Just before reaching the roadside hamlet of Longford, fifteen miles from Hyde Park Corner, a lane leads on the right hand to Harmondsworth, a short mile distant across the wide flat cabbage and potato fields. “Harm’sworth,” as the rustics call it, is mentioned in Domesday Book, under the name of “Hermondesworde;” that is to say, Hermonde’s sworth or sward, the pasture-land of some forgotten Hermonde. Few ever turn aside from the dusty high-road to visit this old-fashioned village, rich in old ti

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XVII

XVII

The long stretches of the Bath Road between this and Slough are nowadays enlivened by few incidents or interesting places, although during the last century, and well on into this, the highway was lively enough with Royalties and their escorts, journeying between Windsor and St. James’s. The route taken on these occasions was generally through Datchet, and so on to the Bath Road just here. An old print of this period shows us how George the Third used to travel on this road to London, or to the u

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XVIII

XVIII

It requires the specialized knowledge of a district surveyor to determine where Slough ends and Salt Hill begins, although probably it would be a shrewd guess to say that the roads which cross the Bath Road in the midst of Slough, and go respectively left and right to Windsor and Stoke Poges, form the dividing line. For all practical purposes, however, the places are one. Salt Hill has decayed, rather than grown, while the town of Slough (unlovely name!) is almost wholly a creation of the railwa

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XIX

XIX

It will not surprise those who are acquainted with the history of Bath, and the crowds of rich travellers who travelled thither, to learn that Hounslow Heath had not long been left behind before another highwayman’s territory was entered upon. This stretched roughly from Salt Hill, on the east, to Maidenhead Thicket, on the west. It would, of course, have been ill gleaning after the harvest had been reaped by the pick of the profession on the Heath, and, as a matter of fact, the gangs who infest

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XX

XX

And now for the plain, unvarnished narrative of one who travelled these roads a century ago. When that simple-minded German, Pastor Moritz, who visited England towards the close of last century, grew tired of London, he determined, he says, to visit Derbyshire; and, making the necessary preparations for his excursion, set out on June 21, 1782, for Richmond, though why he should have gone to Richmond en route for Derbyshire is difficult to understand. He took with him four guineas, some linen, an

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XXI

XXI

A fine broad gravel stretch of highway is that which, on leaving Salt Hill, takes us gently down in the direction of the Thames, which the Bath Road crosses, over Maidenhead Bridge. The distance is four miles, with no villages, and but few scattered houses, on the way. Two miles and one mile respectively before the Bridge is reached are the wayside inns, called “Two Mile Brook” and “One Mile House.” Near this last is the beautiful grouping of roadside elms, sketched in the accompanying illustrat

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XXII

XXII

The “Bear” was the principal inn at Maidenhead in the coaching era, and owed much of its prosperity to the unwillingness of travellers who carried considerable sums of money with them to cross Maidenhead Thicket at night. They slept peacefully at the “Bear,” and resumed the roads in the morning, when the highwaymen were in hiding. Maidenhead Thicket is really a long avenue lining the highway two miles from that town. It is a beautiful and romantic place, but its beauties were not apparent to tra

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XXIII

XXIII

“The run to Reading,” I learn from a cycling paper, “constitutes a pleasant morning’s spin from London.” I should like to call up one of our great-grandfathers who travelled these thirty-nine miles painfully by coach, and read that paragraph to him. Reading numbers over 60,000 inhabitants, and is rapidly adding to them. This prosperity proceeds from several causes, Reading being— “’Mongst other things, so widely known, For biscuits, seeds, and sauce.” The town, of course, stands for biscuits in

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XXIV

XXIV

The Bath Road climbs, with some show of steepness, out of Reading, presently to enter upon that stretch of nearly seventeen miles of comparatively flat sandy gravel road which, for speed cycling, is the best part of the whole journey. The surface is nearly always splendid, save in very dry seasons, when the sand renders the going somewhat heavy, and the cyclist may well be surprised to learn that it was here, between Reading and Newbury, that Pepys and his wife, travelling in their own coach, lo

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XXV

XXV

Newbury, the “hated rival,” is three miles down the road. Within a mile of it in coaching times, but now not to be distinguished from the town itself, is Speenhamland, the site of that famous coaching inn, the “Pelican,” whose charges were of so monumental a character that Quin has immortalized them in the lines:— “The famous inn at Speenhamland, That stands beneath the hill, May well be called the Pelican, From its enormous bill.” Alas! how are the mighty fallen! The Pelican is no longer an inn

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XXVI

XXVI

In 1531, and again in 1556, Newbury was the scene of martyrdoms; and in 1643 and 1644 the site of two battles between Charles and his Parliament, both almost equally indecisive, and both remarkable for desperate courage on either side. The first battle was fought to the south of the town on September 18, and was the culmination of a Royalist attack upon the Parliamentary army under the Earl of Essex, on the march from Gloucester to London. Essex had designed to lie at Newbury, the town being str

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XXVII

XXVII

The Second Battle of Newbury was fought on Sunday, October 27, 1644. The thickest part of it raged round Speen, on the Bath Road, and in the gardens of Shaw House. This house, one of the finest mansions in Berkshire, was built by Thomas Dolman, clothier, in 1581. He was evidently something of a scholar, and worldly wise as well, for he knew that his riches and his grand mansion would rouse envious talk. Accordingly he caused Latin and Greek inscriptions to be carved over the entrance, which, Eng

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XXVIII

XXVIII

It is at Hungerford, sixty-four miles from Hyde Park Corner, that one leaves Berkshire and enters Wilts, coming into wilder and less pastoral country. Hungerford town, however, is just within the Berkshire borders. The constant Kennet flows across the road here, and is crossed by a substantial bridge, from whose parapets anglers may be seen patiently waiting to lure the wily trout from their swims. Fuller quaintly says: “Good and great trouts are found in the river of Kennet nigh Hungerford; the

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XXIX

XXIX

From the everyday respectable dulness of Hungerford itself we will pass to the exciting scandals which make up much of the story of Littlecote, that gloomy and romantic Tudor mansion, which has become famous (or infamous, if you will have it so) through the crimes and debaucheries of Will Darell. There are two ways of reaching Littlecote from the Bath Road. The most obvious way is by turning to the right when in the midst of Hungerford town; the other, which is the more rural, is by a lane a mil

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XXX

XXX

Littlecote had not done with stirring scenes when Darell was dead and the Pophams took possession. The Great Hall, hung round with pikes, leather jerkins, helmets, and cuirasses of Cromwellian times, serves to tell, in its warlike array, of how the place became a rendezvous of the Roundheads of this vicinity. These relics are the arms and accoutrements of the Popham Horse, raised by Colonel Alexander Popham, whose own suit of armour is still suspended here, over one of the doorways. A fitting pl

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XXXI

XXXI

But to return to the road, which presently comes to the charming village of Froxfield, with its wide village green and great red-brick barracks of almshouses, founded in 1686 by Sarah, Duchess of Somerset, for fifty clergymen’s widows, and perched up on a bank above the right-hand side of the highway. Thence, nearly all the way into Marlborough, seven miles ahead, the road lies through Savernake Forest and its outskirts, passing the loveliest forest scenery in England. Nothing can compare for ma

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XXXII

XXXII

There are fine old inns at Marlborough; coaching inns, fallen from the high estate that was theirs in the days when Pepys and Sheridan, my Lord Chatham with his gout and his innumerable train of servants, and Horace Walpole with his gimcrackery and his caustic comments upon the kind of society in which he found himself upon the Bath Road, stayed here. No one comes here nowadays with vast retinues of lackeys, and the man does not exist, be he Peer or Commoner, who could dare be so offensive as th

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XXXIII

XXXIII

When the traveller leaves Marlborough he bids good-bye, for many miles yet to come, to the pleasant forest groves, the rich, low-lying pastures, and the fishful streams that have bordered the road hitherto. The valley of the Kennet is, it is true, near by, and for the next six miles it may be glimpsed, on the left, like some Promised Land of Plenty; but the road itself is bare. The “green pastures and still waters” of the Psalmist, indeed, you think when mounting gradually out of Marlborough you

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XXXIV

XXXIV

The road between Newbury and Bath was in coaching days known as the “lower ground.” So far as physical geography goes, however, the land is a great deal higher, and much more hilly than the “upper ground” between London and Newbury, and it is not to be wondered at that accidents would sometimes happen here. This, then, was the scene of an accident to a coach driven by a gay young blade, one “Jack Everett;” an accident in which he and an elderly lady passenger had a broken leg each. Both sufferer

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XXXV

XXXV

Calne (whose name be pleased to pronounce “Carne”) is not a pleasing place. Once the seat of a cloth-making industry, it has seen its trade utterly decay, and is only now regaining something of its commerce in the very different staple of bacon-curing. One does not contemn Calne on account of its misfortunes, but it must always have been a slipshod place. “Calne,” according to Hartley Coleridge, who described his father’s three years’ residence there, “is not a very pretty place. The soil is cla

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XXXVI

XXXVI

Rowden Hill, a mile out of Chippenham, on the road to Bath, is a welcome drop down into level land again, and would be enjoyable were it not for the bad surface. It is while wheeling such hills and such road-metal that one appreciates at the full the pluck and endurance of those early cyclists who raced across them in the early seventies, making the pace on the high bicycles of those times as gallantly as though the terrible jolting they experienced was really enjoyable. That well-known body of

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XXXVII

XXXVII

And now we come, past the tree-shaded hamlet of Cross Keys, to Pickwick, ninety-seven miles from London, situated at a turning in the road which leads to Corsham Regis, half a mile distant, on the left hand. The traveller, exploring this road for the first time, looks forward with curiosity to seeing a place with so famous a name; but Pickwick, the decayed coaching hamlet, can scarcely be said to “live up to” its literary associations. Strictly speaking, it is not even decayed; but, now that the

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XXXVIII

XXXVIII

From Corsham the old road used to lead precipitously up to the summit of Box Hill and thence downwards by breakneck gullies, furrowed by rains, and rich in loose stones, into Box. The modern highway goes modestly round the shoulder of the hill. The village of Box has gained an adventitious fame from the celebrated tunnel on the Great Western Railway, which pierces Box Hill, and was, upon its completion, the longest tunnel in England. Compared with later works, it sinks into quite minor importanc

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XXXIX

XXXIX

The story of Bath goes back some two thousand years, and has its origin in the myths of ages, in which Bladud figures variously as discoverer and creator of the healing springs. Serious historians are wont to exclude Bladud, and his descent from Brute the Trojan, and Lud Hudibras, the British King, from their pages, for the reason that Geoffrey of Monmouth, the monkish chronicler, who first narrates these stories in his history of Britain, was apt sometimes to confound chronicling with romancing

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XL

XL

They say that Nash “made” Bath. That, however, is but partly true. Bath was beginning to make its way when he appeared, and he simply exploited the place. The Moment had come and brought the Man with it, and a tight grip he retained over all fashionable functions for over fifty years. He warred with the high-class rowdies who would have made the place a resort of Mohocks, and elevated “Bath manners” into a school of conduct perfectly well known and imitated, at a distance, in other parts of the

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XLI

XLI

Among this careless throng there were a few men of will and purpose. Ralph Allen; the two Woods, father and son, architects; and, somewhat later than them, John Palmer, were bold spirits who changed the aspect of Bath and helped to revolutionize the communications of the country. One of the greatest historical figures of Bath—perhaps even the greatest figure of all—before whom Bladud, Prince of Britain, at one end of the historic period, and Beau Nash at the other, sink into something like insig

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XLII

XLII

But to return to the Beau, who seems to represent Bath more fully than any other person connected with its history. In his old age Nash fell upon evil times. Ruined by his own folly and extravagance, he had no opportunities of retrieving the position, for he had lived to see the friends of his more fortunate era pass away, and to witness the arrival of a younger generation which regarded his laws with indifference, if not with open contempt. His last years were eked out with the aid of a pittanc

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XLIII

XLIII

What, however, of the literary celebrities, visitors or residents, or of the statesmen, the naval and military commanders, who were frequenting Bath at the time when that jaundiced criticism was penned. Dr. Johnson was then taking the waters, which are said by a later authority to taste of “warm smoothin’-irons;” Gainsborough alternately painted and bathed; while the Earl of Chatham and his still greater son; Nelson, Wolfe, Sheridan, and Goldsmith, Wordsworth, Southey, Jane Austin, and Landor, h

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XLIV

XLIV

The advertisement columns of a paper just over a century old often afford amusement to those who come upon them. The manners and customs of those times and these are so different that the very quaintness of our forefathers’ attitude of mind brings a smile upon our faces, although those eighteenth-century forbears of ours were really very serious people indeed, and took life, for the most part, like a dose of medicine, while we are apt to go to the other extreme and take it like champagne. No dou

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XLV

XLV

The Abbey is the very centre of Bath. Round it cluster the Municipal Offices, the Baths, and the Pump Room, and along the broad pavements invalids are drawn in Bath chairs—one of the five articles with which the name of the City is indissolubly linked. When Bath chairs, Bath chaps, Bath stone, and Bath buns are no longer so distinguished, then will come the final crash. One need not insist so greatly upon Bath Olivers, because they are not in every one’s mouth, either literally or figuratively;

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XLVI

XLVI

Bath entered upon a dead period about 1820. For a long while the newer and more easily reached glories of Brighton had taken the mere fashionables away, and even the waters were less favoured. Continental wars had ceased, and unpatriotic Britons flocked to foreign spas instead; Bath looking idly on and letting its customers go. THE ROMAN BATH, RESTORED. It was some ten years later that Dickens visited Bath. From what he saw there he drew his portraits of place and persons in the “Pickwick Pape

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