The Holyhead Road: The Mail-Coach Road To Dublin. - free ebook by Charles G. (Charles George) Harper

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The Holyhead Road: The Mail-Coach Road To Dublin.

Charles G. (Charles George) Harper

107 chapters

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107 chapters

Preface

Preface

“The olden days of travelling, now to return no more, in which distance could not be vanquished without toil ”— those are the days mourned by Ruskin, who had little better acquaintance with them than afforded by his childish journeys, when his father, a prosperous wine-merchant, travelled the country in a carriage with a certain degree of style. Regrets are, under such circumstances, easily to be understood, just as were those of the old coach-proprietors, innkeepers, coachmen, postboys, and all

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I

I

“Peace hath its victories, no less renowned than war;” and there is nothing more remarkable than the engineering triumphs that land the Irish Member of Parliament, fresh from the Division Lobby at Westminster, at North Wall, Dublin, spouting treason, in nine hours and a quarter, or bring the Irish peasant, with the reek of the peat-smoke still in his clothes, and the mud of his native bogs not yet dried on his boots, to Euston in the same space of time. But a hundred years ago, when the peaceful

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II

II

The question, “How far to Holyhead?” had in old days been a difficult one to answer. It was not only in the uncertainty and variety of routes that the difficulty of accurately measuring the number of miles lay, but in the wild and conflicting ideas as to what really constituted a mile. This uncertainty lasted until the middle of the eighteenth century, when the first milestones since the days of the Romans were erected. It was, in fact, not before 1750, when, as part of their statutory obligatio

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III

III

The earliest coaches made no pretence of taking the traveller to Holyhead. Chester was the ultima thule of wheeled conveyance when Sir William Dugdale and Pennant kept diaries, or when Swift wrote. We have already seen that the Chester stage took six days, and therefore the horrors of the journey described by Swift about the year 1700, were protracted as well as acute. Whether or not he ever really made the journey by coach is uncertain, but if so, he certainly for ever after rode horseback. But

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IV

IV

Meanwhile, stage-coaching had also been revolutionised. The growth of Birmingham and the great commercial industries of the Midlands had rendered the old methods too slow and cumbrous; and the ancient coaches, supported on leather straps, and with curtained windows, starting once, twice or thrice a week, according to distance travelled, performing their slow and toilsome pilgrimages by daylight and resting at sundown, gave place to the well-appointed vehicles, hung on steel springs, and with gla

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V

V

Such were the conditions of coaching when rumours of a projected London and Birmingham Railway began to be noised about in 1825, and then in 1830. “London and Birmingham” that railway was first named, although, if the original project be closely followed, it will be seen that not London, but Birmingham, took the initiative. London has ever lagged in the rear. When the early Birmingham, Shrewsbury, and Chester coaches plied between those towns and the metropolis, it was not from London that they

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VI

VI

The Holyhead and the Great North Roads are identical as far as Barnet, and the first landmark on the way is the “Angel.” Every one knows the “Angel,” Islington. It is a great deal more than a public-house, and has attained the dignity of a geographical expression. Any teetotaller can afford to know the “Angel,” and the acquaintance is no more a stigma than an intimacy with the English Channel or the North Foreland. Five roads meet at this spot—for seventy years or so the meeting and starting poi

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VII

VII

It is curious to look upon an old print like that of the Archway road and its toll-gate, reproduced here, and then, with a knowledge of that busy spot, with its thronging omnibuses and tramcars, to compare the old view with the present-day aspect of the place. An Archway Tavern is seen standing at the junction of the roads, but it is quite unlike the flaunting gin-palace of to-day. What, also, has become of the horse and cattle pond in front? The toll-gate, we know, finally disappeared in 1876,

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VIII

VIII

The roadway of Highgate Archway is on a level with the cross upon the dome of St. Paul’s. From what the perfervid preachers of our own time—the Solomon Eagles of our day—call that “sink of iniquity,” the voice of London, inarticulate, like the growl of a fierce beast, rises continually, save for some sleepy hours between midnight and the dawn. Frank Osbaldistone, in Rob Roy , journeying north, heard the hum of London die away on his ear when he reached Highgate, the distant peal of her steeples

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IX

IX

Barnet lies two miles ahead, crowning a ridge. Between this point and that town the road goes sharply down Prickler’s Hill, and, passing under a railway bridge, climbs upwards again, along an embanked road that, steep though it be, takes the place of a very much steeper roadway. It was constructed between 1823 and 1827, as a part of the general remodelling of the Holyhead Road. The deserted old way, now leading no-whither, may be seen meandering off to the left, immediately past the railway brid

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X

X

On the crest of the steep ascent we come to Barnet, crowning its “monticulus, or little hill,” as the county historian has it. With the town we have already made some acquaintance, in the pages of the “ Great North Road .” It stands too well within the suburban radius of London for it to escape modern influences, and although, as Dickens said, in Oliver Twist , every other house was a tavern, inns are fewer nowadays and shops more numerous; and many of the surviving inns have been rebuilt. The o

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XI

XI

The modern Holyhead Road, made in the Twenties is seen midway in Barnet, branching off to the left by what remains of the once-famous “Green Man.” Broad and well-engineered though it be, it has little of interest in the three miles between here and South Mimms; its sole features, indeed, being a fine view of Wrotham Park, to the right, and a glimpse of the gateway of Dyrham Park, on the left. It can scarce be said that that heavy stone entrance—a classic arch flanked by Tuscan columns—is beautif

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XII

XII

One shudders to think what would become of railway directors and shareholders if the old Law of Deodand were still in existence. It was an ancient enactment, going back to the days of the Saxon kings, by which the object causing the death of a person was forfeited for the benefit of his representatives. At least, that was originally the humane intention of the law, which then really represented the etymology of its name, making it a God-given compensation. Sometimes the death-dealing object was

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XIII

XIII

The old road regains Telford’s Holyhead Road of the Twenties a little distance short of South Mimms, close by where the cast-iron plate of the old milestone proclaims “Barnett” to be three miles distant. It crosses the broad highway at an acute angle and goes in an ascent, and with many curves behind the village; descending again and almost returning upon itself through the village street, as though a circuitous course and the mounting of every hill were things greatly to be desired by traveller

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XIV

XIV

The Holyhead Road goes broad and straight, and with a long perspective of dust-clouds and telegraph-poles, up Ridge Hill, where the borders of Middlesex are crossed and Hertfordshire entered; but the old way, after passing the “White Hart,” crosses to the right hand and climbs up by itself as a deserted track. Near the hill-top it crosses again, and so descends on the left hand towards St. Albans. It is quite a narrow way, measuring at the most twelve feet across, against the average twenty feet

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XV

XV

We must penetrate very deeply into the past to reach the event that gave the City and Cathedral of St. Alban their name. So dim have records and traditions become, by reason of lapse of time, that it is not quite certain whether the year A.D. 285 or A.D. 305 witnessed the martyrdom of that saint. By all accounts it would seem that the proto-martyr of Britain was a citizen of Verulamium, and a pagan, when the Diocletian persecution of Christians broke out; but a strange thing happened to turn him

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XVI

XVI

The old entrance by Holywell Hill is the most charming part of St. Albans, with fine old red-brick mansions and old inns where the coaches and the post-chaises used to come. Many of the inns are either mere shadows of their former selves, or have been entirely altered to other uses, but their coach-entrances and yards remain to toll of what they once were. There stands a building now a girls’ school, but once the “Old Crown,” and close by the “White Hart,” with “Saracen’s Head Yard” beyond, but

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XVII

XVII

We often read in romances of the villainous innkeepers of long ago, who were in league with highwaymen, and we generally put those stories down as rather wild and far-fetched illustrations of a bygone age. But there were many such innkeepers in the old road-faring times, and they were the highwaymen’s best sources of information. Such an one was the host of an inn at St. Albans, who in 1718 was associated with Tom Garrett and another “road agent” working the highway between St. Albans and London

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XVIII

XVIII

Leaving the city of St. Alban, the river Ver is crossed at Prae House, and continues companionable as far as Redbourne, where it disappears in another direction, in deference to the rise on which Redbourne is built. That old coaching village is a veritable jewel of quaintness in the Queen Anne and Georgian sort. Red-brick houses of those reigns, and wayside hostelries with elaborate signs of wrought iron that seem to await the coming of the coaches again, are the chief of Redbourne’s architectur

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XIX

XIX

Who shall say certainly how or when the phrase “Downright Dunstahle” first arose, or what it originally meant. Not the present historian, who merely sucks his wisdom from local legends as he goes. And when it happens, as not infrequently is the case, they have no agreement, but lead the questing toiler after truth into culs-de-sac of falsehoods and blind-alleys and mazes of contradictions, the labour were surely as profitless as the mediæval search for the Philosopher’s Stone. Briefly, then, “Do

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XX

XX

From Dunstable the road enters a deep chalk cutting through the Downs—similar to, but not so great a work as, the chalky gash through Butser Hill, on the Portsmouth Road. In this mile-length of cutting the traveller stews on still summer days, blinded by the chalky glare; or, when it blows great autumnal guns and snow-laden winter gales, whistling and roaring through this exposed gullet with the sound of a railway train, freezes to his very marrow. Before this cutting was made, and the “spoil” f

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XXI

XXI

“A dirty way leads you to Hockley, alias Hockley-in-the-Hole,” said Ogilby, in 1675; and it seems to have gradually become worse during the next few years, for Celia Fiennes, confiding her adventures to her diary, about 1695, tells of “seven mile over a sad road. Called Hockley in y e Hole, as full of deep slows in y e winter it must be Empasable.” It received, in fact, all the surface-water draining from Dunstable Downs to the south and Brickhills to the north. It is not, however, until he has

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XXII

XXII

The red-brick face of the “White Horse” is set off and embellished by a very wealth of elaborate old Renaissance wood-carving that decorates the coach-entrance. It was obviously never intended for its present position, and is said to have come from an old manor-house at Chalgrave, demolished many years ago. Long exposure to the weather and generations of neglect have wrought sad havoc with this old work. A fragment in the kitchen gives the date 1566, and some strips under the archway, with the i

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XXIII

XXIII

A long and steep descent into the valley of the Ouse conducts from Little Brickhill into Fenny Stratford, seen in the distance, its roofs glimmering redly amid foliage. The river, a canal, and the low-lying flats illustrate very eloquently the “fenny” adjective in the place-name, and it is in truth a very amphibious, bargee, wharfingery, and mudlarky little town. Agriculture and canal-life mix oddly here. Wharves, the “Navigation” inn, and hunchbacked canal-bridges admit into the town; and the l

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XXIV

XXIV

Stony Stratford, a hundred years ago “principally inhabited by lace-makers, with women and children at almost every door, industriously employed in this manufacture,” is now perhaps best known for the famous non sequitur associated with it. “You may well call it Stony Stratford,” said the tormented traveller, “I was never so bitten with fleas in my life!” It would be ill questing among the old inns of “Stony” to discover which of them could claim the doubtful honour of giving rise to that ancien

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XXV

XXV

From “Stony’s” mild annals the two fires that in 1736 and 1742 destroyed great parts of the town stand forth with appropriate luridity. The second was the more destructive, and was caused by the carelessness of a servant, who accidentally set some sheets ablaze. The flaming linen, alighting on a thatched roof, brought about, not only the destruction of many houses, but also of one of the two churches. The tower, the sole relic of that unfortunate building, yet remains in the rear of the High Str

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XXVI

XXVI

Where the park-wall of Easton Neston ends, Towcester—“ vulgo Tosseter,” as Ogilby says, on the Towe, and once the Lactodorum of the Romans—begins. It is not the best of beginnings, or one calculated to favourably impress the stranger with the town. On the left hand rises a terrace of dingy brick houses, whose age is certified by the inscription, “Jubilee Row, 1809”; their height masked by the raising of the road in front, in Telford’s improvements of 1820, their social status evident in the noti

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XXVII

XXVII

We shall not be far wrong if we identify Towcester with the town at which the coach with Tom Brown on board stopped for breakfast, and the “well-known sporting house,” famous for its breakfasts, with the “Saracen’s Head.” A half-past seven breakfast, in a low, dark, wainscoted room, hung with sporting prints; a blazing fire, and a card of hunting fixtures stuck in the mantel-glass. Twenty minutes for breakfast, with such a spread as pigeon-pie, ham, cold boiled beef, kidneys and steak, bacon and

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XXVIII

XXVIII

One mile from Weedon and half-way down Stowe Hill, a broad vale opens to the view, the London and North-Western Railway shooting out below from Stowe Hill Tunnel, with the Grand Junction Canal and the river Nen in close company. Weedon Beck is seen while yet a great way off, its neighbourhood fixed by an immense ugly block of yellow brick buildings on a distant hillside. Nearing the place, these are found to be the officers’ quarters of Weedon Barracks; but before that fact is ascertained the st

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XXIX

XXIX

No wild geese, according to an ancient fable, ever again spoiled the cornfields of Weedon after they had once been banished by the miraculously successful prayers of the Princess Werburgh, a holy daughter of Wulfere, King of Mercia, somewhere about A.D. 780. That pious lady, afterwards raised to the hierarchy of saints, was abbess of a religious house here. Her steward assembled the birds: the abbess commanded them to depart, and they immediately took wing, but refused to leave the neighbourhood

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XXX

XXX

It is this stretch of 75¼ miles that will now be explored. Bid farewell, traveller who would trace the Roman way, to the company of your fellow-men, for this is no frequented route, and towns and villages are few along its course. It begins by climbing out of Weedon and up to a gate, where those who will may trace it across a field. For those others who will not, an ancient divergence, forming a kind of elbow, preserves the continuity of roadway and brings the route over the Grand Junction Canal

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XXXI

XXXI

HIGH CROSS MONUMENT. High Cross is among the oddest and most perplexing of places. A multiplicity of roads and sign-posts are gathered together on the hill-top and the traveller, bedevilled with their number, and the shrubberies and the farmyards that mask them, is fain to halt and unravel the tangled skein. The Watling Street here slightly changes direction, so that its continuation to Atherstone, ten miles distant, is hidden round an angle. Other roads all round the compass lead, according to

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XXXII

XXXII

Beyond Caldecote comes Mancetter—the Roman Manduessedum—on the Warwickshire side, and Witherley, in Leicestershire. Between the two, an earthwork named “Castle Bank,” a rectangle measuring six hundred by four hundred feet, seems to have been the site of the Roman camp. Across the road flows the pretty river Anker, with trees densely overhanging it, and framing with their boughs a charming view of Witherley’s graceful crocketed spire. Mancetter—how nearly it escaped from being another “Manchester

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XXXIII

XXXIII

The gently undulating stretch of country from “Four Crosses” to “Spread Eagle,” once dreaded by the name of Calf Heath, is now under cultivation, and the Watling Street, crossing it, broad and well-kept, wears more the look of a high-road. The spreading lakes seen here and there, known as “Gailey Pools,” are reservoirs of the old Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal that presently crosses the road under a hunchbacked bridge and by an old round-house, whose tower stands out prominently for a lo

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XXXIV

XXXIV

And now to resume, at Weedon, the modern road. It is a tiring pull up out of Weedon, on the way to Daventry, and anything that may excuse a rest is welcome. That excuse is found in the contemplation of a substantial stone-built farmhouse, with nine windows in a row, half a mile out of the village, on the right of the road, and fronted at this day with a pleasant garden. This, now called the “Grange,” was formerly the “Globe” coaching and posting inn. Beyond it, opposite a group of Georgian red-b

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XXXV

XXXV

The first prominent object on approaching the town is the “Wheatsheaf” itself, boasting of being established in 1610, but rebuilt in the coaching age, and just a white-painted, stucco-fronted building with a courtyard and a general Pickwickian and respectable Early Victorian air. Opposite stands an “Independent Chapel, erected 1722,” which, with its secular air and big gates, looks like a converted inn. Continuing along the narrow and unpicturesque Sheaf Street thus entered, the unwary pilgrim,

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XXXVI

XXXVI

Two-and-a-half miles from this point, across country and in the angle formed by the branching of the Watling Street and the Holyhead Road from Weedon, lie the village and the romantic manor-house of Ashby St. Ledgers, the home of Robert Catesby, chief conspirator in the Gunpowder Plot. From Braunston is by no means the best way to Ashby: reached by a long, steep lane, and across six fields and two cross-roads. The only guides on this solitary way are the traveller’s bump of location and a batter

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XXXVII

XXXVII

Retracing our steps to the Holyhead Road again, the “dumpling hills of Northamptonshire,” as Horace Walpole calls them, give place to the long Warwickshire levels. Four miles and a half from Daventry, and just before reaching Willoughby village, lying off the road, the Great Central Railway comes from Rugby, and crosses over on an embankment and a blue-brick-and-iron-girder bridge; a station labelled “Willoughby, for Daventry,” looking up and down the road. Does any one, it may be asked, ever al

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XXXVIII

XXXVIII

Dunchurch and the surrounding Dunsmore—at this time tamed somewhat from its ancient wildness and tickled into productiveness and smiling fertility by plough and harrow—were associated, close upon three hundred years ago, with a conspiracy that might well, had it been successful, have added such a page to England’s story whose likeness for horror and ferocity it would perhaps be impossible to match. Dunchurch, in short, has a scenic part in the “Gunpowder Treason and Plot,” that came near to blow

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XXXIX

XXXIX

It would be difficult nowadays to discover any one to agree with Pennant, the antiquary, who in 1782 could find it possible to write of the superbly wooded road across Dunsmore Heath as a “tedious avenue of elms and firs.” The adjective is altogether indefensible. Six miles of smooth and level highway, bordered here by noble pines, and there by equally noble elms, invite the traveller to linger by the roadside from Dunchurch to Ryton-on-Dunsmore. It is a stretch of country not only beautiful but

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XL

XL

It is here, five miles and a half from Dunchurch, that the famous “Knightlow Cross” stands. Just past a group of cottages, and an inn called Frog Hall, that mark the neighbourhood of Stretton-upon-Dunsmore, and where Knightlow Hill begins to tip downwards, this mysterious relic is found, in a meadow. The so-called “Knightlow Cross” is a square block of red sandstone, standing on the summit of a prehistoric grassy tumulus. It measures thirty inches square, and has a deep square cavity sunk in it.

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XLI

XLI

One sees the city perhaps to best advantage from the Warwick road, or from the rising ground at Stivichall, close by. There below lies Coventry, the famous trinity whence comes the familiar name of the City of the Three Spires, silhouetted against the calm evening sky. The view recalls that eloquent passage where Ruskin, speaking with enthusiasm of the old coaching age that he had known, paints the joy of the traveller who from the long-hoped-for turn in the dusty perspective of the causeway, sa

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XLII

XLII

Romance did not leave Coventry with the passing of mediæval days. It merely changed its aspect; doffed the “armour bright” the romancists love to tell of, and went clad instead in russet; put away helm and pike and broadsword, and sat the livelong day at the loom; changed indeed the Romance of Warfare for that of Industry, so that it was possible for old travellers to remark “the noise of the looms assails the passengers’ ears in every direction.” Coming in later years upon its discarded old war

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XLIII

XLIII

It was the late J. K. Starley’s “Rover” of 1885 that opened the way for cycling’s modern development. It was a design rightly claimed to have “set the fashion to the world,” and the difference between it and patterns of the current season is only in detail. Already, before Starley, attempts had been made to produce a “safety,” as shown by Lawson’s patent of 1876 and his “ bicyclette ” of 1880, together with the designs by Shergold and Bate in 1876 and later, in which 26- to 30-inch wheels, provi

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XLIV

XLIV

Coaching history at Coventry begins in 1658, with the establishment of a stage-coach between London, Lichfield, and Chester. This pioneer, starting from the “George” Inn, Holborn Bridge, reached Coventry in three days, or professed to do so. Suspicions that this was only a profession, not often put into practice, are aroused by the title of a new coach, put on the road in 1739. This was the “London, Birmingham, and Lichfield Flying Coach,” that took just the same time to reach Coventry, and yet

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XLV

XLV

Crossing the intersection of Hertford Street and Broad Gate at this point, the Holyhead Road leads out of Coventry by way of Smithford Street and Fleet Street. Before the revolutionary time of Telford, it continued through Spon End and Spon Gate and reached Allesley along the winding route now known as the “Old Allesley Road,” passing two toll-gates on the way. The “new” road branches off to the right immediately after passing St. John’s church and, passing a long factory-like row of old weavers

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XLVI

XLVI

Meriden is one of the many reputed “centres of England.” Measure a straight line from the North Foreland to Holyhead, and another from the Lizard to the mouth of the Humber, and their intersection will be at Meriden. With an irregularly shaped country like England, this is a somewhat empirical method, and the other reputed centres are evidently obtained by measuring from various places dictated by individual taste and fancy. The very hub of the country is held to be the ancient cross standing up

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XLVII

XLVII

But enough of Packington. Let us on to Birmingham, now but nine miles distant, by Elmdon, Wells Green, and Yardley. Elmdon, were it not for that pretty roadside timber-framed inn, the ‘Cock,’ would be but a name and nothing else, so far as the road could show. Passing it, bid a long farewell, O traveller along the Holyhead Road, to the country, for in less than another two miles Wells Green is reached and Birmingham within hail. Thereafter, in nothing less than eighteen miles shall you see the h

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I

I

There are said to be no fewer than a hundred and forty different ways of spelling the name of Birmingham, all duly vouched for by old usage; but it is not proposed in these pages to recount them, or to follow the arguments of those who have contended for its derivation from “Bromwicham.” It is singular that in the first mention we have of the place, in Domesday Book, it is spelt “Bermingham,” almost exactly as it is to-day, and this lends much authority to the view that we get the place-name fro

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II

II

In Birmingham, close upon four hundred years ago, Leland found but one street, yet that street was full of smiths, making knives and “all manner of cuttinge tooles, and many loriners that make bittes, and a great many naylors. Soe that a great part of the towne is maintained by smithes, who have their iron and sea-cole out of Staffordshire.” Not only has Birmingham grown out of all knowledge since that time, but it has largely changed its trades. Sheffield has taken away the pick of the cutlery

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III

III

Sir William Dugdale, in his diary, under date of July 16th, 1679, mentions the first Birmingham coach we have any notice of. He says, “I came out of London by the stage-coach of Bermicham to Banbury.” That is all we learn of specifically Birmingham coaches until 1731, when Rothwell’s began to ply to London in two days and a half, according to the old coaching bill still preserved. Afterwards came the Flying Coach of 1742, followed in 1758 by an “improved Birmingham Coach,” with the legend “Frict

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IV

IV

Birmingham, says De Quincey, was, under the old dynasty of stage-coaches and post-chaises, the centre of our travelling system. He did not like Birmingham. How many they are who do not! But, look you, he gives his reasons, and acknowledges that circumstances, and not Birmingham wholly, were the cause of his dislike. “Noisy, gloomy and dirty” he calls the town. “Gloomy,” because, having passed through it a hundred times, those occasions were always and invariably (less once), days and nights of r

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V

V

Although the “Hen and Chickens” had so early been removed to New Street, Bull Ring and High Street continued to be the chief coaching thoroughfares. There stood the “Swan,” the “Dog” afterwards known as the “Nelson,” the “Castle,” “Albion,” and “St. George’s Tavern.” In Bull Street was the “Saracen’s Head.” But the most exclusive and aristocratic of all was the “Royal,” afterwards known as the “Old Royal.” This was the house mentioned in the “Pickwick Papers,” where the waiter, having at last go

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VI

VI

The way out of Birmingham is dismal and unpromising, by way of Livery Street and Great Hampton Street. At the end of that thoroughfare—formerly known as Hangman’s Lane—Birmingham is left behind; but some seventeen miles of continuous streets, ill-paved and hilly, and infested with tramways, yet lie before the pilgrim. Livery Street, so-called (at a hazard) because its granite setts jolt so unmercifully the cyclist who is rash enough to ride along it, gives an outlook on to close-packed, mean, an

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VII

VII

At Hilltop, where the rattling and belching steam tramcars branch off for Dudley, a descent is made by Holloway Bank to Wednesbury—the “Wodensburgh,” as it is thought to have been, of Saxon times, and the “Wedgebury” of modern local parlance. Wednesbury begins at the bottom of this descent at Wednesbury Bridge, where the filthy stream called the river Tame trickles between slimy mud-banks under the brick arches built by Telford in 1826; but the end of one town and the beginning of another in the

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VIII

VIII

Down-hill from Wednesbury Market Place, and thence rising to Cock Heath and Moxley, the road runs between rubbish-heaps; a scene of desolation that, however ill it may be to live near to, makes a not unpleasing picture in a sketch, taken at a backward glance, with the town grouped on a curving sky-line. Moxley, perhaps, hints at decayed trade in the sign of the mean little “Struggler” inn. WEDNESBURY. As for Bilston, where is the man heroic enough to sound its praises? Passengers by railway, pas

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IX

IX

The old entrance into Wolverhampton, before the making of Cleveland Road in 1830, was by the narrow Bilston Street, still remaining as an object-lesson in old-time thoroughfares, and thence by Snow Hill along Dudley Street, and so into what was then called “High Green,” now known as “Queen Square.” Darlington Street did not come into being until 1821, and before that time the rest of the way through the town and out at the other end, followed a devious course, by lanes long since swept away, or

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X

X

Little indeed is left of the Wolverhampton of the coaching era—a fact not very greatly to be regretted, because the old town had no architectural pretensions, but a great many squalid cottages and lanes, of no real interest or antiquity. High Green was the exception. It must be borne in mind that the Wolverhampton of that time was a very small place compared with the great manufacturing town of to-day, and that the “neat market-town” of Wigstead and Rowlandson’s tour in 1797 contained only some

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XI

XI

Perhaps the most striking way of picturing the great changes that have taken place in Wolverhampton in the course of a century is by comparing the different aspects presented by High Green at periods ranging from 1797 to modern times. It has had many changes. Only two features in the series of pictures have remained unaltered during that period: the handsome old brick houses at one corner have survived, and the noble tower of St. Peter’s still looks down upon the scene, as it has done for close

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XII

XII

At Tettenhall the borough of Wolverhampton ends, and with it the Black Country. Crossing over the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal, the road makes direct for Tettenhall Hill, eased in its course by a long embankment in the hollow, and by a deep cutting through the red rocks of the hill-top, but still a formidable rise. The old road, however, was infinitely worse. Its course may still be traced branching off to the left by the “Newbridge Inn,” where the old toll-house used to stand, and plu

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XIII

XIII

Shropshire is the land of the “proud Salopian.” Of what, you may ask, is the Salopian proud? It may be doubted, however, if the phrase really means more than that the Shropshireman has ever been high-spirited, jealous of his own good name, and quick to wrath. But he has good cause for pride in the fair shire that held out of old against the Welsh in the hazardous centuries when this was part of the Marches, the Debatable Land where the frontiers shifted hither and thither as the Lords Marchers o

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XIV

XIV

Shiffnal is a little place, changed less in the course of three hundred years than any along this road. Three centuries ago, when it was called “Idsall” quite as often as by its other name, all the town, with the exception of the church, was brand new, and its site with it; for the fire that in 1591 had levelled it with the ground led to the new township being erected a hundred yards or so to the east of the old one. SHIFFNAL. No fires, however destructive, warned our Elizabethan forbears that t

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XV

XV

Breasting a long incline of nearly three miles, the road comes to Prior’s Lee and Snedshill, and, reaching a commanding crest, looks down upon the industry and turmoil of Lilleshall on the one side, and the equally busy and industrious Coalbrookdale on the other. The prettiness of Prior’s Lee is in name alone. It and Snedshill are wastes of slag and cinder-heaps—some a century old, others the still smoking refuse from the blast-furnaces that roar and whizz and vomit smoke on the left. SNEDSHILL

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XVI

XVI

Haygate inn stands, just as does the “Cock,” at the fork of a bye-road leading to Wellington. The “Cock” caught the travellers from London, the “Falcon” (which was really the sign of Haygate inn, although few knew it by any other name than that already mentioned) those from Wales and Shrewsbury. It was intimately connected with the Shrewsbury “Wonder,” being kept by H. J. Taylor, a brother of Isaac Taylor of the “Lion” at Shrewsbury, who put that famous coach upon the road in 1825. Another broth

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XVII

XVII

Regaining the old turnpike at Haygate Inn, the Wrekin broods monstrous on the scene for miles to come, its central bulk reinforced by Ercall to the left, and little attendant Wrekins, crowned with fir-trees, on the right. In midst of this comes Burcot toll-house, situated on a lonely rise, where cross-roads seem to butt up against the great hill on one side and disappear into a valley on the other. This toll-house may well compare for size and solidity with any on the way from London to Holyhead

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XVIII

XVIII

Wroxeter lies within a short distance, but only approached along a narrow and uneven lane. Its fine church-tower looks down upon little more than a few farms and bartons; for village, as generally understood, there is none. This simple rural place, aromatic with hay and straw and corn, is the representative of, and takes its name from, the great Roman city of Uriconium , one-third larger than Pompeii, destroyed by the fury of savage hordes more than fourteen hundred years ago. The City of Uricon

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XIX

XIX

Returning from Wroxeter and passing the tiny hamlet of Norton, the way lies flat to Shrewsbury. Flat, because we are now come beside the Severn (which no Welshman calls anything else than Sivern). Away across the watery plain as we advance are the Stretton Hills on the left, volcanic and mountainous in outline, blue and beautiful in colour; and, more distant, ahead, far beyond Shrewsbury, the Breidden Hills, a great bulk starting from the level without any disguise of foothills or preliminary ri

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XX

XX

“Shrowsbury,” as already noted, is the correct pronunciation of the name of Shropshire’s capital; a mode that still follows the structure of the Saxon place-name, “Scrobbesbyrig.” But it is not reasonable to suppose that the outlander who has never been to Shrewsbury should know all the rights and wrongs of the case, and though it may grate upon the Salopian to hear strangers talk of “Shroosbury,” he can have no possible remedy until he procures a reform in the spelling of the word. Meanwhile, t

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XXI

XXI

Coaching enterprise, from the earliest to the latest days of the coaching era, flourished better at Shrewsbury than any other town along the Holyhead Road. An early mention of public coaches is found in Sir William Dugdale’s diary under date of May 2nd, 1659, when he says:—“I set forward towards London by the Coventre coach,” and is followed in June, 1681, by a reference to a journey from London to his country seat in Warwickshire by the “Shrewsbury coach.” This was an extremely deliberate conve

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XXII

XXII

When at last Lawrence was gathered to his fathers and new men took up the business of coaching, the daily Mail-coach to Holyhead and the two stages, running twice a week, were increased to seven coaches to or from London daily, in addition to numerous local stages. There were the “Oxonian Express,” through to Holyhead, by High Wycombe, Oxford, and Birmingham; the “Union,” by the same route, going no further than Shrewsbury; the “Shamrock,” to Holyhead, by Coventry and Birmingham; the “New Mail,”

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XXIII

XXIII

If Shrewsbury was a place to and from which came and went many fast coaches, it certainly sent forth one coach that was phenomenally slow. The “Shrewsbury and Chester Highflyer,” at the beginning of the nineteenth century, was very much less of a flyer than might have been expected from its name. Those two places are forty miles apart. The “Highflyer” set out from Shrewsbury at eight o’clock in the morning, and arrived at Chester, under favourable circumstances, at the same hour in the evening.

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XXIV

XXIV

The “Lion” was the hotel to which De Quincey came in 1802, when, as a youth, he was setting forth in his unpractical way for London. He had walked in from Oswestry, reaching Shrewsbury two hours after nightfall. Innkeepers in those times knew little of pedestrians who footed it for pleasure, and classed all who walked when they might have rode as tramps. Therefore, it will be allowed that De Quincey timed his arrival well, at an hour when dusty feet are not so easily seen. However, had his shoes

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XXV

XXV

“All the mails in the kingdom,” he continues, “with one solitary exception (that of Liverpool), were so arranged as to reach London early in the morning. Between the hours of four and six a.m., one after the other, according to their station upon the roll, all the mails from the N[orth]—the E[ast]—the W[est]—the S[outh]—whence, according to some curious etymologists, comes the magical word NEWS—drove up successively to the post-office and rendered up their heart-shaking budgets; none earlier tha

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XXVI

XXVI

But if the inns be quaint, how shall justice be done to the quaintness of the mediæval timbered houses in the High Street, or Butcher Row? There is no town in England—no, not even Chester—that can show a greater number, or more beautiful examples of black and white; while for queer street names Shrewsbury certainly bears away the bell. There are Wyle Cop, and the houses at its foot, once known as “under the Wyle”; Pride Hill, which does not refer to the almost Spanish pride of Salopians, but to

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XXVII

XXVII

Indeed, when you have descended Mardol, and so across the Welsh Bridge—the “reddie way to Wales”—have left the town on the way to Holyhead, you are not yet clear of streets and houses. There, on the further shore of Severn, outside Shrewsbury altogether, is the long, steep street of Frankwell, all old houses and tottering tenements, dirty and crazy, and so picturesque that surely some top-hatted, frock-coated smeller of drains will presently level it with the ground and build some sanitary and a

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XXVIII

XXVIII

Along the road, half a mile or so short of West Felton, on the right hand, stands the lodge guarding the entrance to Pradoe, the home for half a century of that famous whip and amateur of coaching, the Honourable Thomas Kenyon. Whether Pradoe be a corruption of the old Welsh word “Braddws,” meaning “Paradise,” none can now say with certainty, but sure it is that the beautiful park in whose recesses the house is secluded, half a mile from the road, has one of the loveliest outlooks upon the dista

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XXIX

XXIX

Beyond that straggling village, at a point where a branch of the Ellesmere canal runs athwart the road and is lost in a long perspective to the right, is the hamlet called “Queen’s Head,” taking its name from the old coaching-inn of that name still presenting a stolid red face to the highway. The inn, the road, the canal, and a deserted toll-house all tell a tale of the havoc wrought by the railway. It was a busy place once, for many coaches changed at the inn, and on the old grass-grown wharves

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XXX

XXX

Up along the rise from Queen’s Head, past Aston Park, where sepulchral burrows of prehistoric man are seen beneath the trees, the way lies on to Oswestry. The town of “Odgerstree,” as the country people call it, is entered soon after passing the old toll-house of Gallows Tree Gate. Once called Maserfield, it lost that name at an early date, and acquired its present title when history was very young indeed. It owes the name of Oswald’s-tre, or Oswald’s Town, to the Christian King Oswald of Northu

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XXXI

XXXI

Modern Oswestry is a place of engineering shops, foundries, and mining interests, and, as the seat of the Cambrian Railway locomotive and carriage works, is busy and prosperous. Not a vestige of its old trade in Welsh flannel remains, for the mills of Lancashire long ago began to produce a cheaper article than the Welsh could make. Very little of old Oswestry is left, and although the streets are still for the most part narrow and crooked, the greater number of the houses are modern. Inns abound

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XXXII

XXXII

Chirk village in summer-time is enlivened by innumerable excursion parties on those days of the week when the Castle is thrown open; otherwise it is a dull little place, its only outstanding features that sometime coaching inn, the “Hand,” and the church. The church is made, by the huge and numerous monuments within, to redound greatly to the honour and the glory of the Myddeltons, and the Myddelton-Biddulphs. Among others, two occupy the place on either side of the altar commonly reserved for t

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XXXIII

XXXIII

Our imaginary and imaginative traveller, waking at Llangollen to morning sunshine and matter-of-fact, will, if his mind is of the proper critical kind, be at once disappointed with the town and enthusiastic on its setting. Around it, shutting out the noisy world, rise the great heights of Barber’s Hill and Castell Dinas Bran, the last-named a mighty eminence rising to a height of over a thousand feet, and diademed with a circlet of very ancient and time-worn ruins. If any one were known to have

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XXXIV

XXXIV

Llangollen owes its name to St. Collen, the patron saint of the parish church. “The name,” says the Reverend W. Bingley, “is pretty enough, and of no great length.” Sarcastic Mr. Bingley! Here is a portion of St. Collen’s name, quoted by him:—“Collen ap Gwynawc, ap Clydawc, ap Cowrda, ap Caradawc Freichpas ap Lleyr Meirion, ap Einion Urth, ap Cunedda Wledig,” and so forth, like recurring decimals. “Ap” being Welsh for “son of,” it becomes quite evident that Collen’s ancestry was, speaking in the

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XXXV

XXXV

Llangollen was “discovered” in 1788 by those feminine Robinson Crusoes commonly called the “Ladies of Llangollen.” Their singular story and the alliterative title have gone forth to all the world, and are familiar where the achievements of many worthier persons are unknown. If eccentricity may rightly be considered a proper passport to fame, then the Ladies of Llangollen are justly celebrated, but if the extraordinary mental obliquity that shaped their wasted lives be looked upon pathologically,

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XXXVI

XXXVI

The great Duke of Wellington was, of course, well known to the Ladies. They had known him from a boy. It was from an old Spanish Prayer Book given him by Lady Eleanor that he learnt that language when going out to his campaigns in the Peninsula. Reminiscences of this queer old couple abound in the published diaries and correspondence of old-time travellers; but none afford so good a picture as that drawn by Lockhart, who accompanied Sir Walter Scott on a visit to Llangollen in 1825. Lockhart, wr

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XXXVII

XXXVII

The settlement of “The Ladies” here synchronised with the appreciation of the picturesque in rural scenery, then a new-born and strange portent. The only travellers along this road into Wales had been those who were obliged to take the journey on business; pleasure in travelling—pleasure in such solitary and rugged scenery—was quite out of the question, and if travellers remembered Llangollen at all, it was as a place where the coach changed horses, and where the one inn afforded the worst cheer

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XXXVIII

XXXVIII

When the traveller sets forth from Llangollen, he does so primed with stories of the excellence of the scenery and the road. The folded mountains, some clothed with pine and larch to their very summits, others stern and jagged with rocks, far exceed any word-picture, as do also the valleys and the glittering course of the Dee, dashing impetuously over boulders and pebbly beaches, or more rarely sliding quietly where the trout lurk in deep and darkling pools, where the Welshman still navigates th

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XXXIX

XXXIX

More in accord with modern Wales is Llansaintffraid, across the Dee, with its trim lodging-houses and villas, and little railway-station which the railway authorities, alarmed at the name of Llansaintffraid, have christened by the simpler title of “Carrog.” More villas, more lodging-houses, and many tourists mark the approach to Corwen, a village or townlet that does not favourably impress the stranger fresh from Llangollen. No one could with truth say that the houses of Llangollen are beautiful

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XL

XL

From Maerdy Post-office, half a mile onwards, commences a steady rise of nearly two miles, the uplands on the right presently culminating in the crags of Cader Dinmael, and the valley of the Geirw on the left gradually deepening and contracting into a profound and narrow gorge; the road running round cornices of rock, fenced by breast-high masonry on the one side, and overhung by rocky cliffs on the other. With boring-tools, pickaxe, and blasting-powder, Telford forced a way for his road round t

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XLI

XLI

The scattered cottages and old toll-house of Glasfryn bring one to Cernioge, the place to which the milestones have been insistently directing, since Corwen. What, the stranger wonders, is this place (“Kernioggy” the Welsh pronounce it) that it should be thus dignified? Well, here it is, just a farmhouse lying back from the road, with a pond beside it under the trees, a few outbuildings, and an older toll-house than the Glasfryn one. Not, nowadays, a very striking spot, except for its remote sol

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XLII

XLII

Across the bridge and we are in Bettws-y-Coed: “Bettws in the Wood.” Exactly how that name fits the situation of the place is instantly seen. It occupies the floor of a tiny valley hemmed in by great hills covered with trees, chiefly dwarf oaks. Through this valley runs the Conway, joined in its midst by the Llugwy. Close by this confluence still remains the old church, the “Bettws” that preceded the village itself, and whence the village obtains its name. Bettws is the Cymric corruption of the

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XLIII

XLIII

The fame of Bettws was made by David Cox, that unassuming landscape painter who, appreciated inadequately in his lifetime, now keeps company with the Old Masters in the estimation of the discerning, and in the prices his works command at public auction. David Cox well knew the Holyhead Road: few so well, and perhaps none better. He was born beside it, in a cottage at Heath Mill Lane, Deritend, in 1783, and his favourite sketching grounds in North Wales lay along, or within sight of, the old high

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XLIV

XLIV

If there were not so many dishonest people, and so many vulgar people, in the world, the visitors-books of the “Royal Oak” would be a delight to present-day travellers. Those books begin in 1855, and have in their time been filled with a very miscellaneous collection of autographs, criticisms, and sketches. In the old days, before the house was rebuilt, and its new magnificence and crowds of vulgar and artless rich frightened away the majority of artists, thoughtless fellows who had not “arrived

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XLV

XLV

The two miles leading from Bettws along the Holyhead Road to Rhaiadr-y-Wennol, or the “Swallow Falls,” conduct upwards, out of the hole in whose kindly shelter Bettws lies. Along this somewhat tiring incline a long procession of sight-seers may be seen toiling every day, from April to October, at any time between eight a.m. and seven in the evening, for the Falls have always been considered one of the sights best worth seeing in Wales, and even the Holyhead Mail used to pull up for five minutes

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XLVI

XLVI

Telford’s road takes an infinitely better course, although, to be sure, the four miles onward to Lake Ogwen are on a steady and uninterrupted rise, almost impossible to face with a steady head-wind, and wholly so when storms scour through the pass. Here is the summit-level of the road, 957 feet above the sea, with mountains 3,000 feet higher surrounding the lonely moorland. Infrequent farmsteads of the smallest and most cabin-like kind are scattered about the almost barren space, among the bogs

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XLVII

XLVII

The Glen of Beavers is a beautiful spot from the standpoint of the tourist, if not of the farmers, who have with infinite labour collected the scattered boulders, and built boundary walls with them; and essay to grow corn and hay in the bottom, where the Ogwen stream goes prattling in summer on its winding course. The Ogwen is no friend to the farmer, for walls and stacks and earth are often carried away in winter by the innocent looking brook, that arises at such times and, clearing the fields

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XLVIII

XLVIII

The road makes an abrupt turn to the left to enter the city of Bangor. The grim stone walls on either side of the forbidding edifice in front do not represent a prison, workhouse, or lunatic asylum, but have at present the honour of housing the University College of North Wales, founded in 1884. Years before that date this was the “Penrhyn Arms” hotel, one of the largest and best on the road, with great resources in the way of reception-rooms, extensive private suites for the considerable person

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XLIX

XLIX

Bangor is a forbidding place—a squalid and uninteresting mile-length of street, extending from this spot to the railway station, where a more recent and less objectionable continuation of it, called Upper Bangor, climbs for another half-mile towards the Menai Bridge. The long, long street of Bangor, narrow and dirty, gives an indescribably second-hand appearance to everything exposed for sale in its shop-windows; and the stranger, newly arrived from the champagne-like air of Capel Curig, has not

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L

L

It is at Bangor that the old Chester route to Holyhead, by way of Penmaenmawr, falls into the great Holyhead Road. Although we have not come by Chester, it may be worth while to glance at Penmaenmawr, that gigantic headland over whose perilous heights old-time travellers went, trembling for their safety. Its Welsh name, meaning literally the “great stone head,” sufficiently describes this old obstacle and stumbling-block, looking over the water to Anglesey. Nowadays the railway tunnels through i

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LI

LI

The ferries into Anglesey, five in all, from end to end of the Straits, were all more or less perilous. Crossing by them, according to evidence produced at an enquiry on the subject, 180 persons lost their lives between 1664 and 1842. The mail route was by Bangor Ferry, called by the Welsh Porthaethwy, or the “Ferry of the Narrow Waters,” close by where Telford’s suspension bridge now spans the channel. Up out of Bangor drove the Mails, and many of the stage-coaches, post-chaises, and chariots,

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LII

LII

Across this monument of early engineering skill, with roadway swaying and vibrating to the passage of every vehicle, and bird’s-eye views up and down the glittering waterway, Anglesey is entered. On its shores to the right sprawls Menai village, with Beaumaris in the distance, and down beneath, on the left, lies the Isle of Benglas, with the oddly placed church of Llantysilio on it. You cannot unmoved set foot in Mona, as this was called before ever it obtained its name of Isle of the Angles. It

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LIII

LIII

Very few are the old travellers or modern writers who have a good word to say for Anglesey. It is “flat, dull, monotonous, barren, treeless, wind-swept,” and many more things expressed by adjectives in the uncomplimentary sort; but will the present historian be credited when, with his hand upon his heart, and if necessary—should his bare word not be held to deserve credit when opposed to that bulk of damnatory evidence—his lips upon the Book he declares that Anglesey is none of these things? A r

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LIV

LIV

The first two miles into Anglesey command the whole range of the Snowdonian mountains; but nothing could be more monumentally striking than the Anglesey Column that shoots up from the wooded, rock-strewn hill of Craig-y-Dinas on the way to the village of “Llanfairpwllgwyngyll,” as a board on the post office amiably shortens that terrific place-name. The column, itself 100 feet in height, designed in the Doric style, rises from a crest 260 feet above the waters of the Straits, and commemorates th

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LV

LV

From the old toll-house at Llanfairpwllgwyngyll to Holyhead it is only twenty-one miles, but there are no fewer than five toll-houses on the way, all in as good and sufficient repair as though they had only retired from business yesterday. And indeed it is not so long since the gates were swept out of existence, and this remote corner of the country freed from these irritating taxes on the farmers and villagers. It is a curious fact that to the Holyhead Road belongs the distinction of having bee

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LVI

LVI

This destination of the Holyhead Road, its sponsor and reason for existence, makes a very sorry ending to these two hundred and sixty miles of picturesque and historic scenery. It is a squalid little town, set down, to all appearance, at the edge of the known world, and only existing on the traffic of its harbour. Described by Swift so long ago as 1727 as “a scurvy, unprovided, comfortless place,” and in Ogilby’s Roads , of 1749, as “consisting chiefly of houses for the entertainment of such per

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LVII

LVII

There still stands, at the entrance to the Pier, the granite archway erected to commemorate the landing of George IV. in 1821. Severely classical, in the Doric sort, it resembles (save that it is not so large and not so black) the funereal entrance to the Euston terminus of the London and North-Western Railway. It bears an inscription in Welsh—“ Cof-Adail i Ymweliad y Brenin Gior y IV. ag ynys fôn. Awst VII., MDCCCXXI. ”—which those whose Pentecostal attainments render it possible may translate.

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LVIII

LVIII

But to end the Holyhead Road in the mean streets of Holyhead, or by merely tracing Telford’s modern highway, would be to conclude on a very feeble and inadequate note. Fortunately, the “old post road” across Anglesey still remains. It is three miles longer than Telford’s, and is especially interesting because it affords an excellent means of seeing with our own eyes what were the difficulties travellers had to contend with in the days before road reform. The twists and turns, and hills and hollo

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LIX

LIX

If a grand and awe-inspiring finish to the Holyhead Road be sought, let the pilgrim, instead of making for the town, ascend the misty steeps of Holyhead Mountain, and make his rugged and circuitous way to the South Stack. The road runs past some peculiarly depressing outskirts, and by a long row of empty and forlorn cottages offered to be let at fourpence a week, and not finding tenants even at that modest sum. These desolate dwellings were built for the use of the men employed on the Holyhead H

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