The ornamental sign by tricks,
Amongst the ropes came firmly fixed.
The sign-post was torn up and fixed immovably between the wheels and the wagon, and in that position was carried aloft, as "slowly the eight big Lincoln steeds" continued their wonted course towards Royston. Before day-light that town was reached, the driver still unconscious of the curious appendage to his load. "Rounding the corner at the Cross" the strange projection crashed into the windows of the shops to the consternation of the inhabitants, as
House after house was ripp'd and torn.
****
Plant-pots and plants alike were strown,
And gilded names in swaths were mown.
Some thought it was an earthquake, and others that the end of all things had come. Amongst the terrified shopkeepers, George Rivers, the witty thespian, is credited with exclaiming:—
"The windows and the frames are gone,
And all the house is tumbling down"!
Not till the wagon reached the Warren did that and the old sign-post part company, and even then the sleepy driver wended his ponderous way towards Buntingford in blissful ignorance of the devastation he had wrought upon the shop windows! "Nor did he learn the strange affray till he returned another day."
1836. The great snowstorm of 1836 was even more memorable than the two preceding storms of 1799 and 1814, for its suddenness, its extent, and the greatly increased number of stage-coaches "on the road" at that time, which suffered from the interruption of traffic. It commenced to snow on the night of Christmas Eve (Saturday) and snowed all day on Sunday, and the next day. No snowstorm in Great Britain for the previous hundred years equalled it in violence and extent. On the evening of the 26th, after it had been snowing for 48 hours, the wind increased to a hurricane, and in the night the fall of snow was from four to six feet, while the drifts were from 20 to 30 feet in depth, and the condition of all exposed to it was appalling! The storm spread all over Europe, and in this island all communication was cut off for nearly a week. No coach got through from Cambridge till the following Thursday. Many a Christmas party that Christmas were minus their guests, for coaches were "snowed up" all over the land, and, but for the timely shelter of inns and private houses, many of the passengers must have perished. There were three coaches almost within sight of each other placed hors de combat in and near Royston. One coach was actually stuck fast in the snow at the Cross, in the centre of the town; another just below the present railway bridge, and another at the bottom of the Kneesworth Hill. These coaches were the Edinburgh Mail, the Boston Mail, and the Stamford Coach, and were all on their way to London at the time. The unfortunate passengers were obliged to spend the Christmas holidays in Royston as best they could, and the mails were sent forward on horseback as soon as practicable. For a whole week no mail coach went into, or came from, London through Buntingford and Royston. Between Royston and Wadesmill, on the portion of the North Road known as the Wadesmill Turnpike Trust, the difficulties of opening up communication were of the most formidable character.
Near the gates at the entrance to Coles Park, Westmill (now the residence of R. P. Greg, Esq.), there were drifts 20 feet deep, and the labour of cutting through the snow between Royston and Wadesmill, was believed to have cost no less than L400, and so great was the loss to the toll-keepers that the Turnpike Trust found it necessary to compensate Mr. Flay, the lessee, to the extent of L200 for the loss of toll through this unexampled interruption of traffic. It may be of interest just now to mention that the above remarkable storm was followed by a serious epidemic of influenza.
1837. Following the important undertaking of cutting through Burloes Hill on the Newmarket Road, came the great work of cutting through the hill on the London Road, south of Royston. The undertaking was begun in 1836, the contract price for the work in this case being L1,723. This work proved more difficult in one sense than that of the Newmarket Road, from the fact that the coaching and other traffic was so much greater along this road and that the work had to be adapted to the continuation of this heavy traffic. The passage of coaches over the temporary roadway was not of the smoothest, and it is said that one passenger became so alarmed that he jumped from the coach, being afraid it would upset, and in doing so broke his leg. The Turnpike Trust, being responsible for the state of the road, though not for the passenger's want of courage, made him a compensation of L50 for the injury.
In 1837 the coronation of Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, was worthily celebrated in Royston. There were free dinners for the townspeople on the Market Hill, with bands of music, and the principal residents dined together at the Bull Hotel afterwards—much the same as in the celebration of the jubilee of Her Majesty's reign fifty years afterwards in 1887.