Just before the introduction of the Penny Post we find the Post Office in Melbourn Street (master, Mr. Thomas Daintry) closed at ten o'clock, but letters were received "between that hour and eleven on payment of sixpence each"! At that time, however, there was an arrangement known as the "Royston Penny Post," comprising the parishes of Barrington, Fowlmere, Foxton, Melbourn, Meldreth, Shepreth and Thriplow.
The posting and delivery of a letter was a different affair then from now. Envelopes and postage stamps had not been invented. The postage was paid by the person receiving the letter, and it did not depend upon the weight of the letter at all, but upon how many sheets it contained. Two very small sheets or small pieces of paper would count as two letters and double postage, but an immense sheet of foolscap, or even folio size, containing many times the writing of the other two, would only count as one, and letters were as a consequence often curious looking documents.
As to the cost of postage of a letter the following were the rates prevailing between Royston and the places named:—Cambridge 4d., London 7d., Norwich 8d., Huntingdon 6d., Newport 10d., Brandon 8d., Cheshunt 7d., Bedford 6d., Buntingford 4d. In the few cases where persons had friends in America, a letter to them cost 2s. 2d.; to Gibraltar the cost was 2s. 10d., Malta and the Mediterranean 3s. 2d., postage in these cases being prepaid. The charge was based upon a scale according to the distance, commencing with 4d. not exceeding 15 miles. The transmission of money was "by wagon," and instead of a creditor asking for a remittance by return of post it was "by return of wagon."
Of the old Inns in Royston it may be of interest to add that the Red Lion ball-room continued to be a centre of fashionable gatherings until, with the decay of the posting and coaching business for which the Red Lion had been chiefly famous, the Bull Hotel (the same owners) became the leading house. The Red Lion was afterwards given up, the ball-room, with its associations going back to the Old Royston Club, was removed and re-erected as the present ball-room or billiard-room of the Bull Hotel, while its rampant lion which had presented a bold face to the High Street for more than a century, was removed to a higher position on the top of Reed Hill, where it now does duty, and has given a sign to the house standing there. Here, for the sake of auld lang syne, it gets a bright new coat of paint now and again, and worthily holds its own as the last relic of a famous old inn, around which so much of the public life of the town and neighbourhood had revolved for some generations!
The Bull was originally the "Black Bull," and the Boar's Head the "Blue Boar's Head." The Bull had stabling for a hundred horses. The Green Man was a sign that explained itself when, at the beginning of the century and for some years afterwards, upon an angular sign on the front of the inn, with faces two ways, was the painted figure of a man in the green habit of the archer and forester. The "Jolly Butchers" or "Ye three Butchers," on the Market Hill, and the "Catherine Wheel," in Melbourn Street, have ceased to be inns.
Such was the outward shell of Royston in the hectic flush of the "good old times." The taking of the census recently suggests a word with regard to the population of the town and how it was ascertained in times gone by. At least, at one decade (1821) the Overseers were paid a penny per head for taking the population. In 1801 the population was only 1484, and in 1831 it was 2008. Further particulars of the population of the town and of the villages in the neighbourhood will be found in an appendix at the end of this book.