There really must have been wheeled traffic hereabouts long before the memory of the oldest folk I ever knew. When they said that they remembered the first cart, I think they must have meant the first cart used for farm-work on the fields. And in the passage I have quoted, Moore only says that a pair of wheels was scarcely to be seen on a farm in the county, not, scarcely to be seen on the roads. But so long as farmers used pack-saddles on their fields, they would use them on the roads as well; and in an agricultural district there would not be much other traffic.
The ancient Britons had wagons of some sort in this part of England long before the Romans came here. They used them for bringing down the ingots from the tin mines to the coast, though these ingots went on pack-horses across France to Marseilles. In narrating this, Diodoros says (v. 22) that the ingots were cast in the shape of an astragalos; and an ingot of about that shape was found in Falmouth harbour, and is now in the Museum at Truro. It would hook on to a pack-saddle, and it weighs about 160 lbs., so that a pair would make a load.
A century ago a tramway was laid down for bringing granite from the Haytor quarries to the head of the Teigngrace canal, where the granite was transferred to barges and went on to Teignmouth to be shipped. The quarries are about 1200 feet above the head of the canal, and the distance is about six miles in a straight line: so the tramway goes winding round upon an easier gradient, and thus comes within two miles of here. The lines are formed of granite slabs of no fixed size, but usually four or five feet long and one to two feet wide; and they are put down lengthways, with nothing in between them to impede the horses. Each slab has a level surface, about six inches wide, as a track for the wheels, and an upright surface, two or three inches high, to prevent their running off the track; but the remainder of the slab is rough. The gauge is fifty inches between the out-sides of the upright surfaces, and therefore fifty inches between the in-sides of the wheels. This tramway was completed in 1820, and carried down granite for London Bridge, the British Museum, the General Post Office, and other buildings of that time. But it was abandoned when the quarries failed, and now its slabs are used for building or broken up for mending roads.
The great roads over Dartmoor were not completed until about 150 years ago. One of them runs north-eastward from Plymouth to Moreton, and so to Exeter and London, and the other runs south-eastward from Tavistock to Ashburton. They cross each other at Two Bridges in the middle of the moor, and at some points they are nearly 1500 feet above the level of the sea. About three miles out from Moreton on the Plymouth road there is a road from Ashburton to Chagford; and at the crossing of these roads the highwaymen were hanged in chains, when caught. At least, my father and my grandfather both told me so; and such things might have happened even in my father’s time, as hanging in chains was not abolished until 1834.
In the old days of practical joking it was one of the stock jokes to go out to some cross-road in the middle of the night, dig up the sign-post, turn it round a right-angle, and fix it down again with its arms all pointing the wrong way. There were two men whom I remember very well—old friends of my father’s—and he told me that these two did this on Dartmoor several times, usually in snowstorms, as the snow soon covered up all traces of their work. But he thought the best part of the joke was in their going out on the bleak moorland in the snow to do a thing like that.
It certainly was no joke riding out at night with a pair of lanterns fixed on underneath your stirrups to guide you in the dark. But travelling by coach was not so very much better. In his diary down here, Friday 5 February 1836, my father notes—“snow up the country, so that the Tuesday coaches could not come in until Thursday.” Writing to him from London after a journey up, 7 April 1839, an old friend of his exclaims—“Oh that Salisbury Plain, thirty-five miles of a wet windy night outside a coach, by god, sir, ’tis no joke.” The same friend writes to him from Sidmouth, 11 January 1841, after coming from Southampton to Honiton by coach—“We had six horses nearly all the way, and soon after passing Ringwood (I believe it was) our road was covered with and cut thro’ snow which was at least four feet deep on each side.... We got capsized into a high bank on descending one hill, but it was managed so very quietly that we were not thrown off and were able to dismount quietly and get the coach properly on her legs again.”
On the London and Exeter coaches the tips came to about a quarter of the fare: one to the guard, three to the drivers—drivers being changed at the supper and breakfast stops—and two to the ostlers at each end. On the 14 July 1839 my father writes to my grandfather that railway fares are comparatively low and no ‘fees,’ that is, tips: also that the ‘first rate’ carriages are good.
My father notes in his diary, 3 May 1840—“Yesterday in London I could scarcely get credited when I said that twenty-four hours previously I was in Brussels. Having steam the whole way, it is a very quick journey.” He left Brussels by rail at 4.15, reached Ostend at 9.0, left by steamer at midnight, and at 1.0 next afternoon “made fast at Tower Stairs.”
Crossing by Dover and Calais in 1843, he writes on 15 July—“Started at 4.0 by the new railway from London Bridge to Folkestone, arriving at the latter at ½ p. 8: coaches waiting to take on to Dover. They were more than an hour in loading and getting the passengers. Reached Dover at ½ p. 10.” Next morning, “the tide being low, the English mail steamer had left the harbour and was riding at anchor in the roadstead, waiting for the mail. I put out in a boat at 6, but it was more than ½ p. 7 before we started, the letter bags being only that instant sent on board. We arrived off Calais at ½ p. 10; but, the tide being low, the steamer anchored in the roads, and the passengers were landed in the boats which took the mail bags.” Returning on 13 October, he found the tide high but the sea rough, and the crossing took close upon four hours: then, coach to Folkestone, and on to London by the train.
A friend writes to him from Exeter, 8 April 1844—“Our railway will be sufficiently complete for an engine to travel here tomorrow, and I suppose will be completed about the first week in May.” It was opened on 1 May, and another friend writes on 17 September—“From Bristol to Exeter we experienced the shaking of the carriages exceedingly, and were really obliged, as I have before said, to hold by the side of the carriage to endeavour to steady ourselves.” Yet this line was on the broad gauge, and that was much less jerky than the narrow. I remember people saying that they would never go up by the South Western, as the Great Western shook them less.