In the old days, no traveller going north along the Great North Road left Alconbury without first seeing that the priming of his pistols was in order, while the passengers by mail or stage secretly put their watches and jewellery between their skin and their underclothing, or deposited their purses in their boots, before the coach topped Alconbury Hill. For at “Aukenbury,” as Ogilby in his old road-maps styles it, you were on the threshold of a robbing-place only less famous than Gad’s Hill, near Rochester, or those other notorious dark or daylight lurks (for day or night mattered little in those times), Hounslow Heath and Finchley Common. The name of this ill-reputed place was “Stonegate Hole.” It is marked distinctly on the maps of Ogilby and his successors, between the sixty-fourth and sixty-fifth milestones from London, by the Old North Road, measured from Shoreditch, and passing through Ware, Royston, and Caxton.
Passing Papworth Everard, you came in those days, on the left hand, just before reaching the fifty-sixth milestone, to “Beggar’s Bush,” where you probably saw the tramps, vagrants and footpads of that age skulking, on the chance of robbing some traveller unable to take care of himself. Here, in sight of these wretches, you ostentatiously toyed with your pistol holsters, or loosened your sword in its scabbard, and so passed on scathless. On leaving Alconbury, however, the horseman generally preferred company, because the highwaymen of Stonegate Hole were well armed, and, by consequence, courageous.
What, exactly, was Stonegate, or Stangate, Hole? It was the deep and solitary hollow that then existed at the foot of the northward slope of Alconbury Hill, known now as Stangate Hill. The name derived from this road being a part of the old Roman “Ermine Street,” formerly a stone-paved way, and the “Hole” was formed by a rise that immediately succeeded the descent. Quite shut in by dense woods, it was an ideal spot for highway robbery. When, in the later coaching era, the road was lowered through the crest of the hill, and the earth was used to raise it in the hollow, Stonegate Hole disappeared. Bones were found during the progress of the works, supposed relics of unfortunate travellers who had met their death at the hands of the highwaymen. A more or less true story was long told of an ostler of the “Wheatsheaf,” the inn that once stood on the hilltop. He, it seems, used to help in putting in the coach-horses when the teams were changed, and would then take a short cut across the fields, and be ready for the coach when it came down the road. The coachman, guard, and passengers, who did not know that the shining pistol-barrel he levelled at them was really a tin candlestick, were duly impressed by it, and yielded their valuables accordingly.
A tale used to be told of one of the old “London riders,” or “bagmen,” who lay at the “Wheatsheaf” overnight and set forth the next morning. His saddle-bags were full, and so weighted with samples of his wares that he could scarce sit his horse, and had to be helped into the saddle by an ostler. Once up, his eyes only with difficulty peered over this mountainous weight, but in this manner he set forth. He had not gone far before he thought he had lost his way, when fortunately he perceived another horseman, and hailed him. The stranger took no notice; and so our traveller ranged up alongside him with the question. Instead of replying, the stranger thrust his hand into his breast-pocket and withdrew what the traveller imagined to be a pistol. Recollections of the evil repute of the place suddenly rushed into the traveller’s mind, and, putting spurs to his horse, he dashed away from the supposed highwayman, and did not draw rein until in the neighbourhood of Huntingdon.
There he met a party of horsemen, who determined to hunt the highwayman down, and so, with the traveller, hurried on to Stonegate. “There he is!” cried the traveller, as they came in view of a peaceful-looking equestrian, ambling gently along.
“You are mistaken, sir,” said one of the party: “that is our Mayor, the Mayor of Huntingdon.”
But the bagman asserted he was right, and so, to end the dispute, the whole party rode up, and one wished “Mr. Mayor” good morning. It was indeed that worthy man, and although he again, instead of making answer, drew something from his pocket, it produced no alarm among his fellow-burgesses, for they at least knew him for a very deaf man, and had often seen him reach for that ear-trumpet which he now drew forth, clapped to his ear, and asked them what it was they said.
Swift, who, travelling between London, Chester, Holyhead and Dublin, remarked upon the many nations and strange peoples he passed on the way, serves to emphasise these notes upon the fading individuality of places and people. The dialect of “Zummerzet” has not wholly decayed, but it has become so modified that when old references to its Bœotian nature are found, the reader who knows modern Somerset, and does not consider these changes, concludes that its grotesque speech was greatly exaggerated; just as he cannot be made to implicitly believe the remarkable and oft-repeated story told by William Hutton of the visit of himself and a friend to Bosworth in 1770, when the people set the dogs at them, for the only reason that they were strangers; or that other tale of the savagery of the Lancashire and Yorkshire villagers, who, when a person unknown to them appeared, conversed as follow:—
“Dost knaw ’im?”
“Naya.”