VANISHED INNS
So far back as 1786 there were three coaches passing through Salisbury on their way from London to Exeter, daily. Firstly, the ‘Post Coach’ every morning at eight o’clock, with the up coach to London every afternoon at four o’clock, Saturdays excepted. Secondly, a mail coach, specially advertised as carrying a guard all the way, every morning at ten o’clock, Sundays excepted, and the up mail every night at ten o’clock, Saturdays excepted. Thirdly, a ‘Diligence,’ which passed through every night about eight o’clock, the up coach at twelve, midnight. All these coaches stopped, and were horsed, at the ‘White Hart.’ In 1797 there were five coaches to and from London, daily, and three on alternate days; and three waggons, two every day, the other on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.
In those times, when highwaymen were numerous and daring and travellers appropriately anxious, stage-coach proprietors in Salisbury advertised the fact of their conveyances being provided with an armed guard, and that any one making an attempt at robbery would be handed over to justice. But, notwithstanding such bold announcements, all the friends and relatives of citizens daring the journey to London used to assemble on the London road and tearfully watch the coaches as they toiled up Bishop Down and over the crest of Three Mile Hill, into the Unknown. The spot is still called ‘Weeping Cross.’
Of the old Salisbury coaching inns, a goodly number have been either pulled down or converted to other purposes. The ‘King’s Head,’ the ‘Maidenhead,’ the ‘Sun,’ the ‘Vine,’ the ‘Three Tuns,’ and others have entirely disappeared; and the ‘Spread Eagle,’ the ‘Lamb,’ ‘Three Cups,’ ‘Antelope,’ and the ‘George’—where Pepys stayed and was overcharged—have become shops or private residences; while the beautiful old ‘Three Swans’ was converted into a Temperance Hotel five years ago.
There is a passage in Sir William Knighton’s Diary under date of 1832, which, although written without any special emphasis, is highly picturesque and informative on the subject of travelling at that time. It gives in one phrase a glimpse of the waiting-room which was a feature of all-coaching inns, and in another shows that it was possible to bargain for fares. Only in this instance the bargain was not struck.
He had come at half-past one in the morning into Salisbury by a cross-country coach, and waiting for the arrival of the mail to Exeter, ‘sat quietly by the fire in the common dirty room appropriated to coach passengers.’
For twenty minutes, he says, he had for companion a man who had just disengaged himself from an irritable rencontre with the coachman of the mail. He had waited from two o’clock in the afternoon to go on to Bristol, but when the time arrived he quarrelled with the coachman about whether he should pay nine shillings or twelve, the passenger insisting upon nine, the whip three shillings more; upon which the traveller decided not to go, returned to the coachroom, and ordered his bed. Sir William asked him if it really was worth while to lose the time and to pay for a bed at the inn over this unsuccessful negotiation, and to this the man replied that it was not. ‘In fact,’ said he, ‘we have both been taken in. The coachman thought I would pay, and I thought he would take my offer.’
XXIX
It is a nine-miles journey, due north from Salisbury to Stonehenge, but although it would, under
PEPYS AT OLD SARUM