Barnet was, to many coaching proprietors, the first stage out of London, and the town prospered exceedingly on the coaching and posting traffic of those two great thoroughfares—the Great North Road and the Holyhead Road. When the Stamford “Regent,” the York “Highflyer,” and the early morning coaches for Shrewsbury, Birmingham, Manchester, or Liverpool arrived, the passengers, who had not found time for breakfast before starting, were generally very sharp-set indeed, and the viands already prepared and waiting in the cosy rooms of the old hostelries, disappeared before their onslaught “in less than no time.” The battle of Barnet was fought over again every morning, but they were not men-at-arms who contended together, nor was the subject of their contention the Crown of England. They were just famished travellers who struggled to get something to eat and drink before the guard made his appearance at the door, with the fateful cry, “Time’s up, gentlemen; take your seats please.” When the horn sounded in the yard, desperate men would rush forth with hands full of food, and finish their repasts as best they might on the coach.
The two principal inns were the “Red Lion” and the “Green Man.” It was, and is now in some degree, a town of inns, but these were the headquarters of the two great political parties. Neither was a “coaching” inn, for they despised trafficking with ordinary travellers, and devoted themselves wholly to the posting business. The “Red Lion” was originally the “Antelope.” Standing in the most favourable position for intercepting the stream of post-chaises from London, it generally secured the pick of business going that way, unless indeed the political bias of gentlemen going down into the country forbade them to hire post-horses at a Tory house. In that case, they went to the “Green Man,” further on, which was Whig. And perhaps, in sacrificing to politics, they got inferior horses! The “Green Man” placed in midst of the town, was in receipt of the up traffic, and was the largest establishment, keeping twenty-six pairs of horses and eleven postboys, against the eighteen pairs and eight postboys of the “Red Lion”; and it is recorded that between May 9th and 11th, when, on May 10th, 1808, two celebrated prizefighters, Gully and Gregson, fought at Beechwood Park, Sir John Sebright’s place down the road, near Flamstead, no fewer than one hundred and eighty-seven pairs were changed. Those three days formed a record time for the “Green Man,” according to these figures:—
| Posting | £141 | 17 | 10½ |
| Bills in the house | 54 | 19 | 0 |
| Bills in the yard | 14 | 10 | 0 |
| £211 | 6 | 10½ |
The “boys” of the “Green Man” wore blue jackets; those of the “Red Lion,” yellow jackets and black hats.
An inn called the “Green Man” stands on the site of that busy house, but it is of more recent date than the old Whig headquarters. It may be seen at the fork of roads where the “new” road to St. Albans, driven through the yard of the old “Green Man” in 1826, branches off.
Thus the “Red Lion” remains, long after the eclipse of its rival. Its frontage is impressive by size rather than beauty. With a range of fifteen windows in line, and its fiercely-whiskered red lion balancing himself at the end of a prodigiously long wrought-iron sign, it is eloquent of the old days. The lion turns his head north, gazing away from the direction in which his chief customers came.
But this white-stuccoed frontage does not hide anything of antiquity, for this is not that original “Red Lion” to which Samuel Pepys resorted. The house he refers to in his diary is the “Old Red Lion”; down the hill, at the approach to Barnet. There he “lay” in 1667. “August 11th, Lord’s Day,” he writes: “Up by four o’clock . . . and got to the wells at Barnet by seven o’clock, and there found many people a-drinking.” After “drinking three glasses and the women nothing,” the party sojourned “to the Red Lion, where we ’light and went up into the great room, and there drank, and ate some of the best cheesecakes that ever I ate in my life.”
The keenness of the innkeepers who let post-horses during the last few years of the coaching age is scarcely credible. It was a fierce competition. The landlord of the “Red Lion” at Barnet thought nothing of forcibly taking out the post-horses from any private carriage passing his house, and putting in a pair of his own, to do the next stage to St. Albans. This, too, free of charge, in order to prevent the business going to the hated rival. Mine host of that hotel also had his little ways of drawing custom, and gave a glass of sherry and a sandwich, gratis, to the travellers changing there. But things did not end here. The landlord of the “Red Lion,” finding, perhaps, that the sherry and sandwich at the “Green Man” was more attractive than his method, engaged a gang of bruisers to pounce upon passing chaises, and even to haul them out of his rival’s stable-yard. Evidently a man of wrath, this licensed victualler! After several contests of this kind, the authorities interfered. The combatants were bound over to keep the peace, the punching of conks and bread-baskets, and the tapping of claret ceased, and people travelling down the road were actually allowed to decide for themselves which house they would patronise!