“What the deuce ails you, Hayward?” asked one of his box passengers, “are you dumb, man?”
Then the Sphinx broke silence: “Can’t drive and talk, too,” he said; and, closing his mouth like a steel trap, spoke no more.
That he was not only a master of the ribbons, but also of a peculiar feat in driving, has already been hinted. This exploit, only once known to be attempted by any other,[[2]] was repeated every time he brought the “Wonder” into Shrewsbury, and never failed to draw an appreciative knot of spectators, or to transfix with horror any strangers who might chance to be among the outside passengers. There was always some difficulty in driving up the steep and narrow Cop and into the “Lion” yard, standing on the near side. Other coachmen quartered slowly up, and then, having first drawn to their off side, turned carefully across and slowly piloted their teams through the narrow entrance of the “Lion.” Hayward’s method was radically different. Galloping up the hill and almost scraping the near-side kerb, he would pass the inn, and then, suddenly thonging his leaders, smartly turn them round in their own length opposite the street called “Dogpole.” Then, calling to the “outsides” to “mind their heads,” he would drive the coach at a trot into the yard, with an inch to spare.
[2]. Stephen Howse, of the Ludlow night mail, was the hero of that occasion. He was born in 1809, and died in 1888.
When the “Wonder” was driven off the London road, and became only a two-horse coach, running between Shrewsbury and Birmingham, Hayward drove the “Greyhound” between Shrewsbury and Aberystwith. Then, following the example of Tony Weller, he “took a widow and a pub.” This house, the “Raven and Bell,” next door to the “Lion,” was long since pulled down. He died November 1st, 1851, but his widow was still in business in 1856. Hayward lies near the scene of his daily exploit, in the churchyard of St. Julian’s, under the shadow of the square tower seen in the accompanying view of Wyle Cop. The flowers bloom fresh at the head of his grave.
XXI
Coaching enterprise, from the earliest to the latest days of the coaching era, flourished better at Shrewsbury than any other town along the Holyhead Road. An early mention of public coaches is found in Sir William Dugdale’s diary under date of May 2nd, 1659, when he says:—“I set forward towards London by the Coventre coach,” and is followed in June, 1681, by a reference to a journey from London to his country seat in Warwickshire by the “Shrewsbury coach.” This was an extremely deliberate conveyance. It trundled as far as Woburn the first evening and stopped there the night, for at that period when the state of the country was unsettled, and roads uncertain, and infested with bad characters, no one thought of travelling after sundown. The second evening it lay at Hillmorton, near Rugby, and thence proceeded, on the third day, to Coleshill. Sir William alighted there, leaving the coach to reach Shrewsbury by way of Sutton Coldfield, Aldridge Heath, and Wellington in another two days.
By the light of later coaching history, which shows that coaches between London and Shrewsbury were established principally at Shrewsbury to go to London—proving that the desire of country folk for the metropolis was greater than that of Londoners for the country—it would seem that this pioneer coach was also a Shrewsbury venture. It probably did not continue long, for even sixty years later Pennant describes how the able-bodied rode horseback to London, while the rich, who were the only people who travelled frequently, had their own carriages, leaving a very inconsiderable and uncertain number to support a regular conveyance. Thus it is that in 1730, when three Shrewsbury ladies visited the capital, we find them riding horseback, escorted by five gentlemen and six servants. Such goods as then passed between the two places came and went by pack horses, and it is not until 1737 that another glimpse of vehicles plying regularly along the road is obtained. From Shrewsbury in that year began the long-drawn journeys of the “Gee-ho,” whose establishment was due to a very shrewd and enterprising soldier, appropriately named Carter. He had been billeted at the “Pheasant,” on Wyle Cop, where the pack horse business was then located, and so enslaved the heart of the widowed Mrs. Warner, who kept the inn, that she married him. The old house is still on Wyle Cop, changed only in name, and that only by an addition. It is now the “Lion and Pheasant.”
The “Gee-ho” in part supplemented, but in greater measure supplanted, the pack horses. It was chiefly intended to carry goods, and was drawn by eight horses, which, with an extra couple to pull it out of the sloughs, brought the lumbering and creaking vehicle to or from London in seven, eight, or nine days, according to the condition of the roads.
Even in 1749, twelve years later, we do not find the failure of the first stage-coach of 1681 forgotten, for a certain Pryce Pugh, who was then landlord of what his advertisement calls the “Red Lion on Wild Cop,” in drawing attention to his house, mentions room for a hundred horses, and notes the starting of a stage-waggon for London, but says nothing of a coach. The horses, doubtless, were post-horses for riders.