The Manchester and Glasgow Road
I
Beyond any possible doubt, there is more history—and more varied history—to the mile, along the lengthy road from London to Glasgow than on any other highway in this historic England of ours; with the sole possible exception of the road to Dover. The Great North Road itself is romantically historic, and there are 389 miles of it, but it is not so compact of historic and domestic incident as the Manchester and Glasgow Road—and it is not quite so long. The difference, to be sure, is trifling—merely a matter of 11¼ miles—but the long miles to Manchester, and on to Glasgow, are more plentifully set with towns and villages than the Great North Road, which, upon the whole, takes an austere and aloof course; and there is a wealth of detail on the way that presents at times an embarrassing choice for the historian.
The Manchester and Glasgow Road, according to the best modern authorities, measures from the General Post Office, London, to the Royal Exchange, Glasgow, 400¼ miles. Before Telford in 1816, under authority of the Government of that day, took the Carlisle and Glasgow division of it in hand, and eventually shortened it by various engineering expedients, the whole distance was 409¼ miles.
There is not the slightest hesitancy to be entertained about the course of this great road. It suited the Post Office in the old mail-coach days to send the mails along the Great North Road to Boroughbridge, and thence across country to Penrith, and so forward to Glasgow, and the contractors made the distance only 397¾ miles; but the route was that adopted here; through St. Albans, the historic towns of Northampton, Leicester, and Derby, Manchester, Preston, Lancaster, and Carlisle. The mere names of those places conjure up many a scene in the stirring annals of the nation, and suggest crowded incidents in the scarcely less interesting story of industrial progress; while the scenery along the road is in many districts of a high order of beauty, ranging between such extremes as the quiet pastoral country beyond St. Albans, through Northamptonshire and Leicestershire, to the wild moors of Staffordshire, the solemn beauty of Lancaster and Solway Sands, the stark heights of Shap Fell, and the bleak moors between Moffat and Douglas Mill.
THE FIRST GLASGOW COACH
The first stages of the road are common to the Great North Road and the Holyhead Road. At Hadley Green, beyond Barnet, we bid good-bye to the first, and at Hockliffe, 37½ miles from our starting-point, we branch off to the right from the second of those great highways.
II
Through communication between London and Glasgow was undreamed of in the earliest days of coaching; and never, in the very nature of things, was the journey often made without a break, until railway travelling came to entirely alter the complexion of affairs. But Glasgow was early convinced of the necessity for public conveyances between itself and other parts; and at so remote a date as 1678 had succeeded in establishing what would appear to have been a municipally supported coach service between Glasgow and Edinburgh. This coach was maintained by William Hoorn, Hoon, or Hume, “marchand in Edinburge,” who received a grant of £22 4s. 5d., and an annual subsidy of £11 2s. 3d., paid two years in advance, and for a term of five-and-a-half years, from the magistrates. The fare was 8s. in summer, and 9s. in winter; the burgesses of Glasgow to have the preference.