Both these advertisements appeared in the columns of the Hull Packet in 1833; and timorous old ladies who wished to journey from Hull to Bridlington in that year were no doubt very thankful to the proprietors of the Wellington for making so clear the dangers of the road traversed by that ‘delightful conveyance,’ the British Queen.

Still standing by the side of what is now Cardigan Road at Bridlington, there is a mile stone informing all who desire the information that Beverley is distant 22 miles. It is on the old coaching road once traversed daily by the British Queen. But a few hundred yards past this relic of the old coaching days the road now reaches the sea-shore, and the remaining portion as far as Barmston has long since disappeared under the waves of the North Sea.

Very pleasant it must have been in the ‘Thirties’ to travel by a well-appointed stage coach—say the Rockingham, Rodney, Trafalgar, Wellington, True Briton, Express, Telegraph, King William, or Queen Adelaide, all of which coaches were running from Hull in 1832.

But this would be, of course, provided the weather were fine, and one could afford to travel ‘first class.’ It would not be pleasant to have to get out and walk uphill as the ‘second class’ passengers were expected to do in the case of a coach running from North Cave to Hull through Brantingham and Hessle; and it would be decidedly unpleasant to have to get out and push behind, as was demanded of the ‘third class’ passengers by this coach.

But there was always the danger of highwaymen to be faced, and the Royal Mail travelled ‘with a guard well armed,’ as the coaching bill reproduced on page 241 shows.

And what of winter travelling, with the thermometer down below freezing-point and the risk every minute of the coach’s being stuck fast in a snow-drift on a part of the road ‘five miles from anywhere’? Here are two local records which testify to the existence of such discomforts:—

Photo by][C.W. Mason
Pistols and Holsters formerly used on the Hull and Patrington Stage Coach.
(Now in the possession of Dr. J. Wright Mason, Hull)

1839. Jan. 7. A dreadful storm visited the country.... For an hour and a half the Scarbro’ mail coach horses could not contend[could not contend] against the wind. The inside passengers of the Beverley coach had to get out and support the vehicle from being overturned.