".... Any bags in addition to the ordinary number must be reported to the road officers by the clerks of the divisions, that they may be entered under the head of 'extra,' also any agents or portmanteaus for Falmouth; and they must instruct the men carrying out the sacks and bags first to report them to the check clerk, and then take them through
the letter carriers' office to the Devonport or Gloucester omnibus, as the case may be, as the guards will not for the future come into the office."
It was at this time that the villages of Hallatrow, High Littleton, Paulton, Harptree (East and West), Farrington Gurney, Temple Cloud, Cameley, and Hinton Blewett were transferred from the postal control of Bath to that of Bristol, under which they still remain.
For several years the only trains carrying third-class passengers from Bristol started at 4.0 o'clock in the morning and 9.0 o'clock at night, offering the travellers, who were wholly unprotected from the weather, an alternative of miseries, and at first travellers were not much better off in point of speed when travelling by railway, as third-class passengers were 91⁄2 hours on the railway between Bristol and London. The coach at the time of its being taken off performed the journey under 12 hours.
The "Bush" coach office was closed in March, 1844.
The Bristol and Gloucester Railway was opened to the public on the 8th July, 1844. Of the seven coaches which had been running between the two
cities six were immediately withdrawn, and on the 22nd July the time-honoured "North Mail" left Bristol for the last time, the horses' heads surmounted with funereal plumes and the coachman and guard in equally lugubrious array.
As late as 1845 Her Majesty's mails were conveyed between Bristol and Southampton in a closed covered cart, "proper for the purpose," as set forth in an advertisement inviting tenders for a new contract. The whole journey had to be performed at the rate of eight miles within the hour, stoppages included. The hours of despatch were: From Bristol at about 6.0 p.m., and from Southampton about 9.0 p.m.
"The Old Bush Hotel," Corn Street, Bristol.
From a picture in the possession of E. G. Clarke, Esq.