"April 21, 1832. Royal Mail to Liverpool every day at 5 p.m. from White Lion, Broad Street; arrive twelve noon the following day by way of Chepstow, Monmouth, Hereford, Shrewsbury, and Gloucester. Return journey Liverpool 5 p.m. Arrive White Lion 12 noon next day.
Mr. Isaac Niblett, who became proprietor of the White Lion Inn in 1823, in which year Thomas Luce gave up the place, was a well-known individual in the coaching world when the mail coach system was at its zenith. He worked 600 coach and post horses—a number only exceeded by the great London coach proprietor Chaplin, with his 1,300, and Horne and Sherman with their 700. Of the twenty-two daily coaches between Bristol and London the greater proportion made the White Lion their headquarters. Amongst other coaches with which Isaac Niblett was especially associated were the "Red Rover" and the "Exquisite." The "Red Rover" ran from Bristol to Brighton through Bath, over Salisbury Plain, on to Southampton and Chichester, and covered the distance of 140 miles in fourteen hours. The "Exquisite" used to run from Birmingham to Cheltenham, thence on through Bristol to Exeter. In the Bristol Directory and Gazette of 1859, Mr. Niblett's innkeepership is alluded to thus:—"Isaac Niblett, White Lion and British Coffee House, family commercial and posting house; hearse and mourning coach proprietor." The White Hart, family and commercial hotel, Broad Street, was at that time kept by one Charles Smith.
Mr. Isaac Niblett, like John Weeks, of Bush Inn fame, had a country place near Bristol. He owned, and stayed from time to time at the Conigre House, Fylton. Mr. Niblett was for some time the owner of the old Bush Inn stables in Dolphin Street, according to evidence given in a recent trial before the Judge of Assize at Bristol. That site, as well as the Conigre Farm, Fylton, is, it is believed, still in the possession of his lineal descendants.
The Grand Hotel, one of the largest in the West of England, and most central in the city of Bristol, now stands on the sites of both the White Lion and the White Hart Hotels. Erected in 1869, it was known as the new White Lion until 1874, when its name was changed to that of the Grand Hotel. The accompanying illustration of the White Lion and the White Hart Inns, taken from a lithograph engraving of about 1880 by the well-known Bristol firm of lithographers, Messrs. Lavars, must have been copied from a picture produced subsequent to the old coaching days, and, judging from the costumes of the pedestrians depicted, the period was probably about 1860, or a few years before the demolition of the old inns. The figure of a white hart appears in the picture over the entrance door of that hostelry but the statue of a white lion, which for very many years stood over the entrance gateway to the inn of that name, and which is recollected by many persons still living, was for some reason or other omitted from the engraving.
THE OLD WHITE LION COACHING INN, BROAD STREET, BRISTOL.
The White Lion appears to have been the leading Inn in the town in 1824, for on May 12 in that year the Mayor, Corporation, and leading citizens dined there on the occasion of the laying of the foundation stone of the Bristol Council House. Samuel Taylor Coleridge delivered lectures in the large room of the Inn in 1800. It was the "blue" house, and in later times the coach which most frequently entered its narrow archway was driven by his Grace the sixth Duke of Beaufort, who put up at the inn on his visits to Bristol, as he had, it is said, a great respect for Isaac Niblett's sterling qualities and fine sporting instincts.
What an evolution in pleasure and commercial traffic has come about in the last three-quarters of a century! When the White Lion in Broad Street and the Bush Tavern in Corn Street were in their prime as Coaching Inns, a four-in-hand Coach in Bristol's narrow streets and on the neighbouring country roads was so often in evidence as scarcely to induce the pedestrian even to turn his head round to look at one in passing. Now such a patrician vehicle in Bristol's midst is brought down to an unit, and it is left to Mr. Stanley White, son of Sir George White, Bart., with his well-appointed Coach and his team of bright chestnuts, to link old Bristol with the traditions of past Coaching days. Strange that Mr. Stanley White should have blended in his one person the love of a coachman for a team with the will and nerve to render him one of Bristol's boldest and most expert drivers of the road machine of the latest kind, to wit: the Motor Car.
MR. STANLEY WHITE'S COACH.