Early Carriages and Roads

by Sir Walter Gilbey

To fully appreciate the enormous value of Macadam’s work it must be considered in conjunction with that of Telford the engineer, and with knowledge of the earlier methods of road-making. The original high-roads in England were the tracks made by travelling chapmen or pedlars, who carried their goods on pack horses. These naturally selected routes over the hills when they sought to avoid the bogs and quagmires of low-lying ground; and these routes, becoming in time the regular coach roads, left much to be desired in point of gradient and contour. Telford cut through the hills to obtain an easier ascent, and when Macadam had “made” the new road thus outlined it was as widely different from the original track it replaced as it is possible to conceive. “Nimrod,” writing in 1826, said, “Roads may be called the veins and arteries of a country through which channels every improvement circulates. I really consider Mr. Macadam as being, next to Dr. Jenner, the greatest contributor to the welfare of mankind that this country has ever produced.”

With good, firm and level roads the speed of the mail and stage coaches increased, and the endeavour to combine speed with safety brought about numerous minor but important improvements in coach-building, proprietors sparing neither pains nor money to insure the best materials and workmanship. The greatest improvements, says Mr. Thrupp, were those begun in 1820 by Mr. Samuel Hobson. He reduced the height of the wheels to 3 feet 3 inches in front, and 4 feet 5 inches behind, lengthened the coach body to better proportions and hung it lower, so that a double step would give access to the door instead of a three-step ladder. He wrought great improvements in the curves of the carriage, and did much to strengthen the details of the underworks.

FAST COACHES.

Coach driving became a favourite occupation among men of good birth who had run through their patrimony and could turn their hands to nothing more congenial. “Horsing” coaches was a business to which all sorts and conditions of men devoted themselves, and which did much to promote the spirit of rivalry that made for good service. Innkeepers and others contracted to supply horses for one, two, three, or more stages of a journey, and thus acquired a personal interest in the coach. The best coaches now ran at ten or ten and a half miles an hour, and faster over favourable stretches of road. The Quicksilver mail from London to Devonport, “Nimrod” tells us, was half a mile in the hour faster than most of the coaches in England, and did the fastest stage of the journey, four miles near Hartford Bridge, in twelve minutes. This coach on one occasion accomplished its journey of 216 miles in twenty-one hours, fourteen minutes, including stoppages.

The mail coaches, it should be said, carried three outside passengers at most, and no luggage at all on the roof. Of course these rates of speed, so much higher than had been known theretofore, called forth protests. “Old Traveller,” writing to the Sporting Magazine in 1822, objects to the encouragement given such hazardous work by “Nimrod.” In his younger days, he says, when about to start on a journey, his wife’s parting hope was that he would not be robbed; now she had changed it to the hope that he would not get his neck broken. It was no uncommon thing, at the beginning of the century and earlier, for a Birmingham merchant to make his will before he set out on a journey; and with all respect to the
“Old Traveller,” the risks he encountered on the road in the days before Macadam were as great from ruts and holes as from highwaymen.

ROYAL MAIL COACH.

Travelling on May-day was avoided by those who objected to fast work, for it was customary for rival stages to race each other the whole journey on that day, and old sporting papers contain occasional record of the fact that a coach had accomplished its entire journey at a rate of fifteen miles an hour. A law passed in 1820, to put an end to “wanton and furious driving or racing,” by which coachmen were made liable to criminal punishment if anyone were maimed or injured, did not stop this practice. For on May 1, 1830, the Independent Tallyho ran from London to Birmingham, 109 miles, in 7 hours, 39 minutes. The writer in Baily’s Magazine of June, 1900, before referred to, gives a graphic account of a May-day race between two of the smartest West country coaches, the Hibernia and l’Hirondelle, from which it appears that these contests were not always free from foolhardiness, though it must be admitted that they produced wonderful displays of coachmanship. Captain Malet gives the following as the fastest coaches in England in 1836:—

London and Brighton, 51½ miles, time five hours, fifteen minutes; London and Shrewsbury, 154 miles, time fifteen hours; London and Exeter, 171 miles, time seventeen hours; London and Manchester, 187 miles, time nineteen hours; London and Liverpool, 203 miles, time twenty hours, fifty minutes; London and Holyhead, 261 miles, time twenty-six hours, fifty-five minutes.

Some of the smartest coaches in England ran from London to Brighton, which, owing to George III’s patronage, had since 1784 risen from a mere fishing village to the most fashionable of seaside resorts. In 1819, says Bradfield, upwards of 70 coaches visited and left Brighton every day; in 1835, says Bradfield, there were 700 mail coaches and rather under 3,300 stages running in England; he estimates the number of horses used at over 150,000, while 30,000 men were employed as coachmen, guards, horse-keepers, ostlers, &c. Mr. W. Chaplin, the member for Salisbury, was the largest proprietor; he had five “yards” in London and owned 1,300 horses. Messrs. Horne and Sherman ranked next to Mr. Chaplin; each had about 700 horses.