Читать книгу The Newmarket, Bury, Thetford and Cromer Road - Charles G. Harper - Страница 9

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The Newmarket and Thetford route was not a favourite one with the earliest coachmasters. Its lengthy stretches of unpopulated country rendered it a poor speculation, and the exceptional dangers to be apprehended from Highway-men kept it unpopular with travellers. The Chelmsford, Colchester, and Ipswich route on to Norwich was always the favourite with travellers bound so far, and on that road we have details of coaching so early as 1696. Here, however, although there were early conveyances, we only set foot upon sure historic ground in 1769, when a coach set out from the “Bull,” Bishopsgate, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 7 a.m., and conveyed passengers to Norwich at £1 2s. each.

In that same year a “Flying Machine,” in one day, is found going from the “Swan with Two Necks” on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays in summer at 12 o’clock noon. For this express speed of Norwich in one day the fare was somewhat higher; £1 8s. was the price put upon travelling by the “Flying Machine”; but in winter, when it set forth on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, at the unearthly hour of 5 a.m., the price was 3s. lower.

In 1782 a Diligence went three times a week, at 10 p.m., from the “White Horse,” Fetter Lane; as also did a “Post Coach,” at 10 p.m., from the “Swan with Two Necks,” the “Machine” at midnight, and “a coach,” name and description not specified, from the “Bull,” Bishopsgate Street, at 10 p.m. There were thus at this time four coaches to Norwich. In 1784 the “Machine” disappears from the coach-lists of that useful old publication, the Shopkeepers’ Assistant, and in its stead appears for the first time the “Expedition” coach. This new-comer started thrice a week—Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays—from the “Bull,” Bishopsgate Street, at the hour of 9 p.m. Evidently there were stout hearts on this route in those times, to travel thus through the terrors of the darkling roads.

In 1788 the “Expedition” is found starting one hour earlier: in 1790, another two hours. In 1798 it set out from the “White Horse,” Fetter Lane, so early as 3.45 p.m., and had begun to go every day. Calling on the way at its original starting-point, the “Bull,” it left that house at 4 p.m., and continued on its way without further interruption.

What the “Expedition” was like at this period we may judge from the very valuable evidence of the accompanying illustration, drawn in facsimile from a contemporary painting by Cordery. It was one of the singular freaks that had then a limited vogue, and is a “double-bodied” coach, designed to suit the British taste for seclusion. How the passengers in the hinder body entered or left the coach is not readily seen, unless we may suppose that the artist was guilty of a technical mistake, and brought the hind wheels too far forward. The only alternative is to presume a communication between fore and hind bodies.

THE NORWICH STAGE, ABOUT 1790.

From a painting by an artist unknown.

This illustration, so deeply interesting to students of coaching history, was evidently, as the long inscription underneath suggests, designed in the first instance as a pictorial advertisement, and doubtless hung in the booking-office of the coach at the “Bull” in Bishopsgate Street. That quaintly-mispelled programme shows its speed, inclusive of stops for changing and supper, to have been six miles an hour.

The difficulties in the way of the coaching historian are gravely increased by the omissions and inaccuracies that plentifully stud the reference books of the past. Thus, although the Shopkeepers’ Assistant omits all notice of the “Expedition” after 1801, we cannot admit it to have been discontinued, for it is referred to in a Norwich paper of 1816, in which we learn that it left Norwich at 3 p.m. and arrived at London at 9 a.m., a performance slower by half an hour than that of eighteen years earlier. From this notice we also learn the fares, which were 35s. for insides and 20s. out.

In 1821 it left London at 5.30 p.m., and in 1823 at 5 p.m. We have no record of its appearance at this time, but the double-bodied coach had probably by then been replaced by one of ordinary build. The old-established concern seems, however, to have lost some of its popularity, for on April 10th, the following year, 1824, the proprietors discontinued it, and started the “Magnet”—so named, probably, because they conceived such a title would have great powers of attraction. If the mere name could not have brought much extra custom, at least the improved speed was calculated to do so. The year 1824 was the opening of the era of fast coaches all over the country, and the “Magnet” was advertised to run from the “White Swan” and “Rampant Horse,” Norwich, at 4 p.m., and arrive at London 7 a.m. These figures give a journey of fifteen hours, a considerable improvement upon the performances of the old “Expedition,” but the return journey was one hour better. Leaving the “Bull,” Bishopsgate Street, at 7 p.m., the coach was at Norwich by 9 o’clock the next morning.

The “Magnet,” unfortunately, was no sooner started than it met with a mishap. On the midnight of May 15th the up coach, crossing the bridge over the Cam at Great Chesterford, about midnight, ran into a swamp, and the passengers who did not wish to drown had to climb on to the roof and remain there, while the water flowed through the windows. Eventually the coach was dragged out by cart-horses. The swamp is still there, beside the road.

This Coach from Norwich to LONDON by Newmarket every Day Convey 8 Insides 4 in Each Body & 6 Outsides in the most Pleasant And Agreeable Stile of any Coach yet offer’d to the Public it Travels 108MILES in 17 hours & half Including half an hour for Supper & the time Of Changeing Horses on the Different Stages the Above Vehicle Is At Present drove by a Coachman who has drove this & others for the Above PROPRIETORS upwards of 19 Years without Overturning Or Any Material Accident happening to any Passengers or Himself. THE “EXPEDITION,” NEWMARKET AND NORWICH STAGE, ABOUT 1798. From the painting by Cordery. This was made, apparently, as an advertisement of the coach.

Meanwhile, the down coach came along, and had only just crossed the bridge when the arch, forced out by the swollen state of the river, burst, with a tremendous crash. Another coach, approaching, received warning from the guard of the “Magnet” swinging his lantern. Had it not been for his timely act, a very grave disaster must have happened, and the passengers of the coach very properly set afoot a subscription for him.

Meanwhile the Royal Mail was going every week-day night, at 7 p.m. from the “Golden Cross,” Charing Cross, and from the “Flower Pot,” Bishopsgate Street, an hour later. It ran to the “King’s Head,” Norwich, and went by Bury St. Edmunds, continuing that route until January 6th, 1846, when—the last of the coaches on this road—it ceased to be.

In 1821 the “Times” day coach left the “Blue Boar,” Whitechapel, at 5.45 every morning, going by Bury; the “Telegraph” day coach, by Barton Mills and Elveden, started from the “Cross Keys,” Wood Street, at 6.45 a.m., and got to Norwich in 13 hours; a coach from the “Bull,” Bishopsgate Street, travelling by Bury, left at 7 a.m.; from the “White Horse,” Fetter Lane, a “Light Post” coach set out, by Barton Mills and Elveden, at 5.30 p.m., arriving at the “White Swan,” Norwich, in 15½ hours, at 9 a.m.; and a coach by the same route from the “Golden Cross,” Charing Cross, at 6.30 a.m., arriving at 8 p.m.

In addition to these were the so-called “single” coaches: i.e., those not running a down and an up coach, but going down one day and returning the next. These were the conveyance from the “Bull,” Bishopsgate Street, at 5.30 a.m., on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, by Barton Mills and Elveden, reaching the “White Swan,” Norwich, in 12½ hours (the best performance of all); and the “Norwich Safety,” by Bury, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, from the “Bull and Mouth” at 7.30 p.m.; a very slow, as well as a self-styled “safe” coach, for it only reached Norwich at 11 a.m.; thus lagging 15½ hours on the road.

The “Phenomenon,” or “Phenomena,” as it was variously styled, left the “Boar and Castle,” 6, Oxford Street, where the Oxford Music Hall now stands, at 5.30 a.m., and the “Bull,” Whitechapel, at 6.30, and went a route of its own, by Chelmsford, Braintree, Sible and Castle Hedingham, Sudbury, Bury, and Scole, to Norwich. To Bury, especially, went three coaches, two of them daily, and one thrice a week.

The Norwich Mail, by Newmarket and Bury, had in the meanwhile been abandoned by Benjamin Worthy Horne, of the “Golden Cross,” and had been taken over by Robert Nelson, of the “Belle Sauvage.” It was the only mail he had. He horsed it as far as Hockerill, and it is eminently unlikely that he and his partners down the road did much more than make both ends meet. For Post Office purposes the Mail was bound to go by Bury, which involved seven miles more than by the direct route, and it had to contend with the competition of the “Telegraph” day coach, going direct, and at an hour more convenient for travellers. So this Mail never loaded well, and coachmasters were not eager to contract for running it. The Post Office, accustomed to pay the quite small amounts of 2d. and 3d. a mile, paid 8d., and then 9d., per mile for this, to induce any one to work it at all, and it was contemplated to entrust the mail-bags to stage-coaches along this route, when the railway came and cut off stage and mail alike.

This Norwich Mail was not without its adventures. It was nearly wrecked in the early morning of June 15th, 1817, when close to Newmarket, by a plough and harrow, placed in the middle of the road by some unknown scoundrels. The horses were pitifully injured. A year or so later it came into collision on the Heath with a waggon laden with straw. A lamp was broken by the force of the impact, and straw and waggon set ablaze and destroyed.

Beside the coaches, there were many vans and waggons plying along the road, and some comparatively short-distance coaches. Thus there was the “Old Stortford” coach, daily, between London and Bishop’s Stortford, and the Saffron Walden coach, twice daily, from the “Bull,” Whitechapel; together with the Saffron Walden “Telegraph,” from the “Belle Sauvage,” on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. “Gilbey & Co.” had a coach plying the twelve miles between Bishop’s Stortford and Saffron Walden, twice daily. Coaching between London and Bishop’s Stortford ended when the “Northern and Eastern Railway”—long since amalgamated with the Great Eastern—was opened to that point, in 1841. All coaches between London and Norwich ceased to run early in 1846.