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In my early days much of the passenger transit of South Wales and the south-westerly part of England passed over the old Passage Ferry across the Severn from Beachley to Aust, and consequently the coaches all passed our park gates. It was said there were fourteen coaches a day. On this I am unable to offer an opinion, but there were a great number, and amongst them were two mails. The road to the head of the old Passage Pier, from Chepstow, was about three and a half miles in length, and very hilly (going up one ascent, long or short as the case might be, to go down another), with the exception of two lengths of flat “galloping ground.” These well deserved their name, and I can still remember the swing of violent speed at which the high, piled-up vehicle tore past us, causing children and accompanying dogs to allow it a very free passage. The journey was not without risk of disaster, for on one occasion in turning a sharp angle, on the incline of a steep shore-hill, without due care, the coach lurched to the outward side of the curve and made a distribution of its outside passengers on the greensward by our park gates. It certainly would have been a great help in those days if the wish (though not exactly as he expressed it) of the driver of one of the more old-fashioned of the coaches could have been carried out, and “a little akyduct” made to convey the road from the top of one hill to the next, thus avoiding the dangerous descent.

The view from the tops of the coaches as they galloped along the flat road at the summit of the Severn cliffs down to the Ferry pier was very beautiful. On one side was the Severn, a mile wide at the narrowest, with the red Aust cliffs opposite, the Sedbury cliffs above; and, in the distance, about thirty miles away up the river, the hills, near or beyond Gloucester, could be faintly seen. On the other side, about a field or two from the road, was the lowest part of the Wye at its point of juncture with the Severn, and the noble estuary itself opening out from about four miles width till it was lost to view in the distance of the Severn Sea.

TIME-TABLE ILLUSTRATING THE METHOD OF TRAVELLING 200 YEARS AGO.

The Old Passage, though probably as well managed as was reasonably possible, was, in many respects, a most inconvenient necessity. On one occasion, while fourteen passengers were crossing in a sailing boat, every living thing, except one dog, perished in mid-transit. It was on a stormy Sunday in September, 1838, and the boat was heavily laden with horses as well as the passengers. How the accident happened was never known. One of my brothers had been watching the boat from our cliffs, and on looking again, after a minute or so, she was gone. The conjectural cause of the disaster was that one of the horses had become unruly. The assignment of the disaster to a judgment for travelling on Sunday, may be looked on as a state of feeling very desirable to be removed by changing times, which have brought a larger charitableness and greater common sense.

PLATE XIII.

Old Chepstow Bridge, rebuilt in 1816, with Post-chaise crossing it.

From an old picture signed W. Williams, 1783.

A novel custom was associated with the Old Passage. A man suspected of possible infection of hydrophobia, was put into the salt water, and towed about in the Severn at the stern of a boat. In the event of a man having been bitten by a stray dog, this operation made his village acquaintances much easier in their minds about him. They had also the fun, and in any case the patient would not be the worse for a thorough good washing!

The appliances of the ferry were a steam boat and various sailing boats, including one known as the Mail-boat, as well as on the Beachley side, an apparatus acting as a telegraph. This consisted of an arrangement of board which, when at rest, resembled a wooden window shutter about a couple of yards square, fastened to one of the buildings; and, by some code of signals of an exceedingly simple sort, requisite directions were conveyed across the river as to the boat service.

On our side there was one solidly built pier, serviceable for shipment of passengers or goods at all states of the tide, and accessible for all kinds of carriage use from the good road which terminated at the top in front of a small kind of hotel; it likewise had the desirable security, for the greater part of its length, of strong posts with chains between them. On the Aust side there was a high- and also a low-water pier, not far apart, a little way below the inn, and if the tide served for boats to reach these all went fairly well after disembarking, but it was a different matter at half-tide. The half-tide pier was a considerable distance from the others—a quarter or half a mile away beneath the cliffs, and mud and stones and the roughest imaginable affairs in the guise of road had to be got through or over on the way to the inn. The effect of this on the springs, paint, &c., of a good Long Acre-built barouche, when by some unhappy necessity it had to be committed to such a method of transit, may be easily imagined. The passage for a carriage was, at the best, not well arranged. A muster of fishermen or boatmen was made, and the carriage was turned on the pier and dragged more or less rapidly on board, and there, I presume, secured from movement, but, certainly, by no means from danger, for part of the freight might consist of half a dozen or a dozen bullocks, which shifted to one side or the other as the vessel lurched. On the whole the transit by the Old Passage Ferry, so well known in former days, was one link in a chain of necessities which left much room for changing times to improve.

The great change in the method of travelling may be said to have been publicly inaugurated in the spring of 1830^[22] by the opening of the Canterbury and Whitstable line of railway.

In the same year the Bill for the Warrington railway was passed by both Houses of Parliament, and permission was also granted to construct a line from Leicester to Swannington, Robert Stephenson being appointed chief engineer to both lines. But the great railway event of that year was the opening, with an imposing ceremonial, on September 15th, of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. This left nothing to be desired in showing high appreciation of the importance of advance in methods of locomotion. Although a complete success, from the point of view of capabilities of safe and also of rapid travelling, the day was one of great trouble and anxiety. As the train neared Manchester the mob crowded on the lines, and while to have gone forward at any moderate pace would have been death to hundreds, on the other hand, the slow movement allowed the populace to swarm on the carriages and display their political aversion to “the Duke” (Wellington) by throwing brickbats, and by other objectional irregularities. The riot was not so much remembered as the accident which resulted in the death of Huskisson. I can recollect the unsophisticated story of something being seen going along the line at such a speed that it was hardly discernible; and also that a horn was used for train signalling in place of the steam whistle. Carelessness of life through ignorance of the danger was everywhere conspicuous; discipline was much needed. My father while waiting at a station took pleasure in walking along the line to while away the time. Tying horse-carriages on open trucks was not an unusual practice with carriage-people who could afford to pay for the luxury. My father long travelled in his own carriage thus attached, and stepped from the truck on which it stood to the next, but of course at considerable danger to his person.

PLATE XIV.

A West of England Royal Mail en route. Original lent by Arthur Ackermann & Son, 191, Regent Street, W.