“Peace hath its victories, no less renowned than war;” and there is nothing more remarkable than the engineering triumphs that land the Irish Member of Parliament, fresh from the Division Lobby at Westminster, at North Wall, Dublin, spouting treason, in nine hours and a quarter, or bring the Irish peasant, with the reek of the peat-smoke still in his clothes, and the mud of his native bogs not yet dried on his boots, to Euston in the same space of time.

But a hundred years ago, when the peaceful labours of the engineer had not begun to annihilate space and time, and the Union of Great Britain and Ireland had only just been effected, no such ready transit was possible, and our great-grandfathers reckoned their journeys between the two capitals in days instead of hours. The Holyhead Road, known to our fathers and ourselves, was not in existence; and Liverpool (and even Parkgate, near Chester) was as often the point of embarkation for Ireland as Holyhead. The journey from London to Dublin was then of uncertain length, determined by such fluctuating conditions as the season of the year, the condition of the roads, and the winds of St. George’s Channel—sometimes smooth, but more often stormy.

What the road was, and what it became, shall be the business of these pages to relate.

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Close upon two hundred years ago, then, when Queen Anne was just dead, and the Elector of Hanover had ascended the throne of England as George I., the way to Holyhead was, in great measure, an affair of individual taste and fancy. Some travellers went by way of Oxford and Worcester, others by Woburn, Northampton, Lutterworth, Stafford, Nantwich, and Chester; some kept the route now known as the Holyhead Road as far as Stonebridge, on the other side of Coventry, and thence by Castle Bromwich and Aldridge Heath; others followed it past Shrewsbury and turned off at Chirk for Wrexham; while others yet had their own preferences, and reached Holyhead goodness knows how—themselves, perhaps, least of all. Those were the times when, as Pennant tells us, the hardy country gentlemen rode horseback. Thickly wrapped in riding cloaks, and with jack-boots up to their hips, they splashed through mud and mire, making light of occasional falls, and so journeyed between London and Holyhead in perhaps six days, if they were both active and fortunate. Those travellers commonly rode post-horses, changing their mounts at well-known stages on the way. The system took its origin from the establishment of postmasters by the Post Office in 1635, when the charge for an able horse was 2½d. a mile. None but duly authorised persons were then permitted to supply horses. In 1658, according to an advertisement in the Mercurius Politicus, the mileage had become 3d. As time went on this monopoly was abolished, and most innkeepers supplied horses for those hardy riders who despised the newfangled coaches. The earliest mention of a coach on this road is found in the above-named paper, under date of April 9th, 1657: “For the convenient accommodation of passengers from and betwixt London and West Chester, there is provided several stage-coaches, which go from the George Inn, without Aldersgate, upon every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday—to Coventry in two days, for twenty-five shillings; to Stone in three days, for thirty shillings; and to Chester in four days, for thirty-five shillings; and from thence do return upon the same days, which is performed with much ease to the passengers, having fresh horses once a day.”

It may shrewdly be surmised that, as the Chester coach of 1739, mentioned by Pennant, did not succeed in performing the journey under six days, the coach of 1657 did not find it possible to do it in four; and this suspicion seems warranted by an advertisement in the Mercurius Politicus of March 24th, 1659, probably emanating from the same persons:—

“These are to give notice, that from the George Inn, without Aldersgate, goes every Monday and Thursday a coach and four able horses, to carry passengers to Chester in five days, likewise to Coventry, Cosell (Coleshill), Cank, Litchfield, Stone, or to Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Shrewsbury, Newport, Whitchurch, and Holywell, at reasonable rates, by us, who have performed it two years.

It will be observed that an alternative route, through Birmingham, is announced, probably to suit the wishes of those who might chance to book seats. The travelling was by no means comfortable, and in 1663 a young gentleman is found writing to his father: “I got to London on Saturday last; my journey was noe way pleasant, being forced to ride in the boote all the way. The company that came up with me were persons of greate qualitie, as knightes and ladyes. This travell hath soe indisposed mee, that I am resolved never to ride up again in the coatch.” He probably rode post ever afterwards.

In 1681 a coach was running (or crawling) between London and Shrewsbury, by way of Newport Pagnell. Sir William Dugdale, travelling by it from London to Coleshill, says: “The first night we stopped at Woburn, the second at Hill Morton, near Rugby, and on the third we proceeded to Coleshill.” Thence it went along the old Chester Road to Aldridge Heath and Brownhills, and by the Watling Street from that point to Wellington. This Shrewsbury stage was robbed on January 30th, 1703, in the neighbourhood of Brownhills, by a gang of men and women, who, after they had plundered the passengers, met three county attorneys, whom they also robbed. One of the attorneys had what is described as a “porte mantel.” In it, among other things, was a pair of shoes, in which the owner had hidden twenty guineas. The thieves threw the shoes away, and when they had departed he happily regained this most valuable portion of his luggage. Other wayfarers were not so fortunate on encountering this hybrid gang of desperadoes; for, ten days later, when two drovers, fresh from Newcastle Fair, with bags of money in their pockets, came jogging along the road, they were set upon and robbed. One was killed and the other dangerously wounded. Two days after this exploit, growing bolder, the gang attacked the High Sheriff of Staffordshire, with his lady and servants, coming from Lichfield Fair, took sixty guineas, and cut off one of the servants’ hands. This was too impudent: the country was scoured, and these murderous ruffians seized. They numbered nine in all, and of them three were women dressed in men’s clothes.

In 1702 the “Wolverhampton and Birmingham Flying Stage Coach” was announced, to go once a week to London, in three days, and set out on the return from the “Rose,” in Smithfield, every Thursday; but this enterprise seems to have been short-lived. Meanwhile, the Chester stage of 1657 and 1659 was still pursuing its steady way; proposing to go the journey in five days, but taking six. The difference between promise and performance is neatly illustrated by Pennant. “In March 1739,” he says, “I changed my Welsh school for one nearer the capital, and travelled in the Chester stage, then no despicable vehicle for country gentlemen. The first day, with much labour, we got from Chester to Whitchurch, 20 miles; the second day to the ‘Welsh Harp’; the third, to Coventry; the fourth, to Northampton; the fifth, to Dunstable; and, as a wondrous effort, on the last to London, before the commencement of night. The strain and labour of six good horses, sometimes eight, drew us through the sloughs of Mireden and other places. We were constantly out two hours before day, and as late at night; and in the depth of winter proportionally later. Families which travelled in their own carriages contracted with Benson & Co., and were dragged up in the same number of days by three sets of able horses.”

“The single gentlemen, then a hardy race, equipped in jack-boots and trousers up to their middle, rode post through thick and thin, and, guarded against the mire, defying the frequent stumble and fall, arose and pursued their journey with alacrity: while in these days their enervated posterity sleep away their rapid journeys in easy chaises, fitted for the conveyance of the soft inhabitants of Sybaris.”

The roads at this time were incredibly bad, no matter the route, and indeed these several ways had their differences originated and continually multiplied by certain lengths of road being impassable at one season, and others equally so on some other occasion. When they were all impassable at one and the same time—a not unusual occurrence—the traveller was indeed in evil case, and the highwayman suffered from great depression of trade. The chief fount of information for travellers at that time was Ogilby’s Britannia, first printed in 1675; a work of which much more will presently be said. This was a thick folio volume containing engraved plates and descriptions of every road in England. Every considerable inn kept a copy of “Ogilby” in those days, for the information of travellers; just as in the modern hotel one finds railway time-tables and county directories as a matter of course. Ogilby was in great request as a work of reference; so greatly indeed, that the early road travellers who thumbed his pages at meal-times and upset their wine over him, or now and again stole a particularly useful map, have rendered clean and perfect copies of early editions not a little difficult to come by. He was much too bulky for carrying about, and so the careful traveller made notes and extracts for use from day to day. Such an excerpt is the yellow and tattered sheet before the present writer, giving manuscript details of how to reach Coventry. But besides copied matter there is a good deal else drawn doubtless from first-hand observation. Coming for instance, to “ffinchley Comon, att y^e galowes keep to y^e right hande” is the direction, and the whole distance is punctuated with the remarks “bad waye,” “a slowe,” and other signs indicating depths of mud and ruggedness of road. “Galowes,” too, recurs with dreadful frequency, probably not because the person who wrote this wanted (like the Fat Boy in Pickwick) to “make yer flesh creep,” or because he was morbidly minded, but for the commonplace reason that gallows made excellent landmarks, and were as common objects of the road then as sign-posts are now.

Dean Swift is the great classic figure on the Holyhead Road at this period; although, to be sure, a very elusive and shadowy one, so far as records of his journeys are concerned. He, too, like Pennant’s hardy single gentlemen, commonly rode horseback, and has left traces of his presence here and there along the road, generally in witty and biting epigrams, written with a diamond ring on the windows of wayside inns. There could scarce, at this time, be anything more naÏvely amusing than the pleased surprise he exhibits in a letter written to Pope in 1726, at “the quick change” he made in seven days from London to Dublin “through many nations and languages unknown to the civilised world,” when he had expected the enterprise, “with moderate fortune,” to occupy ten or eleven. “I have often reflected,” he adds, “in how few hours with a swift horse or a strong gale, a man may come among a people as unknown to him as the antipodes.”