The earliest coaches made no pretence of taking the traveller to Holyhead. Chester was the ultima thule of wheeled conveyance when Sir William Dugdale and Pennant kept diaries, or when Swift wrote. We have already seen that the Chester stage took six days, and therefore the horrors of the journey described by Swift about the year 1700, were protracted as well as acute. Whether or not he ever really made the journey by coach is uncertain, but if so, he certainly for ever after rode horseback. But here is his picture of such an experience:—

This engine of torture was, however, well patronised.

The first stage-coach to ply between London and Holyhead was the conveyance promoted chiefly by that enterprising Shrewsbury innkeeper, Robert Lawrence. It started in 1780, and went through Coventry, Castle Bromwich, Birmingham, Walsall, Wolverhampton, Shrewsbury, Llangollen, Corwen, and Conway, thus keeping pretty closely to the course taken by the modern Holyhead Road. It lay the first night at Castle Bromwich, the second at Oswestry, and the third (if God permitted) at Holyhead. Five years later (in the summer of 1785) the first mail-coach to Chester and Holyhead was established, going by Northampton, Welford, Lutterworth, Hinckley, Atherstone, Tamworth, Lichfield, Wolseley Bridge, Stafford, Eccleshall, Woore, Nantwich, Tarporley, Chester, and St. Asaph. This, the only mail route to Holyhead until 1808, measured 278 miles 7 furlongs, and was the longest of all ways. Other roads for many years led by Oxford and Stratford-on-Avon, and were used by some of the smartest coaches to the end of the coaching age; but the shortest route, the great “Parliamentary” road to Holyhead, measures 260½ miles. In 1808 the London, Birmingham, and Shrewsbury Mail, through Oxford, was extended to Holyhead, going by Llangollen, Corwen, and Capel Curig. It ran thus until 1817, when it was transferred to the direct Coventry route. The Holyhead Road had then begun to be reformed, and the direct Mail took precedence over the old “Holyhead and Chester Mail,” still going by its old course.

The “New Holyhead Mail,” as it was officially named, then started from the “Swan with Two Necks,” in Lad Lane, every evening at 7.30, and took 38 hours about the business. In 1826, the year when the Menai Bridge was opened, the time was cut down to 32¾ hours, and in 1830 to 29 hours 17 minutes, the mail arriving at Holyhead at 1.17 on the second morning after it had left London. In 1836 and the last two years of its existence, the journey was performed in 26 hours 55 minutes; the arrival timed for 10.55 p.m.

Here is the time-bill for that last and best achievement:—

The man who made that achievement possible was Thomas Telford. Long before his aid was sought, the question of improving the communications between the two countries had become a burning one. The Irish members, meeting no longer on St. Stephen’s Green, had a grievance in the circumstance of their journeys to the Imperial Parliament at Westminster being both tedious and hazardous, and this question of road-reform was the first raised by them. The Government, in reply, appointed a Commission; Rennie, the foremost engineer of his day, was called in to advise upon the harbours of Holyhead and Howth, and Telford in 1810 to plan the road improvements.

Exactly what the road was like before it was improved under Telford, let the Report of the Commissioners on Holyhead Roads and Harbours tell:—“Many parts are extremely dangerous for a coach to travel upon. From Llangollen to Corwen the road is very narrow, long, and steep; has no side fence, except about a foot and a half of mould or dirt, thrown up to prevent carriages falling down three or four hundred feet into the river Dee. Stage-coaches have been frequently overturned and broken down from the badness of the road, and the mails have been overturned. Between Maerdy, Pont-y-Glyn, and Dinas Hill, there are a number of dangerous precipices, steep hills, and difficult narrow turnings. At Dinas Hill the width of the road is not more than twelve feet at the steepest part of the hill, and with a deep precipice on one side; two carriages cannot pass without the greatest danger. At Ogwen Pool there is a very dangerous place, where the water runs over the road; extremely difficult to pass at flooded times.” Arrived at Bangor there were the dangers of the ferry to be braved, and, after these, 26 miles of the perilous old road across Anglesey, even now to be traced by those curious in these things. What travelling to Holyhead and Dublin was like in those old times may best be shown by quoting an old diary of 1787, of an expedition from Grosvenor Square, London. The party consisted of a coach and four, a post-chaise and pair, and five outriders. They reached Holyhead in four days (expenses, so far, £77 1s. 3d.), and crossed St. George’s Channel at a further cost of £37 2s. 1d.; and cheap, too, as times then were.

The first idea of the Government towards improving the road was to indict twenty-one townships between Shrewsbury and Holyhead. It would have been an excellent notion, only for the fact that those places were quite unable to find the penalties actually recoverable at law, much less to reconstruct the road. A larger view of the necessities of the case had to be taken. The nation was already pledged to the construction of two harbours, and to the nation now fell the duty of making access to Holyhead Harbour moderately safe. The first practical result was the selection of Telford as engineer, to survey and report upon the 109 miles between Shrewsbury and Holyhead. Telford had already carried out many improvements for the Government in the Highlands, and had, years before, as Surveyor to the County of Salop and Engineer of the Ellesmere Canal, acquired a thorough knowledge of the road through North Wales. He made a survey in 1811, but it was not until 1815 that the Government finally adopted his report and that of the Commissioners, and the Treasury found the money for the work. It was then decided that improvements should be made along the whole length of road between London and Holyhead, but that the Shrewsbury to Holyhead portion being incomparably the worst, it should have the first attention. In the course of five years this first part of the work was completed. The general line of the old road was followed, along the valley of the Dee, and thence from Corwen, across the watershed to the Vale of Conway and to the summit-level at Ogwen Pool; descending from that point by the valley of Nant Ffrancon to Bangor and the Menai Straits. There a quarter of a mile of stormy water still separated the Isle of Anglesey from the mainland, and it was not until the January of 1826 that it was bridged. From the Anglesey side of the Straits an entirely new and direct road was made across the island to Holyhead, saving three miles, and giving a level route, instead of the precipitous old way.

In the result, the Holyhead Road through North Wales may, without hesitation, be pronounced the finest in the land. Passing though it does through the wildest scenery, nowhere is the gradient steeper than 1 in 20, while its width, from 28 to 34 feet, and its splendid surface render it safe and convenient. The old road, frequently as steep as 1 in 6½, and with its sides unprotected from the cliffs and torrents that terrified bygone generations, has almost wholly vanished under the new; but in those places where Telford did not merely remodel it, and took an entirely new line, its character may still be seen.

In 1820 the London to Shrewsbury portion of the work was begun, and the greater part completed by 1828. Minor improvements were made on it from time to time in after years, but it does not nearly compare with the more thorough work undertaken through North Wales. Parts remain rich in very steep hills, and powerful interests situated in the larger towns vetoed the cutting of new routes through crooked and awkward approaches, and so have left much to be desired. Telford himself died, in his seventy-seventh year, in 1834, but the Holyhead Road Commissioners were in existence for years afterwards, and continued to send forth Reports until 1851. For a long period, however, before that time those documents, containing as they do only the surveyors’ reports as to the condition of the road and bridges, have nothing of interest. The last paper of importance is the Parliamentary Return of 1839, giving the sum of the expenses incurred on the whole length of road, including improvement of the road from Bangor to Chester, and cost of building the Menai and Conway bridges. The total amount was £697,963 14s. 9d., of that sum £164,489 7s. 9d. was granted by Parliament towards the work as a national undertaking: the remaining £533,474 7s. 0d. lent by the Treasury, to be repaid by the Commissioners out of the tolls. In 1839, according to a return made to Parliament by the Office of Woods and Forests, £250,880 5s. 9¼d. had been thus repaid. That very little of the balance found its way back to the Treasury may confidently be asserted. But, however that matter stands, certainly the work was done with rigid economy and, considering its nature and extent, at a very small cost.

Some part of the cost of the improved road fell upon the letter writers of that day. The postage of a letter to Ireland was sixteen pence, made up of the following items:—

It made no difference that the direct Holyhead Mail went nowhere near the Conway Bridge: letters for Ireland were still charged that penny, until Penny Postage came in 1841 and treated all places in the United Kingdom alike.