THE “FLYING COACH”

Manchester, less than half the way to Glasgow, was in later years very abundantly supplied with coaches from London; but London and Manchester were not in direct communication by coach until 1754; and had London been left to establish a line of coaches to Manchester, the date would no doubt have been much later. Indeed, it is to be noted that, almost without exception, the earlier coaches between London and the provinces were established by provincials seeking to reach London. The metropolis was always magnificently indifferent; but when the provincial manufacturing towns began to arise, the manufacturers, seeking business with that greatest of markets, and finding nothing for it but to ride horseback to and from London, speedily set up coach services. Thus it was that the first coach ever to run between Manchester and London was established by an association of Manchester men. This was the “Flying Coach” of 1754, which was announced with the statement that “However incredible it may appear, this coach will actually (barring accidents) arrive in London in four days and a half after leaving Manchester.”

Really and truly! as the children say. Here we smile; but those eighteenth-century projectors manifestly took things very seriously, as they had every reason to do; and doubtless considered the establishment of this flier a wonderful achievement.

Six years later, in 1760, Messrs. Handforth, Howe, Glanville & Richardson’s coach is found performing the journey in three days “or thereabouts”; and in 1770 the “London Flying Machine,” by Samuel Tennant, began to wing its way every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in summer, in two days, from the “Royal Oak,” Market Street. It set out in summer at the shocking hour of one o’clock in the morning, but conceded 4 a.m. in the winter months; when, however, it required another whole day for the journey.

The earlier coaches seem to have been discontinued, for Tennant’s “Flying Machine” was in 1770 the only one between London and Manchester; but for the less moneyed and more leisured classes whose time was of small value, and expedition was therefore of little moment, there were Matthew Pickford’s stage-waggons (“Flying Waggons” he called them), which, generally at a penny a mile, conveyed passengers and goods between London and Manchester in four and a half days. They went from the “Swan,” Market Street Lane, on Wednesdays and Saturdays; but had several rivals: notably Bass’s waggons, on Fridays, from the “Fountain”; Cooper’s, from the “Star,” Deansgate, on Wednesdays and Saturdays; Hulse’s, from the “Windmill,” on the same days; Washington’s, from the “Pack Horse,” Mill Street Lane, Tuesdays; and Wood’s, from the “Coach and Horses,” Deansgate, Wednesdays and Saturdays.

In 1776-7, serious competition began for the coaching traffic between London and Manchester, two rival concerns—the “London New and Elegant Diligence” and the “New Diligence”—each setting out from Manchester three times a week and taking only two days to perform the journey. The “New and Elegant” competitor set out from the “Upper Royal Oak” inn, Market Street Lane, and went by Macclesfield and Derby. Its complement was thirteen passengers, who were allowed 14 lb of luggage each, free; and the fare was £2 6s. or 3d. a mile. Among the proprietors of this coach occurs the name of Pickford.

The “New Diligence” (which appears to have been established before its “New and Elegant” fellow) went by way of Matlock and Derby.

The next great event was the establishment of the Manchester mail, in 1785. It left the yard of the “Swan with Two Necks,” in Lad Lane, every weekday evening at 7.30 p.m., and the General Post Office half an hour later, and came to H. C. Lacy’s “Bridgewater Arms,” Manchester, at 6 p.m. the next day. Time, 22 hours; a speed of close upon 8½ miles an hour. At its best period, from 1825 to the end, in 1837, it accomplished the journey in exactly 19 hours, at the average speed of 9·66 miles per hour.

Meanwhile, during the fifty-two years that witnessed the whole career of the mail-coach, down to its final run, stage-coaching along the road to Manchester was utterly revolutionised. Rivalry and competition, as fierce as that on any road, brought the coaches to such a degree of perfection that for comfortable travel, as then understood, it was ahead of all other routes; and to such a turn of speed that it was equal to the best for rapid transit.

During all this period, the districts north of Manchester were more or less beyond the ken of the London stage-coach proprietors, to whom the comparatively lean traffic of the road on to Lancaster, Carlisle, and Glasgow offered no great inducements for through bookings. Moreover, Manchester and Carlisle were themselves great coaching centres, whose coach proprietors were very well able to work by themselves and take such long-distance competition at a disadvantage. From the “Bridgewater Arms,” High Street, Manchester, went numbers of branch mails; from the “Star” inn, Deansgate, and the “Mosley Arms,” Market Place, went a long list of stage-coaches to Lancaster, Kendal, Carlisle, and Glasgow, as well as others along the important cross-roads; while from the “Swan” inn, the “Flying Horse,” the “Palace” inn, and the “Talbot,” Market Street; the “Golden Lion” and “Bush,” Deansgate; “Lower Turk’s Head,” Shude Hill; “Buck,” Hanging Ditch; “Boar’s Head,” Hyde’s Cross, and others a swarm of short-distance coaches set out.

The chief mail contractor at Manchester in the early days of coaching was Alexander Paterson, who removed from the “Lower Swan” inn, Market Street Lane, to the “Bridgewater Arms” in 1788. He was succeeded by H. C. Lacy, who in 1827 removed to what had until then been a private mansion at the corner of Market Street and Mosley Street, and opened it as the “Royal Hotel and New Bridgewater Arms.”

The older inn has long since been converted into warehouses, occupied at the present time by Messrs. Woodhouse, Hambly & Co.

Among the few stage-coaches advertised to run through the whole distance from London to Manchester and Glasgow was the “Courier,” which was started in later years and ran until the opening of the railway. It set out from the “Belle Sauvage,” Ludgate Hill, and from the “Castle and Falcon,” Aldersgate Street, every weekday at 3 p.m., and connected by a branch coach at Carlisle with Edinburgh.