In despair at picturing Manchester in brief—for it is not to be done—I will devote some pages to a few words as to coaching times, and then conclude. Little can with advantage be said of those times, because the inns to and from which the coaches and waggons came and went are nearly all of the past, and because old inns of any kind are rare in Manchester nowadays. The ancient “Seven Stars” in Withy Grove is, however, not only much older than the oldest coach, but looks it too, in its timbered gables and stout walls, and is even of age remote enough for it to be claimed that the Collegiate Church itself is junior to it. Nay, it even pretends to be the “Oldest Licensed House in Great Britain.” Near it is the equally picturesque and ancient “Old Rover’s Return.” The “Bull’s Head,” in a neighbouring alley, with the finely moulded head of a bull by way of sign, has convivial memories and associations with early postal times, and there stands a grotesquely out-of-plumb timbered and lath-and-plastered old tenement in Long Millgate that was once the “Sun” inn, the place where Ben Brierley and his fellow dialect-poets found inspiration in the chimney-corner. The initials “W. A. F.” and the date 1647, are found upon the old building, but it is obviously at least a century older than that. No longer an inn, it is still known as “Poets’ Corner,” and in its rather vague celebrity the curio-dealer who now occupies the premises doubtless finds his account.

The foremost coaching inn at Manchester was the “Bridgewater Arms,” near the corner of High Street and Market Street. To it came the Royal Mail. In later years H. C. Lacy removed to grander premises, at the corner of Mosley Street and Market Street: a house that had in its day been a fine private mansion, and then still had the advantage of possessing a very large, well-stocked garden in the rear. He styled this house the “Royal Hotel and New Bridgewater Arms,” and to it came as well as the Mail, the “Defiance” and other smart coaches. It has long since disappeared, and the present “Royal Hotel” stands on the site; but the old original “Bridgewater Arms” still exists, although now, and for many a year past, occupied as warehouses. The initials B. I. M. and date 1736 are on a spout-head that looks down upon Bridgewater Place, the narrow alley upon which the warehouse fronts. It is a fustian warehouse in these days, but a poetic tribute by a former guest of the house, torn from the arms of his lady-love, remains, scratched on the glass of an upper window. He had his own ideas of where capital letters and punctuation should occur:

1797

This enriched pane is very carefully preserved from injury by being covered with wire, and thus the lover’s lament will probably remain so long as the house stands.

The “Peacock,” resorted to by the “Peveril of the Peak”; the “Swan,” where the “Independent” pulled up; the “Star,” rendezvous of the “Manchester Telegraph,” are now merely names; and the times they belonged to are perhaps more thoroughly forgotten at Manchester than in any other city. Looking upon the maze of branching tramlines and the hundreds of swiftly running electric cars that begin at five o’clock in the morning and do not cease until after midnight, and are driven more recklessly and at a greater speed than elsewhere, you clearly perceive that Manchester has no time for the past and not much leisure to expend upon the present.