The Bath Road: History, Fashion, & Frivolity on an Old Highway
Part 1
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THE BATH ROAD
* * * * *
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
THE BRIGHTON ROAD: Old Times and New on a Classic Highway.
THE PORTSMOUTH ROAD, and its Tributaries, To-day, and in Days of Old.
THE DOVER ROAD: Annals of an Ancient Turnpike.
THE EXETER ROAD: The Story of the West of England Highway. [_In the Press._
* * * * *
THE BATH ROAD
History, Fashion, & Frivolity on an Old Highway
by
CHARLES G. HARPER
Author of "The Brighton Road," "The Portsmouth Road," "The Dover Road," &c. &c.
Illustrated by the Author, and from Old Prints and Pictures
London: Chapman & Hall, Limited 1899 (_All Rights Reserved_)
Printed by William Clowes and Sons, Limited, London and Beccles.
TO E. T. COOK, ESQ.
_Dear Mr. Cook,_
_It was by your favour, as Editor of the_ DAILY NEWS, _that the very gist of this book first saw the light, in the form of two articles in the columns of that paper. It seems, then, peculiarly appropriate that these pages--representing, in the measurements common to journalists and authors, a growth from four thousand to some sixty thousand words--should be inscribed to yourself._
_Sincerely yours_, CHARLES G. HARPER.
_Preface_
_This, the fourth volume in a series of books having for its object the preservation of so much of the Story of the Roads as may be interesting to the reading public, has been completed after considerable delay. The_ DOVER ROAD, _which preceded the present work, was published so long ago as the close of 1895, and in that book the_ BATH ROAD _was (prematurely, it should seem, indeed) described as "In the Press." Attention is drawn to the fact, partly in order to point out how quickly and how surely the old-time aspects of the roads are disappearing; for, since the_ BATH ROAD _has been in progress, no fewer than four of the old inns pictured in these pages have disappeared, while great stretches of the road, once rural, have become suburban, and suburban streets have been so altered that they are in no wise distinguishable from those of town. It is because they will preserve the appearance and the memory of buildings that have had their day and are now being swept off the face of the earth, that it is hoped these volumes will find a welcome with those who care to cherish something of the records of a day that is done._
CHARLES G. HARPER.
PETERSHAM, SURREY, _February, 1899_.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
SEPARATE PLATES
PAGE
1. GEORGE THE THIRD TRAVELLING FROM WINDSOR TO LONDON, 1806. (_After R. B. Davis_) Frontispiece.
2. COACHING MISERIES. (_After Rowlandson_) 7
3. PASSENGERS REFRESHED AFTER A LONG DAY'S JOURNEY. (_After Rowlandson_) 13
4. THE "WHITE BEAR," PICCADILLY 23
5. ALLEN'S STALL AT HYDE PARK CORNER, ABOUT 1756 35
6. HYDE PARK CORNER, 1797 41
7. KENSINGTON HIGH STREET, SUMMER SUNSET 47
8. COLNBROOK, A DECAYED COACHING TOWN 101
9. AN ENGLISH ROAD 125
10. MAIDENHEAD THICKET 131
11. THE STAGE WAGGON. (_After Rowlandson_) 139
12. THEALE 143
13. WOOLHAMPTON 147
14. RAIL AND RIVER: THE KENNET AND THE GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY 151
15. AT THE 55TH MILESTONE 155
16. HUNGERFORD 169
17. MARLBOROUGH 189
18. FYFIELD 195
19. MARLBOROUGH DOWNS, NEAR WEST OVERTON 199
20. THE WHITE HORSE, CHERHILL 207
21. THE OLD MARKET HOUSE, CHIPPENHAM 211
22. BOX VILLAGE 225
23. BATHAMPTON MILL 229
24. PRIOR PARK 247
25. BATH ABBEY: THE WEST FRONT 261
26. THE ROMAN BATH, RESTORED 265
ILLUSTRATIONS IN TEXT
Old Village Lock-up, Cranford (_Title-page_)
Sign of the "White Bear," now at Fickles Hole 25
The "White Horse" Inn, Fetter Lane. Demolished 1898 30
Courtyard of the "Old Bell," Holborn. Demolished 1897 32
Hyde Park Corner, 1786 37
Hyde Park Corner, 1792 39
The "Halfway House," 1848 43
"Oldest Inhabitant" 50
Thackeray's House, Young Street 54
The "White Horse." Traditional Retreat of Addison 55
The "Red Cow," Hammersmith. Demolished 1897 57
Robin Hood and Little John 64
The "Old Windmill" 65
The "Old Pack Horse" 67
Kew Bridge, Low Water 69
Cottages, supposed to have been the Haunts of Dick Turpin 72
A Bath Road Pump 85
The "Berkeley Arms" 86
Cranford House 88
The "Old Magpies" 90
The "Gothic Barn," Harmondsworth 95
Old Flail, Harmondsworth 96
The County Boundary 98
Almshouses, Langley 104
The Stolen Fountain 105
Windsor Castle, from the Road near Slough 106
The "Bell and Bottle" Sign 133
Palmer's Statue 135
Thatcham 149
Inscription, Newbury Church 157
Old Cloth Hall, Newbury 160
The last of the Smock-frocks and Beavers 164
Curious old Toll-house 165
Hungerford Tutti-men 171
Littlecote 176
The Haunted Chamber 178
Roadside Inn, Manton 194
Avebury 201
Silbury Hill 202
Cross Keys 218
The Hungerford Almshouse, Corsham Regis 221
Entrance to Box Quarries 224
The Sun God 233
Roman inscribed tablet 235
The Batheaston Vase 242
"Sham Castle" 249
Old Pulteney Bridge 253
Illustrations to Old Advertisements 258, 259
THE ROAD TO BATH
London (Hyde Park Corner) to-- MILES
Kensington-- St. Mary Abbots 1-3/4 Addison Road 2-1/2
Hammersmith 3-1/4
Turnham Green 5
Brentford-- Star Gates 6 Town Hall (cross River Brent and Grand Junction Canal) 7
Isleworth (Railway Station) 8-1/2
Hounslow (Trinity Church) 9-3/4
Cranford Bridge (cross River Crane) 12-1/4
Harlington Corner 13
Longford (cross River Colne) 15-1/4
Colnbrook (cross River Colne) 17
Langley Broom ("King William IV." Inn) 18-1/2
Slough ("Crown" Hotel) 20-1/2
Salt Hill 21-1/4
Maidenhead (cross River Thames) 26
Littlewick 29-1/4
Knowl Hill 31
Hare Hatch 32-1/4
Twyford (cross River Loddon) 34
Reading (cross River Kennet) 39
Calcot Green 41-1/2
Theale 44
Woolhampton 49-1/4
Thatcham (cross River Lambourne) 52-3/4
Speenhamland} } 55-3/4 Newbury }
Church Speen 56-3/4
Hungerford (cross River Kennet) 64-1/2
Froxfield (cross River Kennet) 67
Marlborough 74-1/2
Fyfield 77
Overton 78
West Kennet (cross River Kennet) 79-1/4
Beckhampton Inn 81
Cherhill 84
Quemerford (cross tributary of River Marden) 86-1/4
Calne (cross River Calne) 87-1/4
Black Dog Hill 88-3/4
Derry Hill (Swan Inn) 90-3/4
Chippenham (cross River Avon) 93-1/4
Cross Keys 96-1/2
Pickwick ("Hare and Hounds" Inn) 97-1/4
Box 100-1/4
Batheaston 103-1/2
Walcot 104-1/2
Bath (G. P. O.) 105-3/4
The BATH ROAD
I
The great main roads of England have each their especial and unmistakeable character, not only in the nature of the scenery through which they run, but also in their story and in the memories which cling about them. The history of the Brighton Road is an epitome of all that was dashing and dare-devil in the times of the Regency and the reign of George the Fourth; the Portsmouth Road is sea-salty and blood-boltered with horrid tales of smuggling days, almost to the exclusion of every other imaginable characteristic of road history; and the story of the Dover Road is a very microcosm of the nation's history. Nothing strongly characteristic of England, Englishmen, and English customs but what you shall find a hint of it on the Dover Road. As for the Holyhead Road, it traverses the Midland territory of the fox-hunting and port-drinking squires, and reeks of toasts and conjurations of "no heel-taps;" the great North Road is an agricultural route pre-eminently; the Exeter Road the running-ground of some of the fleetest and best-appointed coaches of the Coaching Age; while the Bath Road was at one time the most literary and fashionable of them all.
The best period of the Bath Road was peculiarly the era of powder and patches; of tie-wigs, long-skirted coats, and gorgeous waistcoats; of silk stockings and buckled shoes; when the test of a well-bred gentleman was the making a leg and the nice carriage of a clouded cane; when a grand lady would "protest" that a thing which challenged her admiration was "monstrous fine," and a gallant beau would "stap his vitals" by way of emphasis. It was a period of rigid etiquette and hollow artificiality; but a period also of a grand literary upheaval, and an era in which people were not, as now, merely clothed, but dressed.
Bath at this time was the most fashionable place in all England. Did my lady suffer from that mysterious eighteenth-century complaint "the vapours," she journeyed to "the Bath." Did my lord experience in the gout a foretaste of the torments of that place popularly supposed to be paved with good intentions, he also went to Bath, in his private carriage, cursing as he went; while the halt, the lame, the afflicted of many diseases, came this way; some posting, others by stage-coach, and yet more riding horseback. Every invalid, hypochondriac, and _malade imaginaire_ who could afford it went to Bath, for continental spas had not then become possible for English people, and the nauseating waters of Aix, Baden, and other places simply trickled unheeded away.
[Sidenote: _THE BEGGARS OF BATH_]
Every invalid, in fact, who could afford it, went to Bath, and the mentally afflicted, who could not go, were sent thither; so that the saying which is now become proverbial (and whose origin and subtle innuendo seem in danger of being lost) arose, "Go to Bath," with the rider, "and get your head shaved;" the lunatics who were sent to those healing waters usually being thus tonsured. This derisive phrase was used toward any one who propounded a more than ordinarily crack-brained project. It is, perhaps, scarcely necessary to say that it has no sort of connection with the modern music-hall vulgarism, "Get your hair cut!"
Another theory--but one more ingenious than acceptable--has it that the phrase derives from Bath having always been a resort of beggars. What, then, more natural, we are asked, than for one accosted by a mendicant to recall this topographical notoriety, and bid the rogue "go to Bath"? For, according to Fuller, that worthy author of the "Worthies," there were "many in that place; some natives there, others repairing thither from all parts of the land; the poor for alms, the pained for ease. Whither should fowl flock in a hard frost but to the barn-door? Here, all the two seasons, being the general confluence of gentry. Indeed, laws are daily made to restrain beggars, and daily broken by the connivance of those who make them; it being impossible, when the hungry belly barks and bowels sound, to keep the tongue silent. And although oil of whip be the proper plaister for the cramp of laziness, yet some pity is due to impotent persons. In a word, seeing there is the Lazar's-bath in this city, I doubt not but many a good Lazarus, the true object of charity, may beg therein." The road, then, to this City of Springs must have witnessed a motley throng.
II
The history of travelling, from the Creation to the present time, may be divided into four periods--those of no coaches, slow coaches, fast coaches, and railways. The "no-coach" period is a lengthy one, stretching, in fact, from the beginning of things, through the ages, down to the days of the Romans, and so on to the era when pack-horses conveyed travellers and goods along the uncertain tracks, which in the Middle Ages were all that remained of the highways built by that masterful race. The "slow-coach" era was preceded by an age when those few people who travelled at all went either on horseback, with their women-folk clinging on behind them, or else were wealthy enough to be able to afford the keep or hire of a "chariot," as the carriages of that time were named. That sinful old reprobate, Samuel Pepys, lived in the last days of the "no-coach" period, and saw the arrival of the slow coaches. He was one of those who used a chariot, and his "Diary" is full of accounts of how, on his innumerable journeys, he lost his way because of the badness of the roads, which then ran through vast stretches of unenclosed, uncultivated, and sparsely inhabited country, and were so fearfully bad that in many places the drivers did not dare to attempt such veritable "sloughs of despond," but drove around them over the hedgeless fields, thus making new tracks for themselves. In this way the origin of the winding character which many of our roads still retain is sufficiently accounted for.
[Sidenote: _THE "FLYING MACHINE"_]
The "slow-coach" era was, absurdly enough, that of the "flying machines," and in that era, with the year 1667, the coaching history of the Bath Road may be said to begin, when some greatly daring person issued a bill announcing that a "flying machine" would make the journey. It is not to be supposed that this was some emulator of Icarus or predecessor of the ambitious folks who for the last hundred years, more or less, have been trying to navigate the air with balloons or mechanical flying machines. Not at all. This was simply the figurative language employed to convey to those whom it might concern the wonderful feat that was to be attempted ("God permitting," as the advertiser was careful to add), of travelling by road from the "Bell Savage," on Ludgate Hill, to Bath in three days. But here is the announcement:--
"FLYING MACHINE.
"All those desirous to pass from London to Bath, or any other Place on their Road, let them repair to the 'Bell Savage' on Ludgate Hill in London, and the 'White Lion' at Bath, at both which places they may be received in a Stage Coach every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, which performs the Whole Journey in Three Days (if God permit), and sets forth at five o'clock in the morning.
"Passengers to pay One Pound five Shillings each, who are allowed to carry fourteen Pounds Weight--for all above to pay three-halfpence per Pound."
The rush of fashionables to take the waters, and see and be seen, had obviously not then commenced, since one crawling "flying machine" sufficed to accommodate the traffic; and it was not until thirty-six years later that it did begin, when Queen Anne (who, alas! is dead) resorted to "the Bath" for the benefit of the gout. What says Pope?
"Great Anna, whom Three Realms obey, Does sometimes counsel take, and sometimes tay."
If she had taken tea more consistently and drank less port, she would have been just as great and not so gouty--and Bath would have remained in that semi-obscurity in which it had long languished. No crowds of fashionables, no truckling statesmen, no wits, would have hastened down the road and peopled it so brilliantly had not Anne's big toe twinged with the torments of the damned; and it seems likely enough that this book would never have been written. Under the circumstances, therefore, the most appropriate toast for the author and the Mayor and Corporation of Bath to honour is that favourite old one, "High Church, High Farming, and Old Port for Ever," especially the last, "coupling with it," as they used to say before the custom of giving toasts died out, the honoured memory of Queen Anne.
Another three-days-a-week coach then began to ply between London and Bath. In 1711 it had a rival, and five years later saw the establishment of the first daily coach from London. Thomas Baldwin, citizen and cooper of London, saw money in the venture, and, like the hero of one of Bret Harte's verses, who "saw his duty a dead sure thing," he "went for it, there and then." He would seem to have secured it, too, for he held the road for many years against all rivals, and was, moreover, landlord of one of the foremost hostelries on the road--the "Crown," at Salt Hill.
His rivals were many, and, considering the popularity to which Bath soon attained, they must all have done well. Indeed, the establishment of a new coach to Bath would now appear to have been a favourite form of speculation, and Londoners found many such advertisements as the following:--
"_Daily Advertiser._ April 9, 1737. "For Bath.
"A good Coach and able Horses will set out from the 'Black Swan' Inn, in Holborn, on Wednesday or Thursday.
"Enquire of WILLIAM MAUD."
[Sidenote: _COACHING MISERIES_]
The invalid who trusted himself to the stage-coach of that period had, however, many risks to run. Doctors might recommend the waters, but before the patient reached them he had to endure a two days' journey, and even at that to bear a very martyrdom of bumps and jolts. For that was just before the time when coach-proprietors began to announce "comfortable" coaches "with springs," just as, a little earlier, they had laid great stress on their conveyances being glazed, and (to skip the centuries) as railway companies nowadays advertise dining and drawing room cars. Here are some coaching woes:--
"Just as you are going off, with only one other person on your side of the coach, who, you flatter yourself, is the last--seeing the door opened suddenly, and the landlady, coachman, guard, etc., cramming and shoving and buttressing up an overgrown, puffing, greasy human being of the butcher or grazier breed; the whole machine straining and groaning under its cargo from the box to the basket. By dint of incredible efforts and contrivances, the carcase is at length weighed up to the door, where it has next to struggle with various obstacles in the passage."
The pictorial commentary upon this text is appended, together with a view representing passengers refreshed by being overturned into a wayside pond.
The first mail-coach that ever ran in England ran between London and Bristol, and set out on Monday, August 2, 1784. Hitherto the letters had been conveyed by mounted post-boys, often provided with but sorry hacks, and always open to attack at the hands of any bad characters who might think it worth their while to intercept the post-bags. This risk led the more cautious persons, and those whose correspondence was of particular importance, to despatch their letters by the stage-coach, although the cost in that case was 2_s._ as against the ordinary postal charge of only 4_d._ for places between 80 and 120 miles distant.
[Sidenote: _THE FIRST MAIL COACH_]