Part 16

There were in coaching days no fewer than eight inns and posting-houses of different degrees in Meriden. There are now but two inns: the “Bull’s Head,” formerly a farmhouse, and the “Queen’s Head,” already mentioned. Among the vanished signs are the “Nag’s Head,” “Malt Shovel,” “Crown,” and “Swan” (now a butcher’s shop). The magnificent inn spoken of by Pennant was the old “Bull’s Head”; whence the licence was transferred to the smaller house, now so named, at the time when coaching ceased to be. The old house is seen on the right hand, a very large, white-plastered building of good architectural character, now secluded from the road by a wall and iron palisade, standing where the drive up to the inn was formerly placed. One of the entrances to and exits from the house in coaching and posting times was by the first-floor window, above where the portico, a later addition, is seen. The “Bull’s Head” was an exclusive and aristocratic house, and preferred the top-sawyers, who posted in their own “chariots,” to those who travelled in hired chaises; while for the mere passengers by mail or stage-coach it had, at the best, but a contemptuous tolerance. And, indeed, it must have been a lordly place, and, with its surrounding gardens, stables, and picturesque turreted clock-tower, more like a private mansion than a place of public resort. There is still in the turret a dilapidated set of chimes that can, with care and patience, be induced to hammer out a few scattered notes of a tune alleged to be that of “God Save the King,” or Queen, as the case may be.

XLVI

Meriden is one of the many reputed “centres of England.” Measure a straight line from the North Foreland to Holyhead, and another from the Lizard to the mouth of the Humber, and their intersection will be at Meriden. With an irregularly shaped country like England, this is a somewhat empirical method, and the other reputed centres are evidently obtained by measuring from various places dictated by individual taste and fancy.

The very hub of the country is held to be the ancient cross standing upon the village green—shattered now, and bound together by iron bands. A modern legend that it was originally placed here to mark the centre has grown up, and by consequence it is sketched and photographed times without number throughout the year.

The “Forest of Arden Archers,” or the “Woodmen of Arden,” as they sometimes style themselves, an ancient guild revived in 1785, and holding meetings at Forest Hall, near by, remind the forgetful traveller that, like Touchstone, he is in Arden, or, at any rate, on the outskirts of it, in passing through Meriden. Henley-in-Arden lies to the left, served by a station, bald of any poetic or romantic suggestion in the title of “Henley Junction.”

There remained, not so many years ago, an old inn called the “Up and Down Post,” on the road between Meriden and Stonebridge. Its picture-sign, showing two posts, one standing, the other fallen, quite misrepresented the true meaning of the name, which referred to the old system of posting along the roads. Probably the original sign was a picture showing the up and the down postboys meeting.

The road now grows to a noble width; a quiet road too, at any time but Saturdays and Sundays, when Birmingham and Coventry’s all sorts of the cycling kind are let loose upon their eighteen miles between the two cities, and motor cars from afar, whiten the hedgerows with dust. The old “Stonebridge” inn, at the crossing of the Lichfield and Leamington roads, has been gorgeously rebuilt, chiefly to meet the requirements of these, and is now the “Stonebridge Hotel.” The “stone bridge” itself carries the road across a little stream called the Tame. Another inn, the “Malt Shovel,” stands with its old stables in refreshing contrast with that ornate modern hostelry.

A very little exertion will suffice to put the quiet man out of sight and hearing of the crowd. He has only to turn up the lane by the “Clock” inn and make for Bickenhill spire, less than a quarter of a mile away, and he will have the surroundings entirely to himself.

Bickenhill church is very beautiful, but perhaps the most memorable thing connected with it is the notice exposed in the porch:—

It having been decided by the Court of Queen’s Bench, and by the Court of Appeal, that artificial wreaths and glass cases placed upon graves without sanction is an illegal act; notice is hereby given that such must not be placed upon graves without first obtaining permission, and such will be regarded as Memorial Tablets, and the customary fees will be charged.

The vicar’s grammar would not have found favour with Lindley Murray; but speculations as to how an artificial wreath or a glass case can be made an act, illegal or otherwise, do not form the real interest of this notice. _That_ is discovered in the spectacle of two judicial tribunals assuming the rôle of arbiters of taste, and elevating the placing of jampots, enamelled tin wreaths, and the like abominations on graves to illegality. No one can, without mingled feelings of disgust and pity, see the marmalade jars that have held water for flowers, or any artificial things displayed in places with such sacred and melancholy associations, but this would seem to be a question of taste, or the want of it, alone. It would not be a much greater stride for courts of law to determine in what kind of clothes parishioners should attend service. And—another matter. Without defending artificial flowers, are the decayed natural blossoms, shrivelled with heat, and soddened into an obscene and hideous pulp by rains, a pleasing sight? Is it not possible, after all, that the sense of permanency in a glass case or a glass chaplet is a soothing feeling to many a poor mourner who lacks “culture,” but whose instincts revolt from the rotting lilies and stephanotis of the bereaved rich?

Returning to Stonebridge, the road to Coleshill, and to Castle Bromwich and Lichfield will be seen branching off from the Holyhead Road. Here, until the middle of the eighteenth century, the traffic for Shrewsbury and Chester commonly turned off. After that date, not only were the roads through Birmingham and Wolverhampton improved, but the places themselves grew into greater importance, and the old Chester Road, by consequence, decayed. By 1802 all the Chester coaches had deserted it, but the Liverpool Mail came this way until the last. Up to 1761 this was not the way to Coleshill at all. Until that year the road branched off at a point half a mile from Meriden, and lay through Packington Park. It was a straight and flat road, and convenient for Coleshill, but offensive to Sir Clement Fisher, who then was the squire at Packington Hall. It passed within sight of his windows, and he relaxed no effort until an Act of Parliament was passed, stopping it up, and making the present hilly and circuitous road in its stead. The preamble of the Act, stating that the old road was inconvenient and dangerous, is one of the most audacious falsehoods ever publicly stated. The old road can still be traced in the Park, and standing beside it is an old tombstone, recording the fate of a London tailor struck by lightning when travelling this way.

XLVII

But enough of Packington. Let us on to Birmingham, now but nine miles distant, by Elmdon, Wells Green, and Yardley.

Elmdon, were it not for that pretty roadside timber-framed inn, the ‘Cock,’ would be but a name and nothing else, so far as the road could show. Passing it, bid a long farewell, O traveller along the Holyhead Road, to the country, for in less than another two miles Wells Green is reached and Birmingham within hail. Thereafter, in nothing less than eighteen miles shall you see the hedgerows, the fields, and the quiet road again. Birmingham and the Black Country intervene, and not until, having gained and overpassed Wolverhampton, you ascend the heights of Tettenhall, will the sun be seen shining in a clear sky once more. Meanwhile, here is Wells Green, the last approach to the likeness of the country on this side of Birmingham, and by consequence a place of great half-holiday and Sunday resort. Midland cyclists are its chief patrons. For them the “Old Original” tea-house caters, for their custom also the “Ship,” the “Lighthouse,” and many more compete frantically among each other, attracting attention by large and elaborate models of ships, lighthouses, and other objects displayed beside the road. The two old roadside inns—the “Wheatsheaf” and the “Crown”—have been ornately rebuilt; the “Crown” vulgarly.

Beyond Wells Green the road enters an outlying portion of Worcestershire and comes to Yardley, a new-built Birmingham suburb, whose shops, dotted here and there by the wayside, alternate with barns, cow-houses and hedges, presently to give place to suburban streets and so provide those shops with customers. In the hollow succeeding Yardley, at Hay Mills, where a little stream runs, not yet completely polluted and decently buried from sight in a drain pipe, the mile’s length of Worcestershire ends. Hay Mills now belies its idyllic name, for it is here that modern Birmingham definitely begins, and the smoke-cloud and traffic of that great city grow in density.

Small Heath, Bordesley, Deritend, and Digbeth, that are all comprised in the next two and a half miles, are now but the various names distinguishing what would otherwise be one long street, growing gradually more grimy and crowded : a hilly street, where hideous steam tramways, belching smoke and smuts, run noisily, like armoured trains, and where the few old gabled cottages that are left, to tell of times when this was a country road, are closely beset by modern houses, already hung with soot, like the cobwebs on bottles of old port. A dramatic change indeed from what Leland saw, when he journeyed to Birmingham in 1538, and came “through as pretty a street as ever I entred, into Bermingham towne. This street, as I remember, is called Dirtey.” He meant Deritend, which, if called “Dirtey” to-day would by no means be libelled. “Dirty End” would be an easy change from the real name of the squalid street, and equally descriptive of it.

Wigstead in 1797 tells a tale very different from that of Leland. Instead of a “pretty street,” he found an entrance “by no means prepossessing the traveller in its favour—a confused mass of brick and tile rubbish piled together.” Birmingham he thought to be an objectionable place. “Enveloped in an almost impenetrable smoky atmosphere,” he says, “it is by no means an agreeable object to a picturesque eye.”

END OF VOL. 1

_Printed by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ltd., Lowloa and Aylesbury._

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 Bath Road=: History, Fashion, and Frivolity on an old Highway.

=The Exeter Road=: The Story of the West of England Highway.

=The Great North Road=: The Old Mail Road to Scotland. 2 Vols.

=The Norwich Road=: An East Anglian Highway.

=The Oxford Gloucester, and Milford Haven Road.=

[_In the Press._

=Cycle Rides Round London.=

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. Moved advertisement from the second page to the end. 2. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling. 3. Retained anachronistic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed. 4. Footnotes have been re-indexed using numbers. 5. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_. 6. Enclosed bold font in =equals=. 7. Superscripts are denoted by a caret before a single superscript character or a series of superscripted characters enclosed in curly braces, e.g. M^r. or M^{ister}.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Holyhead Road Vol 1, by Charles G. Harper