Part 1

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THE MANCHESTER AND GLASGOW ROAD

CONTENTS.

WORKS BY CHARLES G. HARPER PREFACE LONDON TO MANCHESTER LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS SEPARATE PLATES ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT THE MANCHESTER AND GLASGOW ROAD I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII XIII XIV XV XVI XVII XVIII XIX XX XXI XXII XXIII XXIV XXV XXVI XXVII XXVIII XXIX XXX XXXI XXXII XXXIII

WORKS BY CHARLES G. HARPER

=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. Two Vols.

=The Norwich Road=: An East Anglian Highway.

=The Holyhead Road=: The Mail-Coach Road to Dublin. Two Vols.

=The Cambridge, Ely, and King’s Lynn Road=: The Great Fenland Highway.

=The Newmarket, Bury, Thetford, and Cromer Road=: Sport and History on an East Anglian Turnpike.

=The Oxford, Gloucester, and Milford Haven Road=: The Ready Way to South Wales. Two Vols.

=The Brighton Road=: Speed, Sport, and History on the Classic Highway.

=The Hastings Road= and the “Happy Springs of Tunbridge.”

=Cycle Rides Round London.=

=A Practical Handbook of Drawing for Modern Methods of Reproduction.=

=Stage Coach and Mail in Days of Yore.= Two Vols.

=The Ingoldsby Country=: Literary Landmarks of “The Ingoldsby Legends.”

=The Hardy Country=: Literary Landmarks of the Wessex Novels.

=The Dorset Coast.=

=The South Devon Coast.=

=The Old Inns of Old England.= Two Vols.

=Love in the Harbour=: a Longshore Comedy.

=Rural Nooks Round London= (Middlesex and Surrey).

=Haunted Houses=; Tales of the Supernatural.

=The North Devon Coast.=

[_In the Press._

THE

MANCHESTER

AND

GLASGOW ROAD

_THIS WAY TO GRETNA GREEN_

By CHARLES G. HARPER

_ILLUSTRATED BY THE AUTHOR, AND FROM OLD-TIME PRINTS AND PICTURES_

Vol. I.—LONDON TO MANCHESTER

LONDON CHAPMAN & HALL, LTD. 1907

PRINTED AND BOUND BY HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LD., LONDON AND AYLESBURY.

PREFACE

“_Onward and onward the highway runs to the distant city, impatiently bearing Tidings of human joy and disaster, of love and of hate, of doing and daring._”

THE GOLDEN LEGEND.

_Those lines, instinct with the dramatic possibilities of the road in far-off days, call to mind the old engravings and wood-cuts of the Durer school, in whose back-grounds, on the Hill Terrible, sits the City Beautiful, reached along a delectable road that wanders, now across open heaths and then disappears in the welcome shade of hoary woods; reappearing to reach its goal beside mountain streams and torrents, whose boulderous course it spans by high-arched bridges. Down such roads as these, in woodcuts such as those, go horsed and armed knights, very plumy and steely, ladies fair on their palfreys, with high-horned head-dresses; pages, men-at-arms, peasants, and all the mediæval traffic of the highways; while the verminous hermit in his cell by the bridge comes to his door as the wayfarers go by, scratching himself with one hand, and in the other holding a scallop-shell for the alms he, in a pitiful voice and in the name of God and all the saints, implores._

_Those lines, in that modern versification of the terrible old legend by Jacobus de Voragine, bring all these things vividly before the imagination. You may almost scent the hawthorn blossom on the wayside hedges, can all but feel the soft breath of the wind, or the heat o’ the sun, and can even smell the hermit, rich in pietistic dirt. Joy and disaster, love and hate, doing and daring, all had their place on the highway in those times: Romance and the Road were terms convertible._

_Now all those things are as tales that are told; but for centuries the Road retained that old distinction: the mediæval company had passed away: the knights and the ladies to their altar-tombs in the old country churches, the rest none knows whither; but after then came later generations, all travelling, living, hating, and loving along the highways, and so they continued to do, through the coaching era and until railways for a_ _long series of years rendered the Road an obsolete institution._

_When did the immemorial co-partnership of Romance and the Road begin to be dissolved? Let us consider. The first beginnings are found in the introduction of telegraphic signalling, when signal-stations were erected on the hills, and messages were passed on from one to another by means of revolving shutters or semaphore arms. The system originated about 1795, and came into use along this road in 1803. We read in the “Observer” of that period the startling announcement: “A line of communication, by means of telegraphs, is to be established between London and the north, by which intelligence will be conveyed in six hours at the distance of 400 miles.” Here, then, we find the parting of the ways! Instead of the horsed messenger, performing that distance in, let us say, forty-five hours, the telegraphists sent messages through in a fraction of that time, providing conditions were favourable. A very serious draw-back to the system was that in dull or stormy weather it was unworkable._

_What the mechanical telegraph began the railways and the electric telegraph completed, and the roads—save for the cycles and the motor-cars from whose presence Romance flies abashed—have_ _lost their intimate touch with life. They are largely removed from the sordid instant, and that is why we love them. Present-day romance will only be found by the next generation when, to adopt an American locution, it has become a “back number”: for ourselves, we are fain to the poor recourse of listening to the elfin harmonies of the winds in the wayside telegraph-poles, and to deduce romantic messages from those sounds; but alas! so little romantic may they be that the wires are probably flashing market reports to the effect that “grey shirtings are quiet,” or “bacon was steady.” Yet, on the other hand, a police message may be passing, to lead to the arrest of some fugitive: some fraudulent Napoleon of finance or one of the smaller fry: you never know!_

_In the old days, the criminal, visible to our physical eyes, would be seen, fleeing from justice, and after him, at a decent interval, the officers of the law, tailing away in a long perspective, properly exhausted and furious, their horses foaming and reeking with sweat in most appropriate style. You only see that sort of thing nowadays at Drury Lane or the Adelphi, but they do it very well there, even though the foam and the reek be applied with sponge and soap-suds._

_He who would now find sights like these along the roads would need to wait long. The fugitives are as many as ever, but they are in yonder train. The telegraph has already outstripped such an one before he has gone a quarter of his journey, and the police are waiting at the other end, where, quite emotionless and regardless of dramatic necessities, they will presently arrest him._

_Long stretches of the roads themselves are altered, with the growth of towns, into something new and strange, and where Terror stalked starkly in days of yore and Romance sped, flaunting, by, smug suburbs spread their vistas of red-brick, paved, and kerbed and lighted, and only the doctor, the collectors of rates and taxes, and the cries of the evening newspaper-boys stir the pulses of the inhabitants. The tragedies that sometimes await the doctor’s visits are a poor substitute for the soul-stirring days of old—they are too domestic: and that occasional inability to meet the demands of the tax-gatherer and the rate-collector which even the most respectable suburbs occasionally know is not tragedy in the inspiring sort._

_The pilgrim of the roads therefore finds his account in the past; and it is to illustrate the long leagues for him that these pages are wrought_ _out of long-forgotten things. Such an one, cycling, perchance, down the first few tramway-infested miles and cleansing himself after the almost inevitable muddy skid, may make shift to call a Tapleian philosophy to his aid, and exclaim with gratitude: “After all, it is an improvement upon two hundred years ago. Why, if I had been travelling here_ THEN, _I should probably have been robbed and beaten—perhaps even murdered—by the highwaymen!_”

CHARLES G. HARPER,

PETERSHAM, SURREY, _October, 1907_.

THE MANCHESTER AND GLASGOW ROAD

LONDON TO MANCHESTER

MILES London (General Post Office) to

Islington (the “Angel”) 1-1/4

Highgate Archway 4-1/4

East End, Finchley 5-3/4

Brown’s Wells, Finchley Common (“Green Man”) 7

North Finchley: “Tally-ho Corner” 7-1/2

Whetstone 9-1/4

Greenhill Cross 10-1/4

Barnet 11-1/4

South Mimms 14-1/2

Ridge Hill 16

London Colney 17-1/2 (Cross River Colne.)

St. Albans (“Peahen”) 20-3/4

Redbourne 25

Friar’s Wash 27-1/2

Markyate 29

Dunstable (“Crown”) 33-1/2

Hockliffe 37-1/2

Woburn 42

Woburn Sands 43-3/4

Wavendon 45-1/4

Broughton 47-1/2

Newport Pagnell 50-1/2 (Cross River Ouse.)

Lathbury 51-1/4

Gayhurst 53-1/4

Stoke Goldington 55

Eakley Lane 56-1/2

Horton 59

Piddington 59-1/4

Hackleton 60

Queen’s Cross 64

Northampton (All Saints’ Church) 65-1/4

Kingsthorpe 67

Brixworth 71-3/4

Lamport 74-1/4 (Level Crossing, Lamport Station.)

Maidwell 75-1/4

Kelmarsh 76-3/4

Clipston Station 78-3/4

Oxendon 79-1/4 (Cross River Welland.)

Market Harborough 82 (Cross Union Canal.)

Kibworth 87-3/4

Great Glen 90-3/4

Oadby 93

Leicester 96-3/4

Belgrave 98-1/2 (Cross River Soar.)

Mountsorrel 103-3/4

Quorndon 105-1/4

Loughborough (“Bull’s Head”) 107-3/4

Dishley 109-3/4

Hathern 110-1/2

Kegworth 113-3/4

Cavendish Bridge 117-1/4 (Cross River Trent.)

Shardlow 117-3/4

Alvaston 121-3/4

Osmaston 122-3/4 (Cross Derby Canal.)

Derby (Market Place) 124-3/4

Mackworth 127-1/4

Kirk Langley 129

Brailsford 131-1/2

Ashbourne 137-3/4

Hanging Bridge 139-1/4 (Cross River Dove.)

Swinescote 140-3/4

Milk Hill Gate 144-1/4

Waterhouses 145

Winkhill 146-3/4

Bottom Inn (“Green Man”) 148

Bradnop 150-3/4

Low Hill 151-1/2

Leek (Market Place) 152-1/2

Pool End 154-1/4

Rushton Marsh 157-1/2 (Cross River Dane.)

Bosley 160

Macclesfield 165-1/2

Titherington 166

Flash 167-3/4

Hope Green 171-3/4

Poynton 172-1/2

Hazel Grove 174-3/4

Stockport 177-1/2 (Cross River Mersey.)

Heaton Norris 179

Heaton Chapel 179-3/4

Levenshulme 180-1/2

Grindley Marsh 181-1/2

Longsight 182

Ardwick Green 183-1/4 (Cross Manchester and Ashton-under-Lyne Canal.)

Manchester (St. Ann’s Square) 184-3/4

SEPARATE PLATES

THE MAIL CHANGE (_By J. Herring_) _Frontispiece_

PAGE THE GLASGOW MAIL, ABOUT 1830 (_After J. Pollard_) 7

THE GLASGOW MAIL LEAVING THE YARD OF THE “BULL AND MOUTH” (_After C. Cooper Henderson_) 17

THE “COURIER,” MANCHESTER, CARLISLE AND GLASGOW COACH (_After C. B. Newhouse_) 27

MAILS LEAVING THE YARD OF THE “SWAN WITH TWO NECKS,” 1834 (_After J. Pollard_) 35

THE “MANCHESTER TELEGRAPH,” 1834 (_After Robert Havell_) 39

ISLINGTON GREEN, 1825 113

THE MANCHESTER MAIL CHANGING HORSES AT THE “OLD WHITE LION,” FINCHLEY, 1835 (_After James Pollard_) 117

QUEEN ELEANOR CROSS (_From a photograph taken before the restoration of 1884_) 181

NORTHAMPTON: MARKET PLACE AND ALL SAINTS’ CHURCH 191

MARKET HARBOROUGH 213

MOUNTSORREL 249

THE CHASE AND THE ROAD (_After H. Atken_) 255

STAGE-COACH TRAVELLING, 1828 (DERBY AND SHEFFIELD) (_After J. Pollard_) 295

CHURCH STREET, ASHBOURNE 313

THE MANCHESTER MAILS PASSING ONE ANOTHER NEAR ASHBOURNE (_After J. Pollard_) 327

MACCLESFIELD, FROM THE ROAD TO STOCKPORT 343

ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT

Monken Hadley Church 120

The Fire-Pot, Monken Hadley 122

The Gateway, Dyrham Park 124

The “Fleur-de-Lis” 127

Relics of the Saxon Church in the North Transept, St. Albans 131

Lord Grimthorpe 138

Shrine of St. Alban and Tomb of Duke Humphrey 141

Gorhambury 151

Markyate Cell 153

Woburn Abbey 161

Woburn 163

Newport Pagnell 167

Lathbury Church 170

Gayhurst 172

The “George and Dragon,” Eakley Lane 173

Horton Inn 175

Piddington Church 177

Interior, Church of the Holy Sepulchre 195

Brixworth Church 201

Lamport Church 205

Paxton 208

Monument to Judge Nichols 209

St. Nicholas and the Roman Wall 225

The Roman Milestone 227

St. Margaret’s 231

Trinity Hospital Porridge-Pot 234

St. Mary’s 235

In the Courtyard, the Old Town Hall 241

Church and Cavern, Woodhouse Eaves 253

From the Monument to John Farnham 258

Gotham 265

The Causeway, Swarkestone Bridge 268

Swarkestone Bridge 273

“The Balcony,” Swarkestone 277

Cavendish Bridge 280

The Trent, and Cavendish Bridge, from Shardlow 282

Elvaston Castle 285

Courtyard of the “Bell” Inn 291

“Young Men and Maidens” 299

All Saints’ 301

St. Alkmund’s 303

St. Mary’s Bridge 305

Penelope Boothby’s Monument 316

The “Green Man and Black’s Head,” Ashbourne 322

Hanging Bridge 325

Swinscoe 330

Waterhouses 331

Bottom Inn: The “Green Man” 332

Leek 334

Prestbury 345

The “Village of Hazel Grove” 351

Old Town House of the Ardernes, Stockport 356

I

Beyond any possible doubt, there is more history—and more varied history—to the mile, along the lengthy road from London to Glasgow than on any other highway in this historic England of ours; with the sole possible exception of the road to Dover. The Great North Road itself is romantically historic, and there are 389 miles of it, but it is not so compact of historic and domestic incident as the Manchester and Glasgow Road—and it is not quite so long. The difference, to be sure, is trifling—merely a matter of 11-1/4 miles—but the long miles to Manchester, and on to Glasgow, are more plentifully set with towns and villages than the Great North Road, which, upon the whole, takes an austere and aloof course; and there is a wealth of detail on the way that presents at times an embarrassing choice for the historian.

The Manchester and Glasgow Road, according to the best modern authorities, measures from the General Post Office, London, to the Royal Exchange, Glasgow, 400-1/4 miles. Before Telford in 1816, under authority of the Government of that day, took the Carlisle and Glasgow division of it in hand, and eventually shortened it by various engineering expedients, the whole distance was 409-1/4 miles.

There is not the slightest hesitancy to be entertained about the course of this great road. It suited the Post Office in the old mail-coach days to send the mails along the Great North Road to Boroughbridge, and thence across country to Penrith, and so forward to Glasgow, and the contractors made the distance only 397-3/4 miles; but the route was that adopted here; through St. Albans, the historic towns of Northampton, Leicester, and Derby, Manchester, Preston, Lancaster, and Carlisle. The mere names of those places conjure up many a scene in the stirring annals of the nation, and suggest crowded incidents in the scarcely less interesting story of industrial progress; while the scenery along the road is in many districts of a high order of beauty, ranging between such extremes as the quiet pastoral country beyond St. Albans, through Northamptonshire and Leicestershire, to the wild moors of Staffordshire, the solemn beauty of Lancaster and Solway Sands, the stark heights of Shap Fell, and the bleak moors between Moffat and Douglas Mill.

[Sidenote: _THE FIRST GLASGOW COACH_]

The first stages of the road are common to the Great North Road and the Holyhead Road. At Hadley Green, beyond Barnet, we bid good-bye to the first, and at Hockliffe, 37-1/2 miles from our starting-point, we branch off to the right from the second of those great highways.

II

Through communication between London and Glasgow was undreamed of in the earliest days of coaching; and never, in the very nature of things, was the journey often made without a break, until railway travelling came to entirely alter the complexion of affairs. But Glasgow was early convinced of the necessity for public conveyances between itself and other parts; and at so remote a date as 1678 had succeeded in establishing what would appear to have been a municipally supported coach service between Glasgow and Edinburgh. This coach was maintained by William Hoorn, Hoon, or Hume, “marchand in Edinburge,” who received a grant of £22 4_s._ 5_d._, and an annual subsidy of £11 2_s._ 3_d._, paid two years in advance, and for a term of five-and-a-half years, from the magistrates. The fare was 8_s._ in summer, and 9_s._ in winter; the burgesses of Glasgow to have the preference.

It set forth once a week, and by dint of much labour its six horses dragged it the 44 miles in three days.

How long a time this daring service lasted is not known, but probably not for any extended period. Again, in 1743, the Town Council of Glasgow is found attempting to set up a stage-coach or “lando,” to go once a week in winter and twice in summer. Negotiations were opened with one John Walker, and the fare proposed was 10_s._; but it was not until 1749 that regular communication between Glasgow and Edinburgh was established.

Meanwhile there was nothing in the nature of a coach service between Glasgow and London. To reach the metropolis by public conveyance, you were obliged to go first by this rate-aided conveyance of Mr. William Hume, and then, arrived at Edinburgh, to secure a seat for the tremendous journey southward. It is no mere figure of speech to name that early coach-journey to London “tremendous”; for it took, according to circumstances and the season of the year, from nine to twelve days. The enterprise of Glasgow, it will thus be perceived, was not equal to so great an undertaking.