In 1788 the houses of Blackpool had increased to about thirty-five, and these were arranged in an irregular line along the edge of the cliffs; the intervals between the habitations being with few exceptions so wide that this small number stretched out from north to south, over a distance of quite a mile. One group of six was especially remarkable as presenting a more respectable and modern exterior than any of the others, most of which still retained a great deal of their original defective appearances, as though their owners were unwilling or unable to adapt themselves and their abodes to the improved state of things springing up around them. The company during the busiest part of the season amounted to about four hundred persons, and a news-room had been established for their use in the small cottage, before mentioned, on the site of the Lane Ends Hotel, the smith’s shop adjoining having been converted into a coffee-room and kitchen, at which a public dinner was prepared each day during the summer, and served at a dining-room erected across the way. There were now four additional inns in the village, named respectively, Bailey’s, Forshaw’s, Hull’s, and the Yorkshire House. The first of these had sprung up on the cliffs towards the north, and was kept by an ancestor of its present proprietor; the second was the nucleus from which has grown the Clifton Arms Hotel, whilst the third stood on the site of the Royal Hotel. The roads leading to the hamlet were in such an unfinished state that after heavy falls of rain they could be travelled only with the greatest difficulty, and often with considerable danger both to the vehicle and its occupants; so that under these circumstances most people deemed it more prudent and expedient to perform the journey on horseback, some of them in the pillion fashion usual at that era. In an earlier part of this chapter we spoke of the troubled state of the times and the unsettled and harassed condition of the people as being the most probable causes why Blackpool was so long neglected by many who must have been well cognisant of its beauties in the days of the Tyldesleys, and with equal probability may we now conjecture that the dilapidated and frequently unsafe state of the highways had a serious effect in preventing numbers from visiting the place at this period. Regarding the matter from another point of view, we are led to infer that the four hundred composing the company of 1788, were people who, either in search of health or recreation, had willingly undergone the discomforts of a dreary and sometimes hazardous journey in order to make but a brief sojourn by the shores of Blackpool. Here, then, there is evidence of the great estimation in which the place was held at that early date by the dwellers in the inland towns, and of the rapidity with which its good fame was increasing and extending throughout a large section of the county. As may be naturally supposed, the large influxes