Stage-coach and Mail in Days of Yore, Volume 2 (of 2): A picturesque history of the coaching ageHarper, Charles G. (Charles George)
History
Stage-coach and Mail in Days of Yore, Volume 2 (of 2): A picturesque history of the coaching age
Harper, Charles G. (Charles George)
Coaching (Transportation) -- History
Sherman’s rebuilt “Bull and Mouth” inn, or “Queen’s Hotel,” to give it
its later name, long remained a feature of St. Martin’s-le-Grand, many
years after the last coach had been withdrawn; and the old stables in
Bull and Mouth Street, which had not been included in the rebuilding of
1830, remained, a grim and grimy landmark, put to use, as usually the
case with the old coach offices, as a receiving office for the Goods
Department of one of the great railways. In later years the “Queen’s
Hotel” became the property of that very thick-and-thin supporter of
and believer in the Tichborne Claimant, Mr. Quartermaine East; but the
growth of Post Office business made the site an exceedingly desirable
one for an extension, and in 1887 the house was closed and demolished,
and in the fulness of time the gigantic block of buildings officially
known as “G.P.O. North” arose. Not only were the sites of hotel and
stables thus occupied, but even Bull and Mouth Street was stopped up
and built over. The still-existing Angel Street, close by, between
“G.P.O. North” and “G.P.O. West,” marks where another coaching inn, the
“Angel,” once stood.
Robert Nelson, who entered so keenly into rivalry with Sherman over the
Manchester business, was one of the three sons of Mrs. Ann Nelson, of
the “Bull Inn,” Whitechapel. Not the Bull “Hotel,” for Mrs. Nelson most
resolutely set her face against that new-fangled word; and as an “inn”
the house was known to the very last. An excellent inn it was--one of
the very best. It did not seem strange then, as undoubtedly it would
now be, for so high-class a house to be situated in this quarter
of London. Whitechapel of that time was vastly different from the
disreputable place it is to-day; but the prime reason of so fine an inn
as the “Bull” being situated here was that this was the starting-point
of many routes into the eastern counties, and, just as railway hotels
form a usual adjunct of railway termini, so did Mrs. Nelson possess
an excellent hotel business in addition to the important and highly
successful coaches that set out from her yard and stables.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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