The Great North Road, the Old Mail Road to Scotland: York to EdinburghHarper, Charles G. (Charles George)
History
The Great North Road, the Old Mail Road to Scotland: York to Edinburgh
Harper, Charles G. (Charles George)
A1 Road (England and Scotland); England -- Social life and customs; Great Britain -- Description and travel
Rising steeply out of Bramham and coming to the crest at Moor End, where
the road descends long and continuously to Wetherby and the river Wharfe,
we come to what used to be regarded as the half-way town between London
and Edinburgh. The exact spot, where a milestone told the same tale on
either face, is, in fact, one mile north, where the “Old Fox” inn stands.
This was, of course, the most noted landmark on the long road, and the
drovers who journeyed past it never failed to look in at the “Old Fox”
and “wet their whistles,” to celebrate the completion of half their task.
At Wetherby itself the “Angel” arrogated the title of “half-way house,”
and was the principal coaching inn. It still stands, like its rival, the
“Swan and Talbot,” smaller than of yore, the larger portion of its
stables now converted into cottages. At the “Angel” the down London and
Glasgow mail dined, with an hour to spare; the up coach hurrying through
to its change at Aberford. Wetherby was a change for the stage-coaches,
which ran the whole seventeen miles to Ferrybridge with the same teams; a
cruelly long and arduous stretch for the horses.
[Picture: Nineveh]
This is a hard-featured, stony town; still, as of old, chiefly concerned
with cattle-raising and cattle-dealing, and crowded on market-days with
farmers and drovers driving bargains or swearing at the terrified efforts
of beasts and sheep to find their way into the shops and inns. Down on
the southern side of the town runs the romantic Wharfe, between rocky
banks, hurrying in swirling eddies towards its confluence with the Ouse,
below Tadcaster; and on to the north goes the road, through the main
street, on past the conspicuous spire of Kirk Deighton church, coming in
three miles to Walshford, where a bridge crosses the rocky,
tree-embowered Nidd, and that old posting-house, the comfortable-looking
“Walshford Bridge Inn,” stands slightly back from the road, looking like
a private mansion gone diffidently into business.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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