In practice, it is much cheaper to pay the £30 fine on every acre than it would be to remove the refuse-heaps and to spread the nutritious soil over the land again; hence these abominations of desolation that else might become fields once more, grow the kindly fruits of the earth again, employ industry, and contribute toward the rates and taxes of the community. The old red-brick toll-house still standing by the wayside, about two miles from Wolverhampton, where Gibbet Lane toll-gate once barred the way, is in midst of these wastes. The modern settlement of Monmore Green, as little like the picture of a village green, conjured up by its name, as possible, is beyond. It was here in September, 1829, that the “Greyhound” coach came to grief on its way to Birmingham. The breaking of an axle, that fruitful source of disaster, threw the coach over, and of the five “outsides” who jumped for their lives, one was killed, and the other four badly injured. The great and progressive town of Wolverhampton now looms ahead, a busy and thriving contrast with the scenes just passed, and a place second to none in the forward strides made towards improvement in these days of its expansion. IX The old entrance into Wolverhampton, before the making of Cleveland Road in 1830, was by the narrow Bilston Street, still remaining as an object-lesson in old-time thoroughfares, and thence by Snow Hill along Dudley Street, and so into what was then called “High Green,” now known as “Queen Square.” Darlington Street did not come into being until 1821, and before that time the rest of the way through the town and out at the other end, followed a devious course, by lanes long since swept away, or widened out of recognition. Coaches changing horses at the “Peacock” in Snow Hill, a house still existing as the “Swan and Peacock,” had the privilege of driving through its yard, and so by a short cut into Bell Street, across into Barn Street (long since re-christened Salop Street), and right away for Chapel Ash, and the open country again. The coaches thus privileged were the “Tally-ho,” “Hibernia,” “Crown Prince,” “Emerald,” “Reindeer,” and “Beehive.” The mails and other coaches using the “Swan” in High Green, or Market Place as it was indifferently called, or the “Lion” in North Street close by, had a longer journey, and threaded a mazy course utterly vanished and forgotten since the broad and spacious thoroughfare of Darlington Street was made.