The Newmarket, Bury, Thetford and Cromer Road: Sport and history on an East Anglian turnpikeHarper, Charles G. (Charles George)
History
The Newmarket, Bury, Thetford and Cromer Road: Sport and history on an East Anglian turnpike
Harper, Charles G. (Charles George)
England -- Description and travel; England -- Social life and customs
In that same year a “Flying Machine,” in one day, is found going from
the “Swan with Two Necks” on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays in summer
at 12 o’clock noon. For this express speed of Norwich in one day the
fare was somewhat higher; £1 8_s._ was the price put upon travelling by
the “Flying Machine”; but in winter, when it set forth on Tuesdays,
Thursdays, and Fridays, at the unearthly hour of 5 a.m., the price was
3_s._ lower.
In 1782 a Diligence went three times a week, at 10 p.m., from the “White
Horse,” Fetter Lane; as also did a “Post Coach,” at 10 p.m., from the
“Swan with Two Necks,” the “Machine” at midnight, and “a coach,” name
and description not specified, from the “Bull,” Bishopsgate Street, at
10 p.m. There were thus at this time four coaches to Norwich. In 1784
the “Machine” disappears from the coach-lists of that useful old
publication, the _Shopkeepers’ Assistant_, and in its stead appears for
the first time the “Expedition” coach. This new-comer started thrice a
week—Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays—from the “Bull,” Bishopsgate
Street, at the hour of 9 p.m. Evidently there were stout hearts on this
route in those times, to travel thus through the terrors of the darkling
roads.
In 1788 the “Expedition” is found starting one hour earlier: in 1790,
another two hours. In 1798 it set out from the “White Horse,” Fetter
Lane, so early as 3.45 p.m., and had begun to go every day. Calling on
the way at its original starting-point, the “Bull,” it left that house
at 4 p.m., and continued on its way without further interruption.
What the “Expedition” was like at this period we may judge from the very
valuable evidence of the accompanying illustration, drawn in _facsimile_
from a contemporary painting by Cordery. It was one of the singular
freaks that had then a limited vogue, and is a “double-bodied” coach,
designed to suit the British taste for seclusion. How the passengers in
the hinder body entered or left the coach is not readily seen, unless we
may suppose that the artist was guilty of a technical mistake, and
brought the hind wheels too far forward. The only alternative is to
presume a communication between fore and hind bodies.
[Illustration: THE NORWICH STAGE, ABOUT 1790.
_From a painting by an artist unknown._]
This illustration, so deeply interesting to students of coaching
history, was evidently, as the long inscription underneath suggests,
designed in the first instance as a pictorial advertisement, and
doubtless hung in the booking-office of the coach at the “Bull” in
Bishopsgate Street. That quaintly-mispelled programme shows its speed,
inclusive of stops for changing and supper, to have been six miles an
hour.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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