The seaside was at that time in process of being discovered. At innumerable spots around our coasts fisher villages were then being transformed into elegant resorts, which were saved from becoming vulgar by the sufficient facts that the working classes could not afford holidays, and that, if they could, the means of transport were lacking. When tedious and expensive coach journeys were the only methods of being conveyed, it is obvious that wage-earners could spare neither the time nor the money for what would have been to them, under the most favourable circumstances, an enterprise. But those classes were quite content to do without the week’s or fortnight’s holiday at the seaside which appears nowadays to be regarded as the birthright of most men, women, and children. They were not then educated up to holidays, and were content to work week in and week out through the year, never questioning the scheme of things that gave to the few that leisure they themselves could never enjoy. It is a little difficult nowadays to realise the exclusive Weston that was; although, to be sure, those days when it still posed as exclusive are not so far distant but that many old people in the town can recollect them perfectly well. The beginning of the end of this old-time attitude of aloofness may be dated from 1841, when the Bristol and Exeter Railway that was—the Great Western that is—was opened to Worle, in continuation of the line from Paddington to Bristol; being completed the whole way to Exeter in 1844. The early history of railways is not yet ancient history, but it is already old enough to be obscured and made romantic by legends, some true, others coloured with that passion for the picturesque which transfigures history everywhere. Stories are told, as they are told everywhere, with a great deal of truth in them, of local objections to the railway. We hear of the passionate opposition offered by the Smyth-Pigotts and by the inhabitants of Weston to a proposal to run the main line near the town; with the result that it was constructed no closer than a mile away inland. The two thousand inhabitants who then constituted the town of Weston shortsightedly rejoiced at this victory, which was very speedily found to be a costly one; the branch tramway laid down from the main line, with railway carriages dragged slowly into the place, to a shed situated in the rear of the present Town Hall, proving an undignified entrance that not many visitors cared to experience twice. But for ten years this remained the way into the town by rail. A proper branch line was afterwards built from Worle, but still Weston station remained a terminus, until the new loop line was made, in 1884, coming through the town and rejoining the main at Uphill and Bleadon station.