Flying Coaches

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In the late 1600s, the word “Flying” was applied to new, faster coach services. Flying sounds modern but it had implied speed since Tudor times. Their secret was changing the horses from time to time along the route. Eventually the prefix “fly” came to signify this. There were “Flying” coaches and “fly-wagons” on the roads, and “fly-boats” on the canals. They were all faster than ordinary wagons and boats because they changed the horses rather than making the same animals work the entire distance.

An early example of a flying coach ran from Oxford to London in a single day. This seemingly impossible feat amazed people when it was first introduced. The date was Monday 3rd May, 1669

This is a written account of its first journey, entitled “The first day that the flying coach went from Oxford to London in one day!” No mention is made of changing the horses so we don’t know how long the stages were, but by not expecting the animals which left Oxford to work all the way to London, the coach could achieve 55 miles without an overnight stop.

“Coaches have been lumbering, wearying, waggon-like vehicles until today. Antony à Wood paid his first visit to London in one of them two years ago, jogging along the road at the rate of two or three miles an hour and lodging overnight at Beaconsfield. The whole journey took two days.

It was no wonder then, that all Oxford was in a fever of excitement this day: A journey of two days, crowded, cantered and galloped into one day! Fifty-five miles between sunrise and sunset! What incredible swiftness!

No picture of this wondrous machine is preserved but we can guess what it looked like as it stood at the door of the tavern over by All Souls College on that eventful morning. 

It was like a huge wooden box, covered with leather, with wheels that seemed to run away from the coach. The driver’s seat was a box filled with ropes, and spare traces, and hammer, and screw drivers, and nails; all the contingencies of a journey to London with several breakdowns inevitable. It carried six, the usual number, and had a boot on each side for luggage.

Precisely as St. Mary’s chimes tolled six o’clock in the morning, off went the flying coach into High Street, with its precious freight, followed doubtless, by the anxious fears of a wondering crowd as to whether it would make its appearance in London by the appointed time – seven that same evening – without some dreadful accident.

Over Magdalen bridge, over Shotover Hill, along the pleasant road, startling the rustics as it flew. The public of High Wycombe and Beaconsfleld, where passengers usually stopped for the night, came out to gaze at it.

Through Uxbridge and Acton, while the sun was yet high, along by desolate Shepherd’s Bush, by the lonely gravel pits, past the gallows at Tyburn, past the Lord Mayor’s banqueting house, where that honoured dignitary was accustomed to take his spiced cake and cool tankard after hunting the hare in Marylebone fields, and finally down into the Haymarket, then full of inns, because of the market for hay.

There, punctually and wonderfully, by seven of the clock, Master Antony informs us, “we were all set down at our inn.”

An average speed of around 4½ mph. Double the usual speed of travel for passenger coach journeys. No wonder people were amazed!



Next: Stage Coaches

Section 4:

The Coaches

Introduction

The Wheel

Wheeled Vehicles

The First Coaches

Stage Waggons

Flying Waggons

The First Coach Service

Flying Coaches

Stage Coaches

Glass Coaches

Mail Coaches

Coach Names


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Part 1: Living Memories

Anecdotes written by people who actually travelled on the coaches

Part 2: The Age of Coaching

The coachmen, the inns, the coach proprietors - they’re all here. Come in and meet them

Part 3: The Roads

Britain’s roads were pretty impassable for most of our history.  Coach travel was very difficult until they improved

Part 4: The Coaches

Wheeled transport evolved over many years. Find out how coaches developed

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Sources and information about how I came to create this website

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