The Post Office

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The story of the post goes back to Henry VIII who set up the first organised mail service - but it was for the king’s use only. Riders on horseback wearing the king’s tabard carried messages as required. The first real postal service was established in 1635 by Charles I who needed to improve communication between London and Edinburgh now that England and Scotland were one nation (Charles’s father, James VI of Scotland, had become James I of England after the death of Elizabeth I).

Charles set up a ‘running post’ which travelled night and day between Edinburgh and London several times a week. It consisted of riders on horseback and was designed “to go thither and come back again in six days.”  It can’t have been that successful because in 1649 the city of London established a post of its own with a regular staff of riders and postmasters between London and the North.

The 17th century was a troubled time and in 1649, Charles I was executed and the country ruled by Oliver Cromwell’s parliament until the monarchy was restored in 1660. The new king, Charles II, established a ‘General Post Office’ - and there was an instant decline in efficiency! It took six days each way instead of three.

Towns along the route protested, and so the post was ‘improved’ to “three and a half or four days.” This was still slower than the original time, although it can’t have mattered all that much because almost half a century later the mail-bag was very scanty. On one day in 1745, we are told that the mail brought only one letter to Edinburgh - for the British Linen Company; on another day only one letter was carried to London - for Sir William Pulteney, the banker.

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In 1758 an Edinburgh merchant, George Chalmers, set out to improve things. He had noticed that the Great North Mail, as it was known, set out three times a week and took 87 hours going north, but 131 hours going south. The difference was due to stops made at Berwick (3 hours) and at Newcastle (24 hours) which proved to be unnecessary when he discussed them with officials. Chalmers persuaded the Post Office to change its timings and route and reduced the times to 82 hours for the northbound mail and 85 for the south. He later persuaded the Post Office to run the mails six days a week and the government awarded him a grant of £600 for his services (£100,000 in 2019).  

By the 1780s, there were mail routes to most parts of the country, all operators by riders on horseback. They were thought to be the fastest way to carry mail. But John Palmer of Bath (1742 – 1818) had noticed how stagecoaches had become faster and safer over the year and had started - illegally - to carry some mail. In order to retain control for the Post Office he introduced mail coaches. They were run by coach operators under franchise.

It obviously wasn’t as simple as it sounds because a well known essayist of the time, Thomas De Quincey (1785 – 1859), described the the task as enormous “due to the obstinacy and red-tapeism of the Post Office officials. It was an enterprise sufficient to daunt any but the stoutest heart.” He continued with a wonderful sentence which resonates today: “Government officials have a wonderful power of passive resistance and an insensibility to argument and proof which might be envied by a lamp-post.”

The first mail-coach was put on the Bath Road on the 8th of August 1784, and its success was immediate. Principal towns across the country began to petition for similar services. York was the first successful town and a mail coach was put on the road between London, York, and Edinburgh in October of the same year. It took three nights and two days to do the complete journey.

Mail coaches, from the beginning, had priority on the road. They did not pay tolls. Presumably the Post Office had an arrangement with the various Turnpike Trusts? So when a mail coach was approaching a toll gate, the guard would play a vigorous tune on his horn and the gatekeeper would open the gate for the coach to thunder through. Failure to open the gate spelled trouble with the Post Office for the unfortunate gate keeper. A similar tune was played on the approach to an Inn where a fresh team of horses should be waiting. Mail coaches were allowed to carry a strictly limited number of passengers to boost revenues and keep postal charges down, and at the main termini, Manchester, Liverpool, etc., passengers were first loaded at the coaching inns, then the mail-coach made its way to the Post Office to load the mail. In London, where a great many mail-coaches departed at the same time each evening, it became a socially accepted pastime to go the main Post Office at St Martin le Grand to “watch the mail depart”.

Mail coach speeds increased when Thomas Telford and John McAdam began their road improvement work  and by the early 1800s, the government had at last recognised the necessity of good roads. The mail coaches became fast, efficient and ran to very precise timetables. 

Improvements continued right though to the coming of the railways. The mail route between London and Holyhead had been improved by Telford and attention was turned to the route north between England and Scotland. The road was planned to be “as straight and as flat as engineering science could contrive it” and a portion of it — between Edinburgh and Morpeth — was actually constructed in about 1824, going by way of Soutra Hill, Lauderdale, Coldstream, and Wooler.

The route between London and Morpeth was also surveyed and authorised, and parts of it between London and York were actually begun … when the opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway in 1825 convinced the authorities that the days of the road were numbered!

Despite this, mail coaches were not entirely run off the Great North Road for another twenty years, and Post Office surveyors continued to alter their routes to take advantage of short cuts and more favourable gradients right through to the 1840s.

To conclude, here is the official time-bill for 1832 for the Scotch mail going by way of Selby:—    

Time: 42 hours 23 minutes

Note: The “up” mail (to London) was timed a little slower at 45 hours 39 minutes.

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When you look at the timetable above you realise that, far from inventing modern travel, all the railways did was move it onto steel rails. This is not to underestimate the profound change that the railways brought to all aspects of society, but to point out that the coaching age was every bit as impressive. They just didn’t have engines!

The punctuality of the mails was exceptional. For example, the Glasgow and Edinburgh mails both followed the same route between Alconbury Hill and Doncaster where the Glasgow mail branched off to Ferrybridge and Glasgow. On the return journey, they were timed to arrive at Alconbury Hill within four minutes of each other and such was their punctuality that they could be relied upon to to just that!

Next: Itineraries

Section 2:

The Age of Coaching

Introduction


The world of long-distance coach travel

An Early Advertisement

A coach advertisement from 1706

Beginning to End
How long did the Great Age of Coaching Last?

Two Coaching Periods
The age of coach travel falls into two distinct phases

The First Coaching Period
Coaches in the early period were uncomfortable, slow and dangerous

Highwaymen
The scourge of the early coaching industry, these robbers eventually disappeared

Transition
The change from the early period to the late happened because life in Britain was altering

The Second Coaching Period
This is the Great Age of Coach Travel - surprisingly familiar; just slower and wetter

Facts and Figures
A look at prices, costs and numbers involved in coaching

Different Ways to Travel
There were stagecoaches and mail coaches, and more besides

Destinations

The list of places you could go to is remarkably familiar to the modern traveller

London Coaching Inns

We’re familiar with railway termini but what were the departure points like in the Age of Coaching?

Famous London Coaching Inns


Here are most of the coaching departure points in London, together withe here you could travel to from each one

Inns and Politics

An example of how politics influenced attitudes in some inns along the road

The Battle of Barnet

Not a war, just passengers trying to grab a bite to eat on the road

The Coachmen


Coach drivers were an elite group, but as the coaching age declined, they lost their importance

An Industry at Full Gallop


The first half of the 19th century saw coaching at its peak

Inns, Drivers & Passengers


Who were the travellers and who owned the horses and coaches? Find out here

One Coach Proprietor

William Chaplin was one of the most successful coach proprietors - and he survived the move to railways

Swan With Two Necks

One of Chaplin’s Inn has an unusual name which comes from history

The Cost of Coach Travel

We complain about rail fares but coach fares were far higher

Cost to Proprietors

What did it cost to run a coaching business?

The Value of Money

To understand coaching prices you must compare them with present day values

Accidents

Coach travel was not without risk. Here are some reported  coach accidents

The Post Office

This is the story of the Mail Coaches, how the mail evolved and what mailcoaches were like

Itineraries

A set of possible journeys that you might wish to make

Death by Steam

The railways effectively killed the coaching industry very quickly. Here’s what happened 

Inns Become Booking Offices

City inns had to change when the coaching trade dried up. Here’s how they coped


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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

Background

Sources and information about how I came to create this website

Home Page

Home Page of the Coaching Website