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The Second Coaching Period

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

The Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions altered life in Britain for everyone. Poverty still existed of course, as did inequality, but overall the population was better fed and better educated. Children, such as the young John Clare of Helpston (1793 - 1864), who would have toiled on the family’s strips of land in the three great fields of the village, was taught to read and write in the church porch at Glinton, the next village. He became ‘The Peasant Poet,’ fêted by London society, and actually travelled to London and back by coach on several occasions. A village lad like John would never have journeyed 100 miles in the previous century - the very idea would have been inconceivable.

John Clare illustrates how travel became a much wider necessity than it had ever been in the past. With the Industrial Revolution in full swing, it wasn’t just businessmen who need to make long-distance journeys.

More people travelling led to more coaches running on more routes. Coach proprietors used newer coaches of better design to woo passengers with springs for comfort and glass windows to keep the weather out (for the inside passengers at least!)

Coaching inns sprang up all along the many coach routes to provide horses and refreshment.

And finally, the need for Britain’s roads to improve became so acute that the government at last acknowledged it and did something about the problem. They introduced Turnpike Trusts to collect tolls from road users and spend the money raised on maintaining and improving their roads.

Into this melting pot of innovation, invention and improvement came two road surveyors - Thomas Telford and John McAdam. Between them they reduced steep inclines, found shorter routes and built roads with better foundations and hard-wearing surfaces.

There was one more significant stimulus to improved coaching - the introduction of mail coaches. 

Prior to 1784, the Royal Mail had been carried by riders on horseback. As coaches became faster and safer, many of them had started to carry some mail even though this was illegal. So the Post Office set up its own system of coaches to replace the riders. They were given privileges on the road and were allowed to carry a few passengers and they soon became the elite way to travel.

Prior to this, men of action and business had preferred the flexibility of horseback but now they looked at the speed of the coaches and began to use them for their travel needs instead of riding long distances on horseback.

There followed a period of competition very similar to the later railway races to the north in the 1920s. Stagecoaches began to compete with the mail coaches and also with each other to go ever faster. By 1797, stagecoaches were travelling between Manchester and London - a journey which would have taken over four days in 1750 - in 36 hours. By 1821 the journey time was down to 26 hours.

At the culmination of this second period of coaching, in the mid 1800s, coaches criss-crossed the country in great numbers and you could travel pretty well anywhere on them.

As more coaches ran at greater speeds in competition with each other, the technology and business of coach travel advanced:

- The coaches themselves became better sprung and better balanced.

- The stages (the distance between horse changes) settled at an optimal ten to twelve miles, or sometimes less depending on the hills and terrain of the particular stage.

- Coaching inns, at eight- or ten-mile distances from each other, were contracted to provide horses for each stage of a journey (which might be several hundreds of miles long) and also provide food and overnight accommodation, if required, for passengers.

- Each team of horses would take a coach to the next staging inn on the route and then, after resting, take another coach back.

It was a massive infrastructure and logistics exercise which evolved over the years and enabled the coaches to speed ever faster. As a result, more people used them and passenger numbers increased, which led to more coaches, new routes, and faster speeds.

There was of course a limit to the speeds that could be attained. A horse can only gallop at a certain speed. But by using all of these methods and good horses, the mail coaches achieved timetabled speeds of ten or even eleven miles an hour - including stoppages for changing horses and scheduled meal breaks of twenty minutes. Mail coaches were fast because they carried fewer passengers than stagecoaches and did not have to stop at turnpike gates. But even the stagecoaches were often timed at eight or nine miles an hour including stops, which would have been unheard of a century before. 

This was the Great Age of Coaching that we have all heard of.


Next: Facts and Figures