OLD MAIL COACHES

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LX, Issue 11048, 23 February 1933, Page 4

OLD MAIL COACHES

FIRST TRIP IN 1780. In these days of railway centenaries it is difficult to realise that in 1537 the mail coach was still running between London and Holyhead, in a desperate struggle with the train. A model of the last mail coach to run on this great road has just been presented to the London Museum. It is about four feet long, and is complete, with.,whip, horn, spare trace bars, and the blunderbuss case for; the guard to use against highwaymen from his seat over the mail bags. The model was made in 1842 by Mr Stephen Tester, whose father drove the original coach until 1837. It shows that the poach was drawn by four horses,\and carried four passengers inside, four on the roof, and one next to the driver. The first London to Holyhead coach was started in 1780 by an enterprising Shrewsbury inn-keeper, who advertised it to “lie” the first night at Castle Bromwich, the second at Oswestry, and on the third to arrive, “if God permits,” at Holyhead.

Five years later a mail coach started running over the same route, and later the “new Holyhead mail” ran, which followed a slightly different route. It left the “Swan with Two Necks” in Lad Lane at 7.30 p.m. and took 38 hours to reach Holyhead. The “Irish Mail,” the oldest tiain in the country, which for over 70 years has left Eustbn every night at 8.45 p.m., does the journey to-day in about 5J hours. Yet many people would willingly sacrifice something of the speed of the train of to-day for the romance of the coach of a hundred years ago.