Shakespeare's Local: Six Centuries of History Seen Through One Extraordinary Pub by Pete Brown

Author:Pete Brown [Brown, Pete]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780230767379
Google: DnBCOIOtOa4C
Published: 2012-11-08T06:30:41.577000+00:00

The waggons were built with high sides, and piled high with heavy items such as coal or hops, but also lighter components for local industries such as wool, leather, animal skins for gloves, and exotic imports from the major ports of London, Bristol and Liverpool, with spices, tea and tobacco being distributed to local markets. Although it is surely not typical, Thomas Russell & Co operated a waggoning business between London and the West Country, carrying woollen cloth and sailcloth to London, and an eclectic mix back. Between 1816 and 1821 their cargo included springs for a coachmaker, bundles of trees, caged birds, hunting dogs, numerous pianos, gunpowder, feathers for wigmakers and upholsterers, a crate of marble urgently needed by a stonecutter, a panorama of the Battle of Waterloo, and a corpse.

Waggons often travelled in company, both for safety and for mutual assistance if they got stuck, which they invariably did several times a day. A bit of support also came in handy when, travelling down the middle of the road, you met someone coming the other way. Disputes over right of way on muddy roads were often settled by fists.

Many waggons carried passengers too – if they didn’t exceed four miles an hour (and they very rarely did) they could take passengers without incurring excise duty. But given that the average speed of a waggon was closer to two miles per hour rather than four – slower than travelling on horseback or even on foot – there was a certain social stigma attached to sitting on the back of a lumbering waggon. Writing in 1617, Fynes Moryson claimed that ‘none but women, people of inferior condition, Flemings, their wives and servants, used to travel in this sort’, rather like Margaret Thatcher’s supposed opinion of the people on the 149 bus.

An early waggon would manage somewhere between fifteen and twenty miles per day, meaning popular routes such as London to Exeter or Manchester would take the best part of a week. But despite it being so slow and difficult, the demand for the waggoning trade saw a dramatic increase as England urbanized. In 1650 just 9 per cent of the population lived in towns and cities. This figure shot up to 13 per cent by the end of the century, doubled over the next hundred years and stood at 40 per cent by 1850. The amount of stuff – and people – that needed to travel between towns and cities rocketed. And as the waggoning trade grew, so did the need for inns to cater to it. Soon there were inns in every town – and at regular intervals between them, corresponding to the average distance a waggon could travel in one day. By 1577 – the first year we have an estimate of numbers – there were 3,600 inns across England, lining every major road, with clusters every ten to fifteen miles. For example, St Albans – the first night’s stage out of London – had twenty-seven inns, and there would be smaller stops along the way, providing midday refreshment and a change of horses.

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