"On the Road..." - Coaching Inns

"On the road..." is a series of posts about our Discovery of Britain's highways and byways.  Whether it be some family fun, a surprising connection or just a beautiful spot we want to share our love for this country with you.  

Today we visit New Inn, Gloucester

 When you arrived in town these coaching inns wanted to attend to your every need – a one stop service station:  bootblacks to clean your shoes, scullions and cooks to take care of your clothes and meals, rooms for you to lay your weary head.  Stables and blacksmiths for your horses, and at posting inns you could hire a post-chaise – a closed, four-wheeled, horse-drawn carriage - in which to continue your journey.  These were the car hire depots or taxi service of their day.   One Gloucester Inn, the Black Spread-Eagle, boasted “Stabling for above an hundred horses...very fine Hay in the stables…and fine grazing grounds.”

Inns were vital hubs in the whole transport network and Gloucester was in a great spot to be sending and receiving coaches from all directions - from London, Cheltenham and Oxford in the east, Wales and Hereford to the west, Bath and Bristol to the south, and Birmingham and Liverpool to the north. 

The inn network provided the ability to change horses at regular intervals allowing you to travel at a fair speed.  Goods wagons would slowly trundle along taking a good four days to reach London – some 105 miles away.  A coach from Gloucester at a gentle pace would reach London in a couple of days.    At a quicker pace in the lighter coaches and a changing of horses every six or so miles you could leave at six in the morning and be in London by eight that evening – a 14 hour trip.    A certain Mr Jones, for a bet of 650 guineas, left The Bell Inn at Gloucester at four in the morning and raced to London in nine hours having changed his horses eight times on route (1802).

The Post Office made arrangements with coaching inns to carry mail along certain routes.  The Post Office provided a coach and an armed guard.  The inns provided the driver and horses.  The fares for the four passengers were an extra bonus in the pocket of the inn keeper. 

Inns like this were important social centres.  They were the best place to get the latest news and gossip as mail coaches and travellers from afar arrived with tall tales, loose tongues and eager ears to soak it all in.  Balls, cockfights, plays, lectures, political debates all found a home in or around these community centres. 

An Innkeeper just outside of the City was proud to declare that she had been “dipping man and beast… in the salt-water” for the past 30 years (1754-1784).  Such dipping revitalized the skin and relaxed those aches and pains and provided another reason to stay in her inn. 

With all of these streams of revenue Landlords were often some of the wealthiest citizens in town. 

By 1455 there were at least 10 inns on the main streets of Gloucester, and by the 1820s around 100 coaches would pass through Gloucester every day. 

In 1854 the final mail coach passed through Gloucester signalling the displacement of these ancient coaching inns to the almighty railways.  This shifted the whole status of these inns from an essential service to an optional place to stay should you fancy lingering in town.   Their heyday was gone.   Most disappeared, but New Inn survived as a wonderful reminder of a time when the horse drawn coach was king of the road. 

This is an excerpt from the tour Gloucester City Tour - Part Two which explores the streets around the Cathedral.  The full tour is found on  www.obelisktours.co.uk