The Belle Sauvage, the Bull and Mouth, the Swan with Two Necks – exotic names for three London hostelries from which coaches set out for Worcester and other parts of the West Midlands from the 17th to the 19th centuries. These inns, and coaching inns throughout the country, were enormous establishments as Julian Hunt explained. They employed large numbers of people – grooms, ostlers, post boys, as well as waiting staff, chamber maids etc.  And they stabled numbers of horses that are astonishing to us in these days. (About 100 coaches a day might leave from the Belle Sauvage, for example.)  The task of conveying travellers to different parts of the country presented great logistical problems; how, for example, in an age before the telephone and the internet, did one book a seat from a point midway between London and the coach’s final destination?

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Coaches leaving the Belle Sauvage travelled to Bath. The Ostrich at Colnbrook (20 miles out from London), and the Castle and Ball at Marlborough, were just two of the inns to be found along this route.  The York House Hotel in Bath was the biggest coaching establishment in the country. 

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The coaches which left the Bull and Mouth (in the City of London) travelled the Oxford Road and continued to Worcester via Evesham. Julian showed us an insurance certificate for the inn dating from 1786. (As well as buildings and their contents, horses could also be insured, though this seems to have happened later, during the 19th century.)  The Antelope at High Wycombe was a very up-market establishment with named rooms, such as the King’s Chamber. The Lygon Arms was one of the posh coaching establishments in Broadway. It has been known by that name only from 1820 and has a date 1620 over the porch.  It was formerly known variously as the Swan and the White Hart.

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The coach road actually by-passed Evesham itself. It ran along what we now know as Riverside, and coaching inns in Bengeworth get a good press. The author of the Torrington diaries in the 18th century speaks highly of the Unicorn in Bengeworth.  There was also a Red Lion; Julian spent a little time discussing the present Northwick Hotel which may or may not have been one of these establishments.  (It was renamed the Northwick Arms in 1808.)  The Hop Pole was the best inn in Worcester. Thomas Jefferson visited Worcester in 1786 and kept a bill head from the Hop Pole.

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The Irish Mails ran from the Swan with Two Necks to Holyhead via Stony Stratford (now part of Milton Keynes) and Birmingham.  And a final route that Julian mentioned ran from the rather boringly named Old Bell Inn at Holborn to Kidderminster via Aylesbury.

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As well as providing a service to travellers, coaching inns also served their local communities.  One feature common to all of them was an Assembly Room, essentially a ballroom where local dances were held.  People familiar with the works of Jane Austen will know all about such events; in fact the assembly room at the Red Lion at Laycock was used as a location by the BBC in its serialisation of “Pride and Prejudice”.  Another common feature seems to have been a bowling green.

 

And finally, if the advertisements Julian showed us are to be believed, all coaching inns only ever employed “able horses and safe drivers”.

 

This was a fascinating talk which provoked a lot of discussion.