Holyhead Road

“ It leads through quaint villages, snug and cozy among the hills, seemingly little disturbed by the workaday world beyond. What a change it is to come into the Holyhead road at Daventry, the splendid highway that charms one more and more every time he passes over it; and did ever anyone see it more golden and glorious than we as we hasten toward Coventry in the face of the setting sun? The giant elms and yews and pines that border the road stand sharply against the wide bar of lucent gold that sweeps around the horizon, flecked here and there with purple and silver clouds. ”

“ There is only one street which leads anywhere in particular, only one which can be known at sight and followed fearlessly when known. It is the Holyhead road, and to get from one house in Bethesda to another it is said that even the inhabitants find it safest to make for the Holyhead road at once, and thus secure an intelligible base of operations. ”

“ Passing it, bid a long farewell, O traveller along the Holyhead Road, to the country, for in less than another two miles Wells Green is reached and Birmingham within hail. Thereafter, in nothing less than eighteen miles shall you see the hedgerows, the fields, and the quiet road again. Birmingham and the Black Country intervene, and not until, having gained and overpassed Wolverhampton, you ascend the heights of Tettenhall, will the sun be seen shining in a clear sky once more. ”

“ IX Barnet lies two miles ahead, crowning a ridge. Between this point and that town the road goes sharply down Prickler’s Hill, and, passing under a railway bridge, climbs upwards again, along an embanked road that, steep though it be, takes the place of a very much steeper roadway. It was constructed between 1823 and 1827, as a part of the general remodelling of the Holyhead Road. The deserted old way, now leading no-whither, may be seen meandering off to the left, immediately past the railway bridge, down in the hollow. ”

“ Here the rising road forks, presenting a puzzle to the stranger, for either has the appearance of a high road. The Holyhead Road, however, bears to the left, that to the right leading in an outrageously steep semi-circle to the long, rustic, stone-built street of Braunston village. ”

“ Some travellers went by way of Oxford and Worcester, others by Woburn, Northampton, Lutterworth, Stafford, Nantwich, and Chester; some kept the route now known as the Holyhead Road as far as Stonebridge, on the other side of Coventry, and thence by Castle Bromwich and Aldridge Heath; others followed it past Shrewsbury and turned off at Chirk for Wrexham; while others yet had their own preferences, and reached Holyhead goodness knows how—themselves, perhaps, least of all. Those were the times when, as Pennant tells us, the hardy country gentlemen rode horseback. ”

“ There was an excellent reason for such wealth of accommodation, for the village was situated not only on the Holyhead Road, but at the intersection of it by the Oxford and Leicester Road, along which plied a goodly throng of traffic. On that road lies Rugby, three miles away, and along it went, among other forgotten conveyances, the “Regulator”—“young gents calls it the ‘Pig and Whistle,’” remarked the guard of the coach that conveyed young Tom Brown from London to Dunchurch. ”

“ Windmills, seen in long perspective across the flats, shrilly piping gulls, salt pools, lichened granite rocks, and the ruins of Druidical cromlechs, make up the sum total of foreground and middle distance; with the sea at Penrhos and Trearddur Bay on the left, and a long line of roofs and chimneys in the background under Holyhead Mountain, standing for Holyhead town.
LIX If a grand and awe-inspiring finish to the Holyhead Road be sought, let the pilgrim, instead of making for the town, ascend the misty steeps of Holyhead Mountain, and make his rugged and circuitous way to the South Stack. ”

“ Gaining the summit of Sandhill, a house lying back from the road, on the left, is seen, with traces of a slip-road to it and through its grass-grown stable-yard. It is a noticeable red-brick house, with a steep tiled roof crowned by a weather-vane. Once the “Peacock” inn, it has for many years been a private residence. A short distance beyond, past the cross-roads known as Sheep Lane, Bedfordshire is left behind for the county of Buckingham, through which for the next twelve miles, to the end of Stony Stratford, the Holyhead Road takes its way. ”

“ A thunderstorm here is a terrific and appalling thing, with the encircling mountains acting as sounding-boards to the demoniacal peals of thunder that crash with ear-rending reverberations along the valleys. Fortunately for those who are unwilling witnesses of this elemental strife, Capel Curig possesses a very large and resourceful hotel, standing off the Holyhead Road, by the twin lakes in the valley. ”

“ Here the whole story of our roads from the middle and the end of the nineteenth century and on to the beginning of this century is the story of improving the surface while keeping to the old winding and narrowness. Here and there we have had extensions of space which create really new roads in the neighbourhood of towns, especially as exits from towns, but nowhere as yet have we a complete scheme for the remodelling of a road in the fashion whereby, a century ago, the great Holyhead Road was remodelled. ”

“ Rennie, the foremost engineer of his day, was called in to advise upon the harbours of Holyhead and Howth, and Telford in 1810 to plan the road improvements.
Exactly what the road was like before it was improved under Telford, let the Report of the Commissioners on Holyhead Roads and Harbours tell:—“Many parts are extremely dangerous for a coach to travel upon. From Llangollen to Corwen the road is very narrow, long, and steep; has no side fence, except about a foot and a half of mould or dirt, thrown up to prevent carriages falling down three or four hundred feet into the river Dee. ”

“ Given a wider sphere of action, there is no knowing to what greatness he might have developed. As it was, he did much for Shrewsbury in his time, and greatly influenced the traffic along the Holyhead Road, from end to end. The route had until then been invariably by way of Chester; but the casual inspection of any map will soon show that that city lies at a considerable distance to the north of a direct line drawn from London to Holyhead, and that Shrewsbury is placed much more centrally. ”

“ The first stage-coach to ply between London and Holyhead was the conveyance promoted chiefly by that enterprising Shrewsbury innkeeper, Robert Lawrence. It started in 1780, and went through Coventry, Castle Bromwich, Birmingham, Walsall, Wolverhampton, Shrewsbury, Llangollen, Corwen, and Conway, thus keeping pretty closely to the course taken by the modern Holyhead Road. ”

“ The most remarkable of all Telford’s designs, however, and the one which most immediately paved the way for the railway system, was his magnificent Holyhead Road. This wonderful highway he carried through the very midst of the Welsh mountains, at a comparatively level height for its whole distance, in order to form a main road from London to Ireland. On this road occurs Telford’s masterpiece of engineering, the Menai suspension bridge, long regarded as one of the wonders of the world, and still one of the most beautiful suspension bridges in all Europe. ”

“ But as you come past Berwyn station, that picturesque little place on the railway line running so neighbourly and yet inoffensively parallel with the road and the Dee, you are conscious, whether awheel or afoot, that the road is not by any means flat. The old coachmen, indeed, knew this, although imperceptible to the casual eye, to be one of the most trying rises on the way to Holyhead; and the modern cyclist, who pedals bravely up its two miles, thinks sadly upon the debilitating air of Llangollen until its crest is reached and he perceives the true state of affairs. ”

“ The Bath Road C.C. claim the western highway as their special hunting ground, and there is a recognized Bath and Back Record, the time of which is occasionally reduced by some expert rider who tackles the journey under favourable conditions. There is no recognized road record for the Holyhead Road, but as it is the main artery from London and the Midlands into North Wales it becomes almost a necessity for cyclists to make its acquaintance when travelling to the watering places of the North and West. ”

“ The opening of the London and Birmingham had a great effect upon the Irish mails and passenger traffic; for the Grand Junction Railway, between Birmingham and Liverpool, had already been in existence since July 1837, and thus a continuous route between London and Liverpool was available to Post Office and public, saving many hours and much expense. Both seized the opportunity, and everything went by train to the Lancashire port. It seemed as though not only the Holyhead Road but Holyhead itself was a thing of the past. ”

“ The Roman way, the famous “Watling Street,” avoided the site of St. Albans altogether, and went considerably to the left of the Holyhead Road, to the valley of the Ver, where the ruins of Verulamium may yet be found below the hilly site of the monastery of St. Alban, founded by King Offa of Mercia in 793. It was the monks who in mediæval times diverted the Watling Street from its straight course to Verulam, and made the road from St. Stephens into St. Albans, by the tremendous descent and ascent of Holywell Hill. ”

“ If it had not been for such great undertakings as Telford’s Holyhead Road, which familiarized men’s minds with costly engineering operations, it is probable that projectors would long have stood aghast at the alarming expense of a nearly level iron road running through tall hills and over broad rivers the whole way from London to Manchester. ”

“ He set up his own four-in-hand and drove it himself, on an average, three times a week, the thirteen miles from Pradoe to Shrewsbury; at other times the five miles to Oswestry, or, on occasional longer trips, to Llangollen or Bangor. Long before Telford had taken in hand the first portion of his work on the Holyhead Road, “His Honour” and his neighbour, Sir Henry Peyton, had done something to improve the part that ran close by. It was in those days heavy with sand, and “as bad a road as ever coach travelled on.” Grips and watercourses ran athwart, and rendered it specially dangerous at night. ”

“ At Weedon the old Watling Street bids good-bye to the Holyhead Road for 711⁄2 miles, and goes by itself in a route 751⁄4 miles long, rejoining the modern road at Ketley, near Wellington.
The meaning of the name “Watling Street” is sought under many difficulties, so many and so hazy are the derivations of it advanced. The Britons, it is said, knew the rough track crossing the island before the Romans came as the Sarn Gwyddelin, or Foreigners’ Road, along whose uncertain course came and went the Phœnician merchants who traded with Britain long before Cæsar had heard of this lonely isle ”

“ The Mail was followed by the Bangor Pilot, and the London, Oxford and Holyhead “Oxonian”; the Holyhead Road Commissioners, the engineer, and several thousands of persons.
The total cost of the bridge and approaches was £120,000; a very moderate sum in comparison with many other bridge-building works, and something less than one-fifth the cost of its huge neighbour, the Britannia railway bridge, two miles distant, down the Straits. Four workmen were killed during its progress. ”

“ But in the face of this, what has been the conduct of the Government to the Chester and Holyhead Railway Company? In the first place, it imposed conditions which greatly enhanced the cost of the Britannia Bridge. Then observe how it treated that line with reference to other matters. The Holyhead road runs for about half-a-mile near Conway upon an embankment constructed on the sea-shore. The Holyhead Company proposed to form its railway outside that embankment, thereby, in fact, widening the embankment and affording it protection from the sea. ”

“ No longer was it possible to drive the same wretched animals the whole length of the weary day, but changes at every ten or twelve miles came into vogue, and speed consequently increased. The greatest period of coaching on the Holyhead Road dawned in 1823, when the London and Birmingham “Tally-Ho” began to run. This was often called “Mountain’s Tally-Ho,” being horsed out of London by Mrs. Sarah Ann Mountain, of the “Saracen’s Head,” Snow 24Hill. It was a day coach, and one of the first to run “double,” that is to say, with up and down coaches every day. It left London at 7.45 a.m. ”

“ Parts remain rich in very steep hills, and powerful interests situated in the larger towns vetoed the cutting of new routes through crooked and awkward approaches, and so have left much to be desired. Telford himself died, in his seventy-seventh year, in 1834, but the Holyhead Road Commissioners were in existence for years afterwards, and continued to send forth Reports until 1851. For a long period, however, before that time those documents, containing as they do only the surveyors’ reports as to the condition of the road and bridges, have nothing of interest. ”

“ The Great North Road takes a very different route out of London. It was measured from Hicks’s Hall, Smithfield, and, passing the “Angel” at Islington, pursued a straight and continually ascending course for Holloway and Highgate, going thence to Barnet, Hatfield, Welwyn, Stevenage, Biggleswade, and Buckden to Alconbury; where, as just remarked, the North Road merged into it. From London to Hadley Green, just beyond Barnet, the Great North Road and the Holyhead Road are identical. ”