A1-The Great North Road
Much of the following account from Volume IV of Fletcher's Picturesque Yorkshire of 1899-1901 could be applied to many towns along the Great North Road as road transport gradually became more important and then suddenly collapsed with the development of the railways.
"Not only did the Great North Road pass through the town, but the bridge which carried it over the Ure was the only one between York and Ripon which was public to folk anxious to travel north or south. Consequently the road was filled with a never-ceasing procession of waggons, pack-horses, stagecoaches, post-chaises, droves of cattle, sheep, horses, private carriages, and mail-coaches, and all the heterogeneous life of the eighteenth century road-side. The stage-waggons were first used in this district about the end of the sixteenth century, and remained in evidence as one of the features of the highway until the introduction of railways. They were very strongly-fashioned conveyances, of great length and breadth, with a tilt and cover over the top, and wheels which were usually a foot in width. The usual team for drawing a stage-waggon consisted of ten horses: the waggoner in charge rode alongside, mounted on a stout pony. These waggons were chiefly used for the conveyance of merchandise, and by the poorer classes, who found it cheaper to travel in this way than to hire horses and carriages. For those with longer purses there was abundance of opportunity to travel luxuriously and rapidly. At Boroughbridge there were numerous inns with large stabling accommodation, and horses and carriages were always in readiness to convey travellers north or south, east or west, at a moment's notice. After the mail-coaches began to run in 1789, the coaching trade of the town increased enormously, and it is calculated that about the beginning of the century, there were at least one hundred and fifty horses in constant requisition in Boroughbridge alone. At that time coaching had reached its highest point of development. The mail-coaches sped along at an average rate of ten miles an hour, and the roads were kept in splendid condition. There was another feature of road-life at Boroughbridge, which has almost entirely disappeared. Through the little town, bustling and animated enough then, used to pass great droves of Scotch cattle on their way to the Midlands and the south of England. There were usually hundreds in a drove, and nearly two thousand head have been known to pass through Boroughbridge in a day. The passing of these vast herds brought trade to the blacksmiths, for it was necessary to shoe the cattle after the fashion of horses, and there is record of thirty thousand nails for bullock-shoes being made at Langthorpe, a village just outside Boroughbridge, on the north bank of the river, in one year, and of a blacksmith at the same place earning £6 in one day by shoeing cattle."
"Another feature of the old days of the road was the excellent accommodation of the inns. Boroughbridge was liberally provided with inns in its best days, and one of these, the "Crown," still exists, and with its roomy stables affords an excellent example of what the old English wayside hostelry was It was originally the family mansion of the Tancreds, who had possessions in Boroughbridge and the district as far back as the twelfth century, and after its conversion into an inn speedily became noted as one of the most comfortable hostelries in the whole length of the Great North Road. It was the custom for travellers of distinction and for families passing from one part of the country to another to break their journeys here in order to avail themselves of the rest which the "Crown" afforded. This house was noted for the excellence of its fare, and also for the possession of a library, which was stocked, says Bigland, with well-chosen books, the number of which, though not large, was amply sufficient for travellers resting at Boroughbridge for a short time.
"During its very prosperous days Boroughbridge was noted for its fairs, to which people flocked from all parts of the county and even from beyond its borders. There were fairs here on the 27th and 28th of April for horned cattle and sheep; on the 22nd and 23rd of June for cattle, sheep, and horses; and during the whole of the preceding seven days for hard-ware, cloth, and small goods; and on the 25th and 26th of October for sheep and cattle. The great fair of the year was that of June, which, beginning immediately after the Feast of St. Barnabas, was known far and wide as Barnaby Fair. Nominally a fair of nine days' duration, it usually lasted for the whole of three weeks and even longer. During its holding the town underwent quite a transformation. For weeks before the fair began special preparations were made for trade by the erection of booths and stalls, and of tents wherein frequenters and chance comers might find lodging when the house accommodation failed. On the commons and in the fields outside the town, wandering folk of all descriptions - gypsies, 'hawkers, tinkers, fortune-tellers, horse-copers, and ragamuffins - took up their abode. A special service of light vessels, known as Barnaby boats, came up the river with goods and merchandise for the fair, and the amount of trade done was enormous. There was a curious custom here, provided for by charter, which permitted any householder of Boroughbridge to sell liquor on the two principal days of Barnaby Fair, June 22nd and 23rd. Liquor so sold might be consumed on or off the premises so used, and many of the householders availing themselves of the privilege of this charter used to erect a tent or booth in front of their houses, wherein customers might be accommodated. It was customary for all householders who thus transformed themselves into inn-keepers for the time being, to hang a bush or branch of a tree before their front doors as a sign that refreshment could be obtained there, and there are still remaining in Boroughbridge a few of the iron staples in which these bushes were fixed."
"When the introduction of the railway system began to revolutionize almost every feature of English life, Boroughbridge was at the eight of its prosperity. The coaches were running with speed and regularity, the inns were always filled with customers, and the coachmen, guards, postilions, hostlers and stable-folk had plenty of occupation. The river trade was just as prosperous; boats were continually loading and unloading at the wharf, and merchandise was being distributed all over the countryside. When the rumours of the new order of things began to gain a bearing, old-fashioned folk found it hard to believe that there was really going to be a great change in the condition of things. But as soon as the railways were introduced the change was noticeable - traffic of road and river gradually shrank, and it became evident that the old days were at an end. The opening of the line from York to Croft Bridge in 1841 drove the last of the coaches off the road, and the picturesqueness of the old methods of travelling was exchanged for the less picturesque but more time-saving advantages of the new. It is scarcely to be conceived nowadays that the exchange of one system for another made an enormous difference to the life and conditions of the old coaching-towns of which Boroughbridge was a fine type. Coachmen and post-boys, hostlers and guards, were left with no employment; horses stood idle in the stalls where once they had waited ready harnessed; the roomy old inns were destitute of custom, and were finally transformed into private houses or split up into tenements, and the broad highways, once so full of life and bustle and animation, became solitary and grass-grown. The disappearance of the mail-coaches was speedily followed by that of the stage-waggons, the owners of which found it impossible to compete against the new-fangled railway system. Their disappearance from Boroughbridge was followed by that of the river-craft, for the railways robbed the river of trade even as they were robbing the roads of traffic. Ere long most of the business of the wharf was gone; the shipbuilding yard was closed, and a complete change had come over the once-animated scene. Few towns could change so wonderfully as Boroughbridge must have done between 1830 and 1840, and there can be little astonishment that its old-fashioned inhabitants looked askance at the new order of things. They had been represented in Parliament by two members since the middle of the sixteenth century - the passing of the Reform Bill of 1832 took away their ancient privilege. They had seen their town assume a flourishing condition and become one of the great distributing centres of the county-the introduction of railways changed it in almost a moment from a busy place to what it now is, an old-fashioned sleepy place where life moves quietly and soberly, save at rare times when fair or market or race-meeting wakes it up once more to some semblance of its former self."
©Biff Vernon 2001