The Dumfries Post Office, 1642-1910. 65 



able to determine in what way Dumfries was first l)rought into 

 direct touch with the mail-coach system. 



A very precise account of the method of sending mails by 

 the coaches is furnished by Mr Baines in his " Forty Years at the 

 Post Office." In that work the mail-coach arrangements from 

 London to Dumfries and Port Patrick are described in the fol- 

 lowing terms : — " There was yet another route to the border. 

 The Manchester coach, which ran through Barnet and Derby, 

 was continued by a second coach to Carlisle, and by a third to 

 Port Patrick, and carried the North of Ireland Mails. Leaving 

 London at 8 p.m., it was at Manchester (187 miles) at three 

 o'clock in the afternoon of the second day, only 7 minutes, by 

 the way, before the coaches for Glasgow and Edinburgh were 

 timed to leave, so that one would suppose that letters from 

 Lancashire for Scotland generally, must more than once have 

 missed the junction. It passed through Gretna Green at 6.35 

 a.m. — not too early probably for the blacksmith. 



" And while the 35 miles 5 furlongs from Carlisle to Dum- 

 fries were cantered over at 9 miles an hour by four horses, there 

 was a sad come-down for the Port Patrick mail from the south as 

 soon as Dumfries was passed. A pair-horse coach struggled 

 through Kirkcudbrightshire at 7 miles 4 furlongs an hour; and 

 if for the 85 miles it was paid 5d a mile, or £646 a year in all, 

 it certainly got as much as was fair. The coach was due at 

 Port Patrick at 9.22 p.m. Thus the journey of 424 miles from 

 London (the greatest distance, by the way, traversed by any mail 

 coach) to the Irish Sea was accomplished in a little more than 

 two days. The mails for Ireland passed on by packet to Donagh- 

 adee." 



In addition to the foregoing particulars, we have ascertained 

 that the mail-coach called at the Queen.sberry Arms, Annan, 

 every morning at seven, and reached the King's Arms, Dumfries, 

 at 9 a.m. ; while the return coach left the King's Arms, Dumfries, 

 at 1.30 p.m. and reached the Queensberry Arms, Annan, at 

 3.30 p.m. 



To return to the Edinburgh, Dumfries, and Port Patrick mail- 

 coach, we learn that the Royal Mail for Dumfries left the Black 

 Bull, Catherine Street, and 10 Princes Street (Edinburgh) at a 

 quarter past nine every evening. It called at the Spur Inn, 

 Moffat, at 4 a.m., and reached the King's Arms, Dumfries, at 



