THE HOLYHEAD ROAD 355 



helped his coachman, his passengers, and his four horses 

 on to their feet — (for the horses too had assumed a re- 

 cumbent position) — and having extricated his mail, by 

 the help of his tools, curses, and other expedients not 

 mentioned in the text, pursued his journey to London, 

 leaving the chariot and the ladies to their fate. 



Twelve miles further on brought coaches in the old 

 days to 1 hinstablc in Bedfordshire, where the Priory 

 Church is very fine and interesting, and where the Sugar 

 Loaf Inn used to be celebrated for its dinners. Here 

 follows a typical menu, to be dealt with in twenty 

 minutes — 



•MENU AT THE SUGAR LOAF, DUNSTABLE- 



" A Boiled Round of Beef; a Roast Loin of Pork ; a Roast Aitchbone 

 of Beef; and a Boiled Hand of Pork with Peas Pudding and Parsnips : 

 a Roast Goose ; and a Boiled Leg of Mutton." 



It sounds rather formidable; but there were such 

 people as trenchermen in the Coaching Days. 



Immediately beyond Dunstable, or, to be quite ac- 

 curate, three miles six furlongs beyond it, is Hockliffe, 

 immediately west of which place there used to be some 

 inconveniently steep hills, greatly calculated to bring 

 overladen coaches to grief, but which were cut down, and 

 the valleys at the same time raised, when the new mail 

 road to Holyhead was opened — improved and shortened 

 by the Parliamentary Commissioners. At Hockliffe the 

 mail road to Manchester, Liverpool and Chester branched 

 off from the direct road to Holyhead via Shrewsbury ; 

 and at Hockliffe, on December 26th, 1836, the Manches- 

 ter, Holyhead, Chester and Halifax Mails stuck fast in 

 a snowdrift, within snowballing distance of each other 

 -all the North-Western Mails, that is to say, at one fell 

 swoop. Report says not what happened to the Manches- 

 ter and Halifax Mails, so I presume they remained where 

 they were till the snow melted ; but an attempt to drag 

 the Chester Mail out of the drift with waq-<jon -horses 

 ended in the fore axle giving way and the coach being 



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