528 



COACHING DAYS AND COACHING WAYS 



across the Great North Road. At the Angel, well known 

 in the coaching days as the house of the famed Miss 

 Worthington (stout, smiling, the chrlstener of Stilton 

 cheeses made miles away, but so called because they were 

 sold at her hospitable door), over 300 horses were stabled 

 for coaching and posting purposes. Vast barracks indeed 

 stretching at the back of the old house — one wing of 

 which alone is now open to travellers — tell of the bustle 



of post-boys, of 

 the hurrying to 

 and fro of fidgety 

 passengers over 

 eager to be off, the 

 harnessing and 

 unharnessing of 

 horses, of all the 

 many-voiced Babel 

 of travel in fact 

 which fifty years 

 ago surged and 

 swayed round this 

 teeming coaching 

 centre, now lying 

 silent and deserted 

 as the grave. I am 

 told — and from its 

 central position on 

 the great North 

 Road seventy-five 

 miles from London 

 I can well understand the fact — that at Stilton in 

 the old days the ebb and flow of traffic never 

 ceased. All day coaches and postchaises continually 

 poured into the place and out of it. And by night the 

 great mails running from John o' Groat's almost, into 

 the heart of London, thundered through the splendid 

 broad thoroughfare, visible mediums as it were of an 

 empire's circulation. And other wayfarers besides 



->«tv* 



Oriel Window in The An^el, Gt-antham. 



