SNOWSTORMS 17 



severity, there is no rccasou to believe that such 

 winters were less exceptional then than they are 

 now. But the great frosts and snowstorms of those 

 times belong to history, and although they only 

 occurred (as they do now) at considerable intervals, 

 they bulk largely in the records of the past. 



The o;reat snowstorm of December 26, 1836, dis- 

 located the coach service all over the country. The 

 drifts on Marlborough Downs varied in depth from 

 fourteen to sixteen feet. The Duke of Wellington, 

 who was travelling down the road to the Duke of 

 Beaufort's place at Badminton, arrived at Marlborough 

 on the Monday night, in the thick of it, and put up 

 at the " Castle." He was journeying in a carriage 

 and four, with outriders, aud started again the next 

 morning, to be promptly stuck fast in a wheatfield. 

 A number of labourers were procured, who dug 

 him out. 



On that memorable occasion, the Bath and Bristol 

 mails, which were due at those places on the Tuesday 

 morning, were abandoned eighty miles from London, 

 the mail-bags being brought up by the two guards in 

 a post-chaise with four horses. For seventeen miles 

 they had to come by way of the fields. 



Three outside passengers died of the cold when one 

 of the stage coaches reached Chippenham, and frost- 

 bites w^ere innumerable. 



But if all the untoward coaching incidents were 

 recounted that befell upon the Bath Road, this would 

 resolve itself into a dismal record, and it miaht then 

 be supposed that coaching was invariably dangerous 

 and uncomfortable, which was not the case. One of 



