40 THE BATH ROAD 



for ill the year just mentioned we learn tliat Kniglits- 

 bridge was in so deplorable a state of neglect that 

 it was perfectly impassable for jDersons possessing a 

 common rea;ard for cleanliness or comfort. Ankle- 

 deep in mud and water, the pavement was rendered 

 additionally dangerous by two steps, forming a 

 sudden descent, so that those who were rash enough 

 to attempt to pass that way in the dark generally 

 bruised themselves severely at the best of it ; or, at 

 the worst, broke a leg or an arm. 



But this was nothing compared with a former age, 

 when Lord Hervey, writing from Kensington, said 

 the road was so infamously bad that he lived there in 

 a solitude like that of a sailor cast away upon a lonely 

 rock in mid-ocean. The only people who enjoyed 

 this condition of affairs appear to have been the foot- 

 pads and the highwaymen, who had the very best of 

 times, until they were caught. Indeed, in the days 

 when the stage-coaches performed the then marvellous 

 feats of travelling at anything from three to five miles 

 an hour, under favourable circumstances, the road 

 could not be considered safe after Hyde Park Corner 

 was left behind ; and records tell of highway robberies, 

 with the romantic accessories of blunderbusses and 

 horse-pistols, at Knightsbridge so late as 1799. 



There was at that time, and until 1848, an old inn 

 standing by the way, near where are now Knights- 

 bridge Barracks. This inn, the " Halfway House," 

 occupied the exact site where Prince of Wales's Gate 

 now gives access to Hyde Park. Hereabouts lurked 

 all manner of bad characters, who had infested the 

 neighbourhood from time immemorial, safe from 



