COACHING IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 95 



With 1753 the continuous coaching history 

 of Shrewsbury begins, in the starting of the 

 " Birmingham and Shrewsbury Long Coach," 

 which journeyed to London in four days, by 

 the efforts of six horses. The distance was 152 

 miles, the fare 18s. The " Long Coach " was a 

 type of vehicle intermediate between the "Cara- 

 van" of 1750* and the "Machine," established 

 in April 1761. It was a cheap method of con- 

 veyance, one remove above the common stage- 

 waggons. It set out once a Aveek, and seems to 

 have l)een so immediately successful that a rival 

 and somewhat higher-class vehicle was put on the 

 road as soon as the coachmakers could build it. 

 It was in the June of that same year that 

 the rival — " Fowler's Shrewsbury Stage-coach " 

 was the name of it — began to ply to and from 

 London in three and a half days ; fare, one guinea 

 inside, outside half a guinea. Thus they con- 

 tinued to run for thirteen years, Avithout the 

 intrusion of a third competitor. We are not 

 told hoAV these outsides Avere carried. Probably 

 they Avcre obliged to cling to the sloping roof, 

 on Avhicli the athletic and adventurous found a 

 fearful joy Avitli every roll and lurch, Avhile those 

 Avho Averc neither agile nor imbued Avith the spirit 

 of adventure grcAv grey Avitli apprehension. In- 

 deed, it Avas probably the freak of some Avild spirit 

 — perhaps a sailor or a drunken soldier — in 

 seating himself on the roof that first gave coach- 

 proprietors the idea that roofs might be used to 

 * P. 119. 



