34 STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS 01 YORE 



The "New Exeter " Mail went at the moderate 

 inclusive speed of 9 miles an hour, and reached 

 Exeter, where it stopped altogether, 1 hour 

 38 minutes later than the " Quicksilver." The 

 fourth of this company went a circuitous route 

 down the Bath Road to Bath, Bridgewater, and 

 Taunton, and did not get into Exeter until 

 3.57 p.m. Halting ten minutes, it went on to 

 Devonjwrt, and stopped there at 10.5 that night. 

 The tahulated form given on oj^posite page 

 will clearly show how the West of England 

 mails Avent in 1837. 



The starting of the " Quicksilver " and the 

 other West-country mails was a recognised London 

 sight. That of the " Telegraph " would have 

 been also, only it left Piccadilly at 5.30 in the 

 morning, when no one was about besides the 

 unhappy j^assengers, except the stable-helpers. 

 Chaplin, who horsed the "Quicksilver" and 

 other Western mails from town, did not start 

 them from the General Post Office, but from the 

 Gloucester Coffee-House, Piccadilly. The mail- 

 bags were brought from St. Martin's-le-Grand 

 in a mail-cart, and the City j^^ssengers in an 

 omnibus. The mails set out from Piccadilly at 

 8.30 p.m. 



It was at Andover that the " Quicksilver," 

 from 1837, leaving its contemjiorary mails, 

 climbed up past Abbot's Ann to Park House and 

 the bleak Wiltshire downs, along a lonely road, 

 and finally came, up hill, out of Amesbury to 

 the most exposed part of Salisbury Plain, at 



