304 



PUBLIC MEETINGS HELD. 



CHAP. XV. 



abandoned in favour of horses a rumour which the 

 directors of the Company considered it necessary publicly 

 to contradict. 



Public meetings were held in all the counties through 

 which the line would pass between London and Bir- 

 mingham, at which the project was denounced, and 

 strong resolutions were passed against it. The county 

 meetings of Northampton 1 were held at Towcester ; of 

 Bedford at Leighton Buzzard ; of Buckingham at Stony 

 Stratford ; of Hertford at Watford and Great Berkh amp- 

 stead ; and of Middlesex, in Exeter Hall, London. It 



1 The opposition of the town of 

 Northampton, above referred to (p. 

 293), was generally understood at the 

 time to have had the effect of compel- 

 ling the engineer to deviate the line so 

 as to avoid that place, and to render 

 necessary the construction of the 

 Kilsby Tunnel. This had been often 

 stated without contradiction, and was 

 repeated in the first edition of this 

 work, published in 1857. That state- 

 ment having come under the notice of 

 Mr. W. T. Higgins, Mayor of North- 

 ampton at the time, he addressed a 

 letter to the ' Times,' dated Septem- 

 ber 19th, of that year, enclosing the 

 copy of a resolution passed at a public 

 meeting of the inhabitants held in 

 November, 1830 " That it is the 

 opinion of this meeting that it is 

 highly desirable that such railway 

 should approach as near to the town 

 of Northampton as possible." On 

 this the author wrote to Robert Ste- 

 phenson for further information, and 

 the following was his reply, dated 

 30th September, 1857 : " It may be 

 quite true what the Mayor of North- 

 ampton says, but it certainly does 

 not convey the whole truth. Meet- 

 ings were held in almost every {own 

 on the line, both for and against the 

 railway, but Northampton distin- 

 guished itself by being rather more 

 furious than other places in opposition 

 to railways, and begged that the line 

 might be kept away from them. It 

 is true that the low level of North- 

 ampton presented a very great objec- 

 tion to the line approaching it nearer 



than it does ; but I had a strong lean- 

 ing for that direction, because it would 

 have admitted of the line approaching 

 the Kilsby ridge up the Althorp val- 

 ley in a favourable manner. I was 

 anxious to go in that direction for 

 another reason, viz., that the line 

 would have reached a point better 

 calculated than Rugby for command- 

 ing the midland and northern coun- 

 ties. If you look at the map, you 

 will easily see the bearing of this 

 view. The line by Banbury and 

 Warwick I soon abandoned, in conse- 

 quence of feeling the absolute im- 

 portance of enabling the London and 

 Birmingham to command the mid- 

 land counties and the districts now 

 traversed by the North Midland. No- 

 thing saved a direct line to Man- 

 chester in 1845, but the general posi- 

 tion of the London and Birmingham, 

 and especially the bending northwards 

 and passing through Rugby, instead 

 of bending southwards, and passing 

 through Banbury and Warwick, which 

 latter course was strongly urged upon 

 me by some of the most influential 

 Birmingham people. Few persons 

 have any notion of how completely 

 the whole system of our railways has 

 been influenced by the bend north- 

 wards at Rugby, to which I have re- 

 ferred. Scarcely a single line that 

 now exists to the north of that point 

 would have been made as it now is, 

 but for the determination I then 

 formed as to the direction in which 

 the railway should be constructed." 



