Attendance was very good on a cold January night. Bob Welch notes:
During a very entertaining Talk given by David
Waller of the Northop Heritage Group he explained how the very earliest
"Mail" system started during the reign of Henry V111 to take official
documents to various parts of England and Wales over a number of dedicated
routes including the London Holyhead route which travelled through Tarporley
and Chester on its way to the port of Holyhead. Various Postmasters were
appointed a stages along the route who had to supply the horses for the Royal
Messenger and a Postboy to show him the way and return the horses from the next
staging post. The Post Masters were often Innkeepers. By the time of Charles 1
demand was such from the public that the service was made available to all, or
at least those who could afford to pay.
In 1720, one Ralph
Allen from Bath saw an opportunity and with the help (influence and money) from
his father-in-law set up a nationwide postal service carrying the mail on
behalf of the Post Office. He had a very lucrative contract for doing this and
by the time of his death in 1764 had made a lot of money.
The next stage of
development came with John Palmer, also from Bath, who persuaded the then
Chancellor William Pitt that it would be a good idea to carry the Mail by
stagecoach. Safer also as the Postboys were always at risk of attack. Although
the Post Office were against the idea, Palmer went ahead on his own and
developed a network of routes to carry the Mail by specially designed coaches.
The London Holyhead route was one such. In 1785 the Post agreed to take over
the running of the service. Each Mail coach had priority on the route, paid no
Turnpike dues and the Mail was protected by an armed Royal Mail Guard. Mail
Coaches left the Swan with Two Necks Inn in London promptly at 8.00pm every
evening and arrived at Holyhead 45.5 hours later. Nantwich and Tarporley were
stopping points for the team of four horses to be changed as was Chester but
there the stop included a meal break. Over time the route was changed to miss
out the dangerous crossing of the River Conway and the mountainous North Wales coast
to an easier one via Shrewsbury thus the Mail coaches no longer came through
Cheshire. It also shortened the journey to about 25 hours.
By the 1840s the
Railways had been built and the horsedrawn Mail Coaches were consigned to
history.
