Coach Travel in the Highlands
"Tourists in the Western Highlands: Springing a Hill in the Pass of Melfort." A large engraving drawn by Sydney Hall, found in an August 1892 edition of The Graphic.
The 18th century saw a steady increase in the availability of coach travel throughout most of Great Britain. George Robertson, writing in his Rural Recollections of 1829, remembered that in 1763 there were only two regular coach services throughout the whole of Scotland, and these only connected Edinburgh to Leith. The only other service was that from Edinburgh to London which ran once a month, and took 12-14 days to do the journey. By 1827, there were nine coaches a week on this route, and the journey south was down to 46 hours.
Monsieur Trottman makes his way by coach from London to Scotland, the first in the delightful series depicting Trottman in Scotland by Cham.
Things in the rest of Scotland had improved a little by 1837. The Penny Magazine lists services from Perth to Inverness; Inverness to Thurso; Perth to Braemar; Braemar to Aberdeen; Oban to Loch Lomond; "and one or two mail gigs which run to the north and north-west coasts of Sutherland and Caithness. These are, I believe, the only public conveyances in the Highlands, except steam boats." The author of a journal written in 1856, now in the National Library of Scotland (MSS 2507-8) suggests that coaches on "...most of the tourist routes in Scotland...run only from about the beginning of July until the end of September."
The mail-gig from Lairg to the north-west: Laxford and Scourie. An illustration from The Graphic, 1875. Even until a few years ago, it was the Royal Mail van that offered transport from Lairg up to Tongue, a facility that I myself used on occasions.
An engraving after Jacob Thompson.
Of course, wheeled transport was impossible in Sutherland and Ross-shire until the roads were constructed there in the early 1800s. One solution when carrying heavier goods was to use sledges rather than on wheeled vehicles. The 1845 New Statistical Account for Golspie thought that "sledges, which may soon become one of the objects interesting to the antiquary, were formerly the best means of carriage which those in better circumstances could use in farming, and for other purposes. Now, almost every poor man who cultivates a croft of land, has a wheeled cart."
Thomas Garnett, on his tour of Scotland in 1798, saw horses dragging sledges at Glencroe. The carts "have no wheels, but two arms projecting behind, which drag upon the ground, the horse bearing up the other end; they are very rude, and badly contrived, for the horse has not only the cart to drag along, but part of the weight to bear. These carts or sledges, though common here, are not peculiar to this district; we observed them in several parts of the highlands..."
"Glencroe", drawn by W. Watts for Thomas Garnett's Tour, published in 1800.
The only road in the far north that could take larger coaches was that from Inverness up the east coast. Joseph Mitchell in his Reminiscences recalled "the misery of a night journey alone by the mail to Caithness. First there are the perils of the Meikle Ferry; then you have to cross the Ord of Caithness, ascending and descending an elevation of 1200 feet; then to wend your way along that dreary Caithness coast, with the sea on one side seen through the pale moonlight, and the bleak bare country on the other. If the night is gloomy, a solemn loneliness comes over you, rendering the bodily fatigue of travelling still more oppressive.
"In my early days, coaching was very slow and imperfect. The coachman's drive was limited to one stage of ten or twelve miles; thereafter he tended his horses and prepared them for the return journey. His reward was sixpence from each of the passengers." With the improvements in the roads came an improvement in the service, "brought to its greatest perfection" by 1840. Some "country gentlemen....started a coach between Edinburgh and Aberdeen. Their coaches were luxurious and handsome, the horses beautifully matched,...the drivers and guards in their uniform of red coats and yellow collars. [They were] steady and respectable men, great favourites on the road, obliging, full of conversation and local knowledge, and several of these played with no mean talent on the bugle and cornet........I shall never forget the shrill and dreaded sound that Macpherson used to send through his horn, a mile off, in the middle of the night, in the empty streets of Elgin, as he announced the approach of the mail."
This initiative led to similar services being established between Inverness and Aberdeen, forcing other contractors to follow suit, though Mitchell observed that "the cramped form and colour of the mail coaches never changed."
Travellers were at times fairly squashed into coaches, giving rise to caricatures like this one by an anonymous artist, published by Smith, Elder & Co., in 1835.
This was the sort of companion one hoped to avoid! Drawn by William Heath (and published by McLean c.1829), our traveller is complaining that he was "The most uncomfortableest, I vos hever hin. Six hinsides vy there arn't a nut room for four on us - bring us a bottle of mull'd red port, vaitor, hand do ye hear get a wheelbarrer for this here luggage - vy they looks like drownded rats houtside."
Still, "on a fine day on the box-seat outside of these coaches, nothing was more enjoyable than sweeping through the country at ten or twelve miles an hour."
Alas, progress was not always as speedy, nor as pleasant.....
From The Graphic, 1875.
From The Graphic, 1875.
Osgood Mackenzie (A Hundred Years in the Highlands) recalls a winter journey from Perth. "We travelled by the Highland stage-coach. It was mid-winter, and we managed to get as far as Blair-Atholl, when a violent snowstorm started, and a few miles beyond the village the coach was suddenly brought to a standstill by trees being blown across the road both in front and behind us. A runner was despatched for a squad of men with saws and axes, but the blizzard was so severe that by the time help came the coach could not be moved on account of the depth of snow, and we got back to Blair Inn by the help of a very high-wheeled dog-cart. How well I remember being lifted by our faithful Simon, and being carried in the arms to the trap. After being kept prisoners at Blair for several days, we managed to get back to Perth, whence we got to Aberdeen by the newly-opened railway, and from there to Inverness by steam-boat. Thus we had to fall back upon the sea after all to get us north."
As in the rest of the country, the coach services were doomed once the railways were in place. Catherine Sinclair (Scotland and the Scotch, 1840) thought this no bad thing, for with the coming of the trains, the passengers no longer had to "incur the self-reproach of seeing what worn-down skeletons of horses await them at every stage, which are lashed into temporary activity. for their use, foaming and gasping out their very lives with exhaustion, while death alone can ever bring them rest or ease."
But some had more romantic memories of the coaching days:
"But I was going to forget my old friend Angus Mackay, the last survivor of these humble and intelligent servants of the public. Angus was on the mail in 1825, a fair-haired, ruddy-faced lad...and he remained until the coaches were superseded by the railways. He continued to travel by rail, but he could not bear what he called the confinement of the trains, and ultimately retired....For some forty-eight years Angus was a guard, neither snow, wind, rain, storm, nor whisky having, appaerntly, any effect on his constitution. The only evidence of the latter stimulant, although he was never the worse, was the enlarged size, and beautiful, rubicund colour of his nose. He now spends his time, staff in hand, gossiping with his friends, and seeing the trains arrive, and depart from the station at Inverness." (From Joseph Mitchell's Reminiscences of my Life in the Highlands.)
In some tourist areas, notably the Trossachs, the romantic spirit of the old coaching days was maintained well into the 20th century. Passengers from the Steamers landing at places like Stronachlachar and the Trossachs Pier then proceeded on their journey by coach, perhaps to a hotel, or to the station at Callandar.
A cutting found in the Andrew Richard collection (see my page 'Trossachs Bus Driver).
Finally, a very strange engraving for you to ponder upon. Very little is known about it, though it forms one of a series of groteque caricatures, all signed with the monogram MVK (possibly!). It looks almost modern, but the paper is watermarked 1813 (Whatman). If anyone has any theories as to what is going on in the image, I would be very pleased to hear from them (greywings89@gmail.com). Clearly it reflects the problems of coach travel at the time.
