Ref this message :-
At 17:52 24-01-2000 -0000, you wrote:
>A friend has asked if I could find out where to get the specifications for a
>4-11 stage coach of the type running around 1800, on the run from London to
>Great Yarmouth, passing through Hedingham in Essex.
>
>Can anyone help?
>
>Alison Roddham
As there have been no replies, we thought we should come in with what
information we have.
Have you or your friend seen Edmund Vale's book "The Mail-Coach Men of
the late Eighteenth Century" ? this has lots of information and pictures
..but one extract says
"the 'improved' patent coach ...new in 1795. from Boulton's description,
it must still have been of the two-piece design shown in Besant's diagram,
with the coachman's box fixed rigidly over the fore-axle and the body
(with the guard's seat and mail-box) detached and in a state of suspension
in the manner described by the inventor...."
There were at least three designer/builders Boulton, Besant and Vidler,
and the Post Office Archives hold information about them - but we do not
know how you would access those archives at present - have you tried the
Royal Mail website?
Incidentally the Time bill given in the book quoted shows London to
Yarmouth as an Auxiliary Coach which departed London 6 pm and arrived at
the Post Office Yarmouth at 12.5 the next day a total time of 18.5 hours to
cover the 123.5 miles.
There is a note to say that it is not a mail coach until it takes up the
mail at Ipswich, before that it is a stage coach and so the journey takes
two hours longer than a mail coach would take !
Lots of interesting reading in this book, and though it is long out of
print, it may be available in your library?
Eunice and Ron in Queensland Australia
[log in to unmask]
check for old letters,Regency, British Postal History and Stamps, stamp
booklets, discworld,
http://members.xoom.com/leisurewrite/xmpage.html
http://www.home.gil.com.au/~ears/index.html
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