STOKE GOLDINGTON'S COACHING HERITAGE & HISTORY


In 1830 there were seven Coaching Inns in the small Buckinghamshire village of Stoke Goldington which may seem to be excessive when you consider that the village is only just over a mile long. By 1850 most of them had gone out of business.

This is the story of how this came about and the reason for the sudden change.

Mail and Passengers were transported over long distances by horse drawn coaches on a regular scheduled basis.

The coaches, when fully loaded were very heavy and were pulled by teams of four horses, which had to be changed at regular intervals (about every ten miles). Progress was around ten miles per hour and so on the 191 mile journey from Manchester to London the teams be changed eighteen times, during the nineteen hour journey.

Most of the traffic between London and The North (Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester & Liverpool) went via Northampton and so as Stoke Goldington is just twelve miles south of there, it was an obvious place for a staging post.

There were about twenty-eight coaches per day travelling through the village hence the need for the seven inns.

By 1840 The Midland Railway had established the line between Euston and Birmingham and The Grand Union Canal between London and Birmingham had opened and the need for Mail & Stagecoaches disappeared.