Olden Days of the Stagecoach and Mail Coach

Historian Jonathan Smyth looks at the stagecoach and mail delivery in olden days in his latest Times Past column…

On a summer’s evening, in days gone by, the rattle of horses’ hooves and the sounding of the post horn could be heard as the Dublin to Derry mail coach approached McCabe’s of Drumgoon on its way to Cootehill for five o’clock. Today, the call of the post horn is long gone, but the old coach road remains intact and in use by tractors and cars.

The English, when under Roman rule from 55 BC to 410 AD, employed messengers to sprint between towns and villages to deliver letters. Later, the addition of dispatch riders, saw post-boys journey on horseback, until the introduction of the stagecoach and mail coach service. The arrival of the mail coach soon rendered redundant the work of these early forms of mail delivery, and horse drawn mail cars began to ply regular routes across the length and breadth of Ireland.

Passenger coaches began operating in Ireland from around the 1730s and they were advertised in trade directories and newspapers. In 1737, an early stagecoach service ran between Dublin, Drogheda and Kilkenny.

A stagecoach is defined by the Miriam-Webster dictionary as ‘a horse-drawn passenger and mail coach running on a regular schedule between established stops.’ A local historian and former Cavan County Council official, T.S. Smyth, in his publication, Postal History: A story of progress, published in 1941, asserted that stagecoaches mainly ‘carried passengers’ and occasionally, ‘letters – sent as parcels’.

Smyth’s study, informs us that the Enniskillen stagecoach came through Cavan, starting at ‘Mr Seagrave’s grocery store in Smithfield, Dublin, on Mondays during winter, and on Thursday the coach started out from Mr Howard’s in Enniskillen, on its return journey to Dublin.’

Smyth then quoted an almanack from 1788, which showed that a ‘Cavan Coach’ departed from 105 King Street, Dublin on a Tuesday, ‘and from John Ball’s, in Cavan on Thursday’, and took the coach road to Virginia and on to Kells.

In 2007, Arnold Horner recalled in History Ireland, that the coach to Cavan in the mid-18th century would make an overnight stop at Kells. Another account, in the Schools Folklore collection (volume 0969), tells of the coach on its way from Cavan to Enniskillen, as it raced along the road through ‘Drumbruchas, Drummond, and Drumba, directly to the village of Kinawley’, some three miles from Swanlinbar.

The early coaches, Smyth affirmed, were unlikely to have carried the mails for Cavan Town. However, in 1790, the Royal Mail began to operate its first mail coach in Ireland and, with the construction of a new ‘broad road’ at the beginning of the 19th century between Dublin, Cavan and Enniskillen, the journey northwards was improved.

Each night, at 7.40pm the mail coach with its double guard set out from Capel street, Dublin, travelling to Enniskillen via Cavan. The mail coach stopped at the old Farnham Hotel, Farnham Street, in Cavan (this building later served as the Technical School and then as the County Library). The mail coach stopped at the Globe Hotel too, on Main Street, Cavan.

The School Folklore Collection (volume 0980), contains another piece about a ‘stable for the commercial coach’, which ‘was at the head of Gillick’s Bray and the Inn’ known as ‘New Inn’, then the property of Tom Reilly, while the stable for the mail coach ‘was at Greelishe’s’ in Drumgora, Lavey, where ‘John Lee’s was the Inn’.

Coaches were easy targets for thieves, and their punishment, should they be caught, was sentencing to death by hanging. On December 1, 1796, the Cavan mail coach was robbed near Dunshaughlin and a package taken containing the ‘bank post bills of Beresford and company’ payable to H. Warner for a considerable sum of money. The highway thieves were dressed as ‘country fellows’ placing blunderbusses to the head of the driver and threatened his ‘instant destruction’ should he have tried to resist. The carriage was drawn into a by-road and the mails removed. After the ordeal, the driver was left walk to the nearest town.

In 1815, Charles Bianconi the Irish-Italian ‘King of the roads’, also known as, ‘the man who put Ireland on wheels’, began transporting the ‘Royal Mail’ without a contract, while boasting with confidence that his coaches could run day or night at a faster speed than any of his rivals.

In 1857, Bianconi, produced a paper in which he recorded: ‘I still have over 900 horses, working thirty-five two-wheeled cars, travelling daily 1,752 miles; twenty-two four-wheeled cars, travelling daily 1,500 miles; ten coaches, travelling daily 992 miles, – making in the whole sixty-seven conveyances, travelling daily, 4,244 miles, and extending over portions of twenty-two counties’, including Co Cavan.

Interestingly, we must bear in mind that this was an era of competition between road and railway transport.

A different Coach

Over the centuries, the Dublin Lord Mayor’s coach fell into disrepair, until it was necessary to give it some tender loving care. On December 3, 1976, The Anglo-Celt reported on the restoration work, carried out by Kieran Cullivan, the talented Cavanman whose services were sought to restore the paintwork on a coach, which the paper said was ‘more valuable’ than the one used by the ‘Queen of England’.

The Lord Mayor’s Coach was built by William Whitton, Dominick Street, Dublin and first appeared on the streets in November 1791. It was believed to be the only carriage of its type and was used as a prototype for the ‘English Monarchs state coach’, which was built in 1808.

The restoration work was managed by Anthony McHale, a senior engineer, with Dublin Corporation, with additional advice from the National Art Gallery about how to recreate the paintwork, and its ‘four allegorical paintings on the front and back’ including the doors, which had both been painted over and varnished in 1932 (so that it could be utilised for the Eucharistic Congress).

The National Art Gallery recommended Kieran Cullivan as the correct professional person to renovate the coach’s ‘allegorical’ paintwork. With Kieran’s expertise applied to the intricate artwork, the coach was ready for its first public appearance since 1932. On St Patrick’s Day, March 17, 1976, the Dublin Lord Mayor’s coach took top place in the city’s annual St Patrick’s Day parade. Acknowledging the great work carried out, The Anglo-Celt proudly stated, Mr Cullivan ‘is son of Mr and Mrs Joseph Cullivan, Cathedral Road, Cavan’.

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