The Exeter Road: The Story of the West of England Highway
1899
The Exeter Road: The Story of the West of England Highway
1899
The Exeter Road was once England's great western artery, and Charles G. Harper reconstructs its vanished world with the passion of a man who watched the coaching era give way to railways. Beginning at Hyde Park Corner, he traces this ancient route through the Dorset downs and Somerset hills, past coaching inns that once thrummed with the arrival of the famous 'Telegraph' and 'Quicksilver' mails. This is not dry topography but living history: Harper interviews surviving coachmen, records local legends, and evokes the bone-shaking terror of a winter journey through muddy byways where highwaymen waited. Written in 1899, when steam had already made the old road seem archaic, this book carries a particular wistfulness. Harper understands that roads are more than pathways - they are repositories of English character, shaped by centuries of travelers, toll collectors, innkeepers, and the unnamed multitudes who walked and rode before us. His prose bridges Victorian antiquarian curiosity and modern historical sensibility, making the Exeter Road a time machine as much as a thoroughfare.
