Prehistoric Roads
There have always been roads or trackways leading from place to place. Some of these must have been wide enough for wheeled traffic. Certainly Roman accounts describe the British as being good charioteers, and Queen Boudicca (or Boadicea) is well known for her chariot, as shown in the statue of her beside Westminster Bridge in London. There would certainly have also been larger wagons of sorts for hauling wood, farming produce and other heavy materials.
At Newton there seems to have been an old road running from Haydock to Lowton. From Haydock it ran past Hall Meadow, down Townfield Lane and crossing the modern A49, it went towards Castle Hill and on towards Lowton. Townfield Lane is six feet below the level of the ground next to it, and is probably an ancient British lane. It has been found that where the Roman road between Warrington and Wigan crosses this old lane, it slopes down to it on both sides, clearly showing that it was there before the Roman road.
Roman Roads
After the Romans invaded Britain, they built a network of roads to help them in conquering and subduing the native population. These roads were extended as they conquered more of the country.
These roads were completely different from any which had been seen in this country before. Older roads just developed, almost as part of the landscape and tended to wind about, perhaps from village to village, and avoiding even small features in the landscape. The Roman roads, however, were planned and built wherever possible in straight lines and sometimes even went over low hills instead of around them. This was mainly for the benefit of the legions in the Roman army, to help them move quickly around the country to conquer and to put down any uprisings.
One of these Roman roads comes from the south, connecting with Chester (which was an important Roman city which they called Deva) to the south-west and with Condate (now called Kinderton, near Middlewich) to the south-east and eventually with London (Londinium). The road crossed the Mersey by a ford at Wilderspool, now part of Warrington (Veratinum), and went on north, through Newton, Wigan (Coccium) and Preston, to Lancaster and probably beyond.
It used to be thought that the Roman road through Newton was a later addition to the network of roads, built around A.D. 85 to 117, but more recent discoveries have led to a date around A.D. 69 to 77 being thought more likely. If this is true, then the Roman road through Newton would have been part of the main route, built to help in the conquest of the north-west.
The Roman road at Newton seems to have been made up first of a thin layer of small-stoned gravel and sand, then sandstone blocks about eight inches across and four and a half inches thick, with a layer of larger-stoned gravel (up to 2 inches across) as the top layer.
There have been several archaeological investigations into the road in the Newton area, the most recent being in November 2001 when a small team from the Liverpool Museum excavated two sections at Cole Avenue.
Roads after the Romans
After the Romans left and Britain was invaded by the Anglo-Saxons the Roman roads of course remained. They were so well constructed, and being so straight and direct, they must have been very useful to the new invaders.
Many Roman roads have continued to be used, even to the present day, although they have been resurfaced many times since! Such roads include long stretches of the Great North Road, Watling Street and the Fosse Way. One sign of the use of these roads by armies on the move is that not many villages lie actually on the roads, but usually at a relatively safe distance back. It is possible that this is why the main road through Winwick and Newton does not follow the Roman road. After times became more settled, perhaps the main road then developed its present route.
Many Roman roads did fall into disuse, while other roads developed elsewhere. These generally had no road surface at all, and could be compared to the worst farm tracks of today! In winter they would have been extremely muddy, and even in summer there would have been deep ruts left by the wagons and other wheeled traffic. Where roads were unfenced they often became extremely wide because traffic used to go further and further to the side of the original way to avoid the mud and ruts.
Packhorses were often used instead of wheeled traffic, because the roads were so bad. Although these could only carry a limited amount they were also ideally suited to hilly areas.
In the Middle Ages some roads were of particular importance and these were called Great Roads. One of these was the road leading across Cheshire northwards on through Warrington, Wigan, Preston, Lancaster and Kendal to Carlisle. Parts of this followed the old Roman road, but diverted from it for parts of the way. This happened in the stretch through Winwick and Newton, but just north of Newton rejoined the route of the Roman road, which it followed on to Ashton-in-Makerfield. This medieval route is the line of the present A49 road in the Newton area.
The system grew of road maintenance by individual parishes. This was confirmed by the Highway Statute of 1555. Following on from this in 1563 it was laid down that parishioners had to work for six days each year, under the direction of two unpaid surveyors, on repairing the roads. There were, however, ways of getting out of this work by paying somebody else to do it, or by giving money to the parish. The system laid down in 1555 and 1563 was called Statute Labour.
The duty of the parish surveyors, who were under the supervision of the Justices of the Peace, was to ensure that the parish provided materials, tools and labour for the highways. They were elected yearly by the parishioner and officially appointed by the Justices. As the post needed good local knowledge and authority the surveyors were usually local farmers, but they rarely had any technical experience or training in road making or maintenance. In practice Statute Labour was gradually commuted to parish highway rates after the mid 17th Century.
It was not surprising that highway maintenance was not usually done willingly or efficiently, and so the state of the roads remained bad. There was a lack of money, and men often did not work on the roads because work on the land came first, and the surveyors and Justices had to turn a blind eye to this. The real reason, however, for the reluctance to work on the roads was that they would be used by travellers from outside the parish! By the 18th century the Industrial Revolution was under way and it was seen that improvements to the highway system were vital, and the result was the introduction of the Turnpike Roads.
Turnpike Roads
The first Turnpike Act was passed as early as 1663, but this was only 'an Act for repairing the highways within the counties of Hertford, Cambridge and Huntingdon' (which included part of the Great North Road). Other Turnpike Acts were passed over the years, relating to other parts of the country.
Turnpike Trusts were actually private companies which were granted the right to put up toll gates and to charge road users for the right to travel or to drive their livestock along the section of road which the company had responsibility for. In return the trusts had to improve, maintain and enclose by fences or hedges these sections of highway. The trustees were mainly local landlords, and they were granted their powers, usually for a period of 21 years, at the end of which they had to apply for a new Act of Parliament. Sometimes the Turnpike Trusts actually built complete new sections of road, perhaps by-passing awkward stretches of the old road.
Turnpike trusts were awarded the right to statutory labour, or payment from the parish highway rates. Stretches of road not covered by the trusts continued to be covered by the old system.
A Turnpike Act was passed in 1726, for the road out of Liverpool towards London, but only as far as Prescot. Improvements, including new sections of road, were completed by 1732. The road was extended, by further Acts, to St. Helens after 1746, and to Ashton-in-Makerfield and Warrington after 1753. These stretches of road came close to, but not actually through Newton.
Meanwhile, however, the Warrington to Wigan Turnpike Trust had been set up by Act of Parliament in 1726. This section did pass through Newton, and largely followed the old medieval route to the north, which in turn more or less followed the old Roman road, and nowadays is called the A49 road. By 1750 this Turnpike had been extended north as far as Westmorland.
In 1762 another local Turnpike Trust was set up by Act of Parliament: this was the Bolton and St. Helens Trust. There were three sections: Bolton to Newton Bridge, Newton to Parr, and Golborne Dale to Winwick. In 1788 the Golborne Dale to Winwick section was excluded from the Act, which however did continue the term of the remaining duties of the trust in the other two sections.
Major users of the Turnpikes were the stage coaches and stage wagons, which developed their systems through the 18th century. These, however, were largely eclipsed from 1830 onwards by the railways. As a result, just as the turnpike trusts were set up one by one on different stretches of road in different parts of the country, so they declined in a similar piecemeal way.
The system of statute labour, dating from 1555, and the parish rates which gradually replaced them from the mid 17th century, were finally abolished by the General Highway Act in 1835. This also removed the right of turnpike trusts to the right of statute labour or income from the parish rates.
This was a major blow for the trusts, on top of the increasing competition from the railways. By 1848 the money collected from tolls on all the turnpikes had fallen by a quarter. This meant that often they were unable to keep their roads in good repair.
Locally, the Warrington Turnpike Trust finally expired in 1877. This meant simply that the trust was not renewed when its latest period of 21 years or so expired. Two years later, in 1879, the Bolton and St. Helens Trust also expired.
During this period from 1871 to 1880, the number of trusts fell from 854 to 184. The last turnpike trust in the country was finally abolished in 1895 (in Anglesey), at about exactly the same time as the first car ran on the roads.
Roads after the Turnpikes
With the decline of the turnpikes responsibility for roads went back to local authorities, who were already in charge of unturnpiked roads. There was still the old problem of maintenance by the parishes, and various new Acts of Parliament tried out new arrangements, including highway districts, although there were in 1894 about 5,000 separate parishes still responsible for highway maintenance and still electing surveyors of highways.
The Local government Act in that year finally abolished the system first set up in 1555 and turned the responsibility for highways over to the new Urban and Rural District Councils. A previous Local Government Act, in 1888, had meanwhile provided Government money to the new County Councils for their new duty of entirely maintaining the main roads within their borders which were not still under the control of the few remaining Turnpike Trusts. This Act set up the first really modern system of road administration.
To sum up, as the age of motor transport was beginning about a hundred years ago, the highways were maintained within boroughs or urban districts by the local borough or district councils, and outside the towns main roads were maintained by county councils and minor roads by the rural district councils. Maintenance was overseen by paid surveyors and carried out by hired labourers paid for by money from local rates.
With the rise in use of motor transport new roads came to be needed. A new route was particularly needed between the growing conurbations of Liverpool and Manchester. A road was planned and built here, the work beginning in 1929. This was to be called the Liverpool East Lancashire Road. The total cost was £3 million, 75% being paid by the Ministry of Transport and 25% by the Lancashire County Council, Liverpool City Council, the County Borough Councils of Bootle and St. Helens, as well as the Mersey Docks and Harbours Board. the total length was 28 miles, from Liverpool to a point in Salford, where it joined with the existing A6 road. Unskilled labour was hired locally.
The new road was officially opened on July 18th 1934 by King George V. It was first built not as a duel carriageway as it is now, but as a single carriage road with no central reservation, and there were more roundabouts or 'islands' than there are now having been replaced by traffic lights.
Although just outside the boundary of Newton the East Lancashire Road came to be very useful to the town.
Forms of transport
Because of the atrocious state of the roads, from the time the Romans left until about the early 18th century, the most reliable form of transport was by horse. Even for carrying goods such as coal, pack horses were widely used. For personal transport also, people travelled about the country on horseback. Not everyone could afford this, however, and the vast majority of people had to walk to travel, sometimes for considerable distances. It was common for such travellers to go in groups for safety. The pack horses also used to go in groups, or in 'trains', and foot travellers often accompanied these pack horse trains.
There were various forms of wheeled traffic, but these could not be used when the roads became too muddy - sometimes for months at a time. For passenger transport, these ranged from the pony and trap to the stagecoach. These coaches were sometimes quite large, carrying up to 28 passengers each, with 12 inside and 16 on the roof. Such coaches were pulled by four horses, or even five or six on roads with steep hills.
Stage coaches were big business. There was even a national stagecoach timetable. The 1820 edition of this shows that there were between 700 to 800 departures every day from London, and even around 400 each day from Liverpool. Some of these went through Newton. An engraving dated 1834 shows a York to Liverpool stagecoach passing St.Peter's Church in Newton.
The coaches ran between staging posts marked by coaching inns, where travellers could rest and eat or stay the night, and where the horses could be changed and stabled. There was a whole culture of coaching which eventually died out when the railways took over their business. This culture can be seen in such books as Charles Dickens' 'Pickwick Papers'.
Stage coaches were in use long before the turnpike roads were set up, but they became lighter and more comfortable as the roads were improved. At the same time of course, they became faster, and reached their best in the early 19th century.
Postal services were in operation for many years and the Royal Mail was established in 1660. This service at first mainly used men on horseback, but from 1784 regular mail coaches first appeared. By this time the fastest coaches were travelling at the then incredible speed of eight to ten miles per hour!
As well as stage coaches, there were also stage waggons. These were far slower than the coaches. They had very wide wheels so that they could ride over the ruts left by narrower wheels. Sometimes these waggons also took passengers who did not mind the much longer travelling times, or who could not afford to travel by coach. James Pickford, a London to Manchester waggoner, was first recorded in 1756. This business developed into the Pickford's road haulage business of today.
Under the entry for 'Newton-in-Makerfield' in the 'History, Directory and Gazetteer of the county Palatine of Lancaster' by Edward Baines, published in 1825, there is a summary of the coaches running from Newton:
COACHES.
From the Horse & Jockey
To Liverpool every mg. at 8, &
To Bolton every evg. at 1/4 p. 6
From the Bull Inn.
To Liverpool at 1/2 p. 4 aft. &
To Bolton, Bury, Rochdale, &
Leeds, at 9 morning daily.
A Market Coach to Warrington
every Wed. at 9 mg. and to
Wigan same evg. at 1/2 .p. 5
** A Coach to Warrington,
every Wed. at 9 mg. and to
Bolton same evg. at 1/2 p. 5.
There is also an entry under 'Carrier':
John Hargreaves, (from the Bull)
daily to Wigan at 4 aft. & to
Warrington at 1/2 . 8 night;
and goods forwarded by J.H.
to all parts of the kingdom.
There was a whole range of other road vehicles as well as the stage coaches and waggons. These were the privately-owned gigs, curricles, cabriolets, landaus, phaetons, broughams and many others, which increased in numbers in the 18th and early 19th centuries. They also improved in design, giving greater comfort and speed, helped of course by the improved roads.
There have always been roads or trackways leading from place to place. Some of these must have been wide enough for wheeled traffic. Certainly Roman accounts describe the British as being good charioteers, and Queen Boudicca (or Boadicea) is well known for her chariot, as shown in the statue of her beside Westminster Bridge in London. There would certainly have also been larger wagons of sorts for hauling wood, farming produce and other heavy materials.
At Newton there seems to have been an old road running from Haydock to Lowton. From Haydock it ran past Hall Meadow, down Townfield Lane and crossing the modern A49, it went towards Castle Hill and on towards Lowton. Townfield Lane is six feet below the level of the ground next to it, and is probably an ancient British lane. It has been found that where the Roman road between Warrington and Wigan crosses this old lane, it slopes down to it on both sides, clearly showing that it was there before the Roman road.
Roman Roads
After the Romans invaded Britain, they built a network of roads to help them in conquering and subduing the native population. These roads were extended as they conquered more of the country.
These roads were completely different from any which had been seen in this country before. Older roads just developed, almost as part of the landscape and tended to wind about, perhaps from village to village, and avoiding even small features in the landscape. The Roman roads, however, were planned and built wherever possible in straight lines and sometimes even went over low hills instead of around them. This was mainly for the benefit of the legions in the Roman army, to help them move quickly around the country to conquer and to put down any uprisings.
One of these Roman roads comes from the south, connecting with Chester (which was an important Roman city which they called Deva) to the south-west and with Condate (now called Kinderton, near Middlewich) to the south-east and eventually with London (Londinium). The road crossed the Mersey by a ford at Wilderspool, now part of Warrington (Veratinum), and went on north, through Newton, Wigan (Coccium) and Preston, to Lancaster and probably beyond.
It used to be thought that the Roman road through Newton was a later addition to the network of roads, built around A.D. 85 to 117, but more recent discoveries have led to a date around A.D. 69 to 77 being thought more likely. If this is true, then the Roman road through Newton would have been part of the main route, built to help in the conquest of the north-west.
The Roman road at Newton seems to have been made up first of a thin layer of small-stoned gravel and sand, then sandstone blocks about eight inches across and four and a half inches thick, with a layer of larger-stoned gravel (up to 2 inches across) as the top layer.
There have been several archaeological investigations into the road in the Newton area, the most recent being in November 2001 when a small team from the Liverpool Museum excavated two sections at Cole Avenue.
Roads after the Romans
After the Romans left and Britain was invaded by the Anglo-Saxons the Roman roads of course remained. They were so well constructed, and being so straight and direct, they must have been very useful to the new invaders.
Many Roman roads have continued to be used, even to the present day, although they have been resurfaced many times since! Such roads include long stretches of the Great North Road, Watling Street and the Fosse Way. One sign of the use of these roads by armies on the move is that not many villages lie actually on the roads, but usually at a relatively safe distance back. It is possible that this is why the main road through Winwick and Newton does not follow the Roman road. After times became more settled, perhaps the main road then developed its present route.
Many Roman roads did fall into disuse, while other roads developed elsewhere. These generally had no road surface at all, and could be compared to the worst farm tracks of today! In winter they would have been extremely muddy, and even in summer there would have been deep ruts left by the wagons and other wheeled traffic. Where roads were unfenced they often became extremely wide because traffic used to go further and further to the side of the original way to avoid the mud and ruts.
Packhorses were often used instead of wheeled traffic, because the roads were so bad. Although these could only carry a limited amount they were also ideally suited to hilly areas.
In the Middle Ages some roads were of particular importance and these were called Great Roads. One of these was the road leading across Cheshire northwards on through Warrington, Wigan, Preston, Lancaster and Kendal to Carlisle. Parts of this followed the old Roman road, but diverted from it for parts of the way. This happened in the stretch through Winwick and Newton, but just north of Newton rejoined the route of the Roman road, which it followed on to Ashton-in-Makerfield. This medieval route is the line of the present A49 road in the Newton area.
The system grew of road maintenance by individual parishes. This was confirmed by the Highway Statute of 1555. Following on from this in 1563 it was laid down that parishioners had to work for six days each year, under the direction of two unpaid surveyors, on repairing the roads. There were, however, ways of getting out of this work by paying somebody else to do it, or by giving money to the parish. The system laid down in 1555 and 1563 was called Statute Labour.
The duty of the parish surveyors, who were under the supervision of the Justices of the Peace, was to ensure that the parish provided materials, tools and labour for the highways. They were elected yearly by the parishioner and officially appointed by the Justices. As the post needed good local knowledge and authority the surveyors were usually local farmers, but they rarely had any technical experience or training in road making or maintenance. In practice Statute Labour was gradually commuted to parish highway rates after the mid 17th Century.
It was not surprising that highway maintenance was not usually done willingly or efficiently, and so the state of the roads remained bad. There was a lack of money, and men often did not work on the roads because work on the land came first, and the surveyors and Justices had to turn a blind eye to this. The real reason, however, for the reluctance to work on the roads was that they would be used by travellers from outside the parish! By the 18th century the Industrial Revolution was under way and it was seen that improvements to the highway system were vital, and the result was the introduction of the Turnpike Roads.
Turnpike Roads
The first Turnpike Act was passed as early as 1663, but this was only 'an Act for repairing the highways within the counties of Hertford, Cambridge and Huntingdon' (which included part of the Great North Road). Other Turnpike Acts were passed over the years, relating to other parts of the country.
Turnpike Trusts were actually private companies which were granted the right to put up toll gates and to charge road users for the right to travel or to drive their livestock along the section of road which the company had responsibility for. In return the trusts had to improve, maintain and enclose by fences or hedges these sections of highway. The trustees were mainly local landlords, and they were granted their powers, usually for a period of 21 years, at the end of which they had to apply for a new Act of Parliament. Sometimes the Turnpike Trusts actually built complete new sections of road, perhaps by-passing awkward stretches of the old road.
Turnpike trusts were awarded the right to statutory labour, or payment from the parish highway rates. Stretches of road not covered by the trusts continued to be covered by the old system.
A Turnpike Act was passed in 1726, for the road out of Liverpool towards London, but only as far as Prescot. Improvements, including new sections of road, were completed by 1732. The road was extended, by further Acts, to St. Helens after 1746, and to Ashton-in-Makerfield and Warrington after 1753. These stretches of road came close to, but not actually through Newton.
Meanwhile, however, the Warrington to Wigan Turnpike Trust had been set up by Act of Parliament in 1726. This section did pass through Newton, and largely followed the old medieval route to the north, which in turn more or less followed the old Roman road, and nowadays is called the A49 road. By 1750 this Turnpike had been extended north as far as Westmorland.
In 1762 another local Turnpike Trust was set up by Act of Parliament: this was the Bolton and St. Helens Trust. There were three sections: Bolton to Newton Bridge, Newton to Parr, and Golborne Dale to Winwick. In 1788 the Golborne Dale to Winwick section was excluded from the Act, which however did continue the term of the remaining duties of the trust in the other two sections.
Major users of the Turnpikes were the stage coaches and stage wagons, which developed their systems through the 18th century. These, however, were largely eclipsed from 1830 onwards by the railways. As a result, just as the turnpike trusts were set up one by one on different stretches of road in different parts of the country, so they declined in a similar piecemeal way.
The system of statute labour, dating from 1555, and the parish rates which gradually replaced them from the mid 17th century, were finally abolished by the General Highway Act in 1835. This also removed the right of turnpike trusts to the right of statute labour or income from the parish rates.
This was a major blow for the trusts, on top of the increasing competition from the railways. By 1848 the money collected from tolls on all the turnpikes had fallen by a quarter. This meant that often they were unable to keep their roads in good repair.
Locally, the Warrington Turnpike Trust finally expired in 1877. This meant simply that the trust was not renewed when its latest period of 21 years or so expired. Two years later, in 1879, the Bolton and St. Helens Trust also expired.
During this period from 1871 to 1880, the number of trusts fell from 854 to 184. The last turnpike trust in the country was finally abolished in 1895 (in Anglesey), at about exactly the same time as the first car ran on the roads.
Roads after the Turnpikes
With the decline of the turnpikes responsibility for roads went back to local authorities, who were already in charge of unturnpiked roads. There was still the old problem of maintenance by the parishes, and various new Acts of Parliament tried out new arrangements, including highway districts, although there were in 1894 about 5,000 separate parishes still responsible for highway maintenance and still electing surveyors of highways.
The Local government Act in that year finally abolished the system first set up in 1555 and turned the responsibility for highways over to the new Urban and Rural District Councils. A previous Local Government Act, in 1888, had meanwhile provided Government money to the new County Councils for their new duty of entirely maintaining the main roads within their borders which were not still under the control of the few remaining Turnpike Trusts. This Act set up the first really modern system of road administration.
To sum up, as the age of motor transport was beginning about a hundred years ago, the highways were maintained within boroughs or urban districts by the local borough or district councils, and outside the towns main roads were maintained by county councils and minor roads by the rural district councils. Maintenance was overseen by paid surveyors and carried out by hired labourers paid for by money from local rates.
With the rise in use of motor transport new roads came to be needed. A new route was particularly needed between the growing conurbations of Liverpool and Manchester. A road was planned and built here, the work beginning in 1929. This was to be called the Liverpool East Lancashire Road. The total cost was £3 million, 75% being paid by the Ministry of Transport and 25% by the Lancashire County Council, Liverpool City Council, the County Borough Councils of Bootle and St. Helens, as well as the Mersey Docks and Harbours Board. the total length was 28 miles, from Liverpool to a point in Salford, where it joined with the existing A6 road. Unskilled labour was hired locally.
The new road was officially opened on July 18th 1934 by King George V. It was first built not as a duel carriageway as it is now, but as a single carriage road with no central reservation, and there were more roundabouts or 'islands' than there are now having been replaced by traffic lights.
Although just outside the boundary of Newton the East Lancashire Road came to be very useful to the town.
Forms of transport
Because of the atrocious state of the roads, from the time the Romans left until about the early 18th century, the most reliable form of transport was by horse. Even for carrying goods such as coal, pack horses were widely used. For personal transport also, people travelled about the country on horseback. Not everyone could afford this, however, and the vast majority of people had to walk to travel, sometimes for considerable distances. It was common for such travellers to go in groups for safety. The pack horses also used to go in groups, or in 'trains', and foot travellers often accompanied these pack horse trains.
There were various forms of wheeled traffic, but these could not be used when the roads became too muddy - sometimes for months at a time. For passenger transport, these ranged from the pony and trap to the stagecoach. These coaches were sometimes quite large, carrying up to 28 passengers each, with 12 inside and 16 on the roof. Such coaches were pulled by four horses, or even five or six on roads with steep hills.
Stage coaches were big business. There was even a national stagecoach timetable. The 1820 edition of this shows that there were between 700 to 800 departures every day from London, and even around 400 each day from Liverpool. Some of these went through Newton. An engraving dated 1834 shows a York to Liverpool stagecoach passing St.Peter's Church in Newton.
The coaches ran between staging posts marked by coaching inns, where travellers could rest and eat or stay the night, and where the horses could be changed and stabled. There was a whole culture of coaching which eventually died out when the railways took over their business. This culture can be seen in such books as Charles Dickens' 'Pickwick Papers'.
Stage coaches were in use long before the turnpike roads were set up, but they became lighter and more comfortable as the roads were improved. At the same time of course, they became faster, and reached their best in the early 19th century.
Postal services were in operation for many years and the Royal Mail was established in 1660. This service at first mainly used men on horseback, but from 1784 regular mail coaches first appeared. By this time the fastest coaches were travelling at the then incredible speed of eight to ten miles per hour!
As well as stage coaches, there were also stage waggons. These were far slower than the coaches. They had very wide wheels so that they could ride over the ruts left by narrower wheels. Sometimes these waggons also took passengers who did not mind the much longer travelling times, or who could not afford to travel by coach. James Pickford, a London to Manchester waggoner, was first recorded in 1756. This business developed into the Pickford's road haulage business of today.
Under the entry for 'Newton-in-Makerfield' in the 'History, Directory and Gazetteer of the county Palatine of Lancaster' by Edward Baines, published in 1825, there is a summary of the coaches running from Newton:
COACHES.
From the Horse & Jockey
To Liverpool every mg. at 8, &
To Bolton every evg. at 1/4 p. 6
From the Bull Inn.
To Liverpool at 1/2 p. 4 aft. &
To Bolton, Bury, Rochdale, &
Leeds, at 9 morning daily.
A Market Coach to Warrington
every Wed. at 9 mg. and to
Wigan same evg. at 1/2 .p. 5
** A Coach to Warrington,
every Wed. at 9 mg. and to
Bolton same evg. at 1/2 p. 5.
There is also an entry under 'Carrier':
John Hargreaves, (from the Bull)
daily to Wigan at 4 aft. & to
Warrington at 1/2 . 8 night;
and goods forwarded by J.H.
to all parts of the kingdom.
There was a whole range of other road vehicles as well as the stage coaches and waggons. These were the privately-owned gigs, curricles, cabriolets, landaus, phaetons, broughams and many others, which increased in numbers in the 18th and early 19th centuries. They also improved in design, giving greater comfort and speed, helped of course by the improved roads.