The ‘Brighton Road’ is legendary in coaching circles.  The London to Brighton route was one of the most populated and competitive during the ‘Golden Age’ of coaching in the first half of the 19^th-century, before being eclipsed by the efficiency of the railways.  During that era of Stage Coaches as means of conveying passengers, goods and information, the Castle Square in Brighton was the epicentre.

Coaches with names such as the Regent, Magnet, Age, Wonder, Quicksilver and Times run by different proprietors and driven by different coachmen frequented the route.  There has been much written about the Brighton Road, called the ‘Regency Road’ in ‘Coaching Days & Coaching Ways’ where there is a chapter devoted to it.  The Duke of Beaufort in the Badminton Library also writes about the coaches and his association with them, including stealing away in one and the abhorrent beatings that he and his fellow pupils received as schoolboys.  A different time.

For a more succinct summary of the Brighton Road, Sallie Walrond has a section in her excellent ‘Encyclopaedia of Driving’ which is a less florid read, and the references to the Badminton Library account are apparent.

The Brighton Road was the focus for much of the Coaching Revival during the latter 1800s when the likes of Alfred Vanderbilt and James Selby became associated with it.  Vanderbilt famously transported many horses from his American stables to be used on the road and there were several syndicates which operated coaches with varying levels of success.

Selby’s famous wager that he could do the return journey with his Old Times in under eight hours, a distance of 108 miles including the stops, took place in July 1888. He started at The White Horse Cellars, Piccadilly for a return trip to the ‘Old Ship’ in Brighton and completed the task with ten minutes to spare.  Sadly, he died not long after aged only 44.

In living memory, the coaching enthusiast and one-time collector Norman Brown, a funeral director from Northern Ireland, recreated the London to Brighton run with stops using his Vigilant coach.  Seats for each of the stages were sold to raise funds for charity, as has become customary with coaching runs nowadays.

The Bolney Stage in West Sussex, not far from Gatwick airport, is an excellent pub and I have visited it twice in recent weeks for CC related meetings.  The information on a leaflet that they supply states it began as life as ‘Fords Farm’, evolved to the ‘Tudor Tea Rooms’ then in the 1960s was renamed the Bolney Stage, implying that it had once been used as coaching inn, although it is hard to prove.  The building is thought to date from around 1500 and it was on the main London to Brighton road, specifically between Pyecombe and Bolney whose turnpike was opened in 1810.  Although the link to the coaching age is tenuous, its evocation of that time and its allegiance with the Brighton Road is still interesting – and the food and hospitality are superb!