Author: Stuart Butler

When you sit by the mute, still, mill race,
With swallows swooping low over a surface
Like glass, it’s easy to miss the water’s whispers.
I don’t mean the oozing and splashes,
The swish of the fish or the wind in the rushes,
I mean the tales of long ago when weir
And sluice meant a spuming spate of power,
A circuit of cog, belt, loom and jenny,
A revolution of the water wheels,
A pandemonium of 5 valley hammer-noise.

I laughed then in the face of precocious steam,
Bade weavers leave their homes to come to me,
Sprung cycles of boom and workhouse bust
To make any modern credit crunch seem very small beer,
Told workmen to form combinations,
Threw masters in the cut and felt the red coats’
Horses’ hooves pound the ground with General Wolfe,
Forced spinners to emigrate to New South Wales
Or lodge in hulks on their way to Botany Bay,
Saw coal black gold shift on cut and iron railway,
Fought a losing battle with boiler, chimney, steam,
Felt weed-dank choke my wooden-wheels,
Then knew my time was past.

So shed a mournful tear and took my vow of silence.

THE FLOWER OF GLOSTER by Temple Thurston 1912

‘…desolate though the Thames and Severn may now be, it has such beauties as I shall ever remember … the topmost lock of the Golden Valley, where the Sapperton Tunnel pierces its dark way into the very heart of the hills … that wonderful valley of glorious gold, where in the month of May the deep woods have laid down their royal carpet of blue-bells …’

‘When you join the Thames and Severn Canal at Stroud, it is but twenty-eight miles and a few furlongs before you come to Inglesham, where the water of the canal joins the Isis and all signs of the tow-path are lost to you for ever. But those twenty-eight miles are worth a thousand for the wealth of their colour alone.

Immediately you have come to Brimscombe Basin and the high land, studded with the grey Gloucestershire houses, begins to rise at either side of the canal, it is no longer the English scenery you might expect, but like mountain villages in Switzerland, thousands of feet above the level of the sea. I have seen villages in the Apennines which reminded me of Chalford and St. Mary’s crossing. The mills and the factories with blue slate roofs make a colour against the golden distance of the Golden Valley, to which, through all those little villages on the hill-sides, you feel you are always leading, slowly and surely, like a miner who nows the day will come when he shall strike his reef. There is an aura of gold everywhere. The distance is no longer blue – that is more the colour of the nearer foreground. But away beyond it there is a mist of gold into which all tones and shadows melt like metal cast into a furnace. Mills and factories, blue slate roofs and grey houses! All this sounds impossible; but it is true!

Yet this is but the beginning of the Golden Valley, the long courtyard to that garden through which you must pass before you come to the great gates which give entrance to this deep valley of gold. And all along by the side of this paved courtyard there grow in broad white feathered masses the flowers of cow-parsnip. At one spot, on a pathway the other side of the canal, there is a door set in a wall that the path itself may continue. Here was the greatest cluster of all.’

‘Soon after Chalford, the grey houses with their blue slate roofs grew fewer in number, the hills at each side became higher; there are broader pasture fields; a stray farm or lock-house is all you can see of human habitation. In the nearer distance the dense woods spread over the rolling land and, like an army in glittering mail, with golden trappings and with coloured plumes, they march down the hill-sides to the water’s edge.

This part of the country must be the most luxuriant in the whole of England. In a half hour’s ramble through those woods … I counted seventeen sorts of wild flowers then in bloom … bluebells and orchis … cuckoo-pint … nettles, red and white … Garlic I found and primroses … violets grew so thickly … Ground ivy … forget-me-nots, king cups … lesser celandine … strawberries in blossom … the common bugle … Herb-Robert … stitchwort and salvia. I have no doubt I missed a great many more … knotted figwort … white and purple comfrey … willow herb …

And with all these jewelled flowers, imagine a valley of gold. The leaves of all the countless trees set before you in the golden flush of youth; the fields on the other bank dipped in the myriad buttercups and cowslips; the sunlight steaming on it all from a cloudless sky in May …

When I came out of those woods into the sunshine again, I could only stand and wonder …’

‘For more than three miles the canal divides the wooded hills, a band of silver drawn through the valley of gold. Lock by lock it mounts the gentle incline until it reaches the pound to Sapperton Tunnel, and at the summit spreads into a wide basin before it passes into the last lock some few hundred yards before the tunnel’s mouth.

The whole way from Stroud is almost deserted now. We only met one barge in the whole journey. An old lady with a capacious barge bonnet was standing humming quietly to herself at the tiller. That was the only boat we found on those waters. The locks are, however, good; some of them have only just been made within the last few years. But the draught of water is bad; in some places we just floated, and no more. It was stern work for Fanny then. I thought the tow-line must give way, the strain upon it was so great.

In one short pound more shallow than the rest, we came across two little boys, bathing…

After our meal we went on through the rest of this wonderful valley. It was golden to the last. Even in the water itself the weeds grew more luxuriously than I have seen in any river. In and out of the forests of trailing weed the fish moved mysteriously, like mermaids in a fairy-tale. It was all a fairy-tale beneath the water. There were dense growths, and then clear spaces on to which the sunshine fell in brilliant patches. The pen of Hans Andersen could have found many a story in that magic country beneath the still water of the canal.

At the top of the valley, looking down between the hills through a lattice-work of apple blossom, stands the Bricklayers’ Arms, a little inn with two or three houses clustered around it …

The passage through the tunnel of Sapperton, which, on a sudden bend of the canal, opens a deep black mouth into the heart of the hills … Into the grim darkness you glide and, within half an hour, are lost in a lightless cavern where the drip drip of the clammy water sounds incessantly in your ears.

Some time ago, when there was more constant traffic on this canal, there were professional leggers to carry you through; for there is no tow-path … There are no leggers now. For four hours Eynsham Harry and I lay upon our sides on the wings that are fitted for that purpose, and legged every inch of the two and three-quarter miles. It is no gentle job. Countless were the times I looked ahead to that faint pin-point of light; but by such infinite degrees did it grow larger as we neared the end, that I thought we should never reach it … A drip of shiny water on one’s face is quite enough to upset the most engrossing contemplation. I saw the pin-point of light growing to the pin’s head, and still we laboured on, only resting a few moments to light a fresh candle or take breath.

It was evening when we came out into the light again and, though the sun had set, with shadows falling everywhere, it almost dazzled me. A barge in the next lock rose above the lock’s arms, with every line cut out against the pale sky.’

To Whom it may Concern and to Posterity

I have been asked to leave an account of the plight of the first convicts to be transported from the Stroud-water district to New South Wales, or, less frequently, Norfolk Island. I have said that I will do this quite willingly. I do this through the words of _______________________ , and my pen.

But first, I will provide a list of the convicts themselves, their places of origin, the dates of their sentencing, dates of their transportation and their ships of transportation. I hope that you will find a perusal of this instructive, informative and enlightening.

Samuel Davis (killed 30 May 1788) from Stroud, sentenced in 1785 for seven years, transported 1787 on the Alexander.

Samuel Griffiths (als Brisco, als Butcher), sentenced in 1784 for seven years, transported 1787 on the Alexander.

Joseph Haines (Haynes), sentenced in 1785 for fourteen years, transported 1787 on the Alexander.

Elizabeth Lock 21 (m Richard Morgan q.v. 30 Mar 1788), servant, sentenced 1783 for seven years, transported 1787 on the Lady Penrhyn.

Joseph Long from Slimbridge, sentenced in 1785 for seven years, transported 1787 on the Alexander (later Norfolk Island).

William Oakey (Oakey) killed 30 May 1788) from Painswick/Stroud, a labourer, sentenced in 1784 for seven years, transported 1787 on the Alexander.

Elizabeth Parker als Pugh, died 26 Feb 1788, (had a daughter, Ann, on the voyage), from North Nibley, sentenced in 1785 for seven years, transported 1787 on the Friendship.

Edward Risby from Uley, a labourer, sentenced in 1784 for seven years, transported 1787 on the Alexander (later Norfolk Island, then Van Dieman’s Land).

Daniel Smart (died at Sydney Cove 11 Mar 1788), from Stroud, sentenced in 1786 for seven years, transported 1787 on the Alexander.

Richard Smart (died on voyage 24 May 1788), from Stroud, sentenced in 1786 for seven years, transported 1787 on the Alexander.

‘We were taken from Newgate and put in rowboats in the fogs of early in the year 1787. We shivered in our rags, coughing like hags, rattling our shackles, as we ploughed along the Thames. We thought a ship ought to be an improvement on what we had undergone: we had served part of our sentences in Newgate, and some of our number had exchanged a death sentence in exchange for transportation, it was said. We were a surly and irascible bunch. When we saw where we were to be chained below decks, some swore they regretted not taking the rope at the scaffold.

Now, I am a man of average height, about 5 feet 4 inches when not shod. But how could I stand upright in headroom of some 4 foot six inches? Can you imagine that discomfort and fixed contortion? I didn’t know I had a nine-month voyage ahead of me neither.

We were barricaded in, with marines on sentry to stop us from mutiny and standing upright.

Me and my Newgate cellmates were put on the Alexander. It was the largest ship on the voyage, at about 100 feet long, 30 feet in width and about 450 tons. They managed to put nigh on two hundred of us in there. The newest ship, the Lady Penrhyn, was for the women; it was the healthiest but I think it was the slowest ship in our entourage and the Alexander the fastest. Our convict fleet also included the Friendship. Every one of these ships was like a Noah’s Ark what with the animals all on deck.

Lamentable creatures! The cacophony was heart-rending straightway: the sea was in a bad mood in the Channel; they were on deck in the wind and waves, but we were chained below decks in the confined space. Lamentable creatures! The scurvy, fever, pneumonia and dysentery were all rife. Twenty of us were to die, and there was never less than twenty sick at every sunset.

It was a blessed relief when we reached the Canary Islands in June – not bad going, from the captain’s viewpoint. We were allowed up on deck then for some of God’s fresh, clean air.

The Atlantic Ocean beckoned, and Rio awaited us. We anchored there in August, awaiting the Lady Penryhn. And what tales we heard of life aboard that ship. Couplings and carnality and fecundity down there below decks with the crew pressing the women hard: it was little wonder that the voyage brought forth new life, in consequence. Marriage transpired too; it was not all base-born.

We left Rio and reached Cape Town in November. (I have such remarkable accounts to tell of adventures in New South Wales and so little paper and ink, that I will be quite perfunctory with the rest of the navigation.) We arrived at Botany Bay in January 1788, nine months after the commencement of the transportation. The Bay was not what the captain had been led to expect, and so we sailed on to Port Jackson and Sydney Cove.

We landed the animals, built wattle and daub huts, dug and hoed and assiduously set about breaking the obdurate soil. The eucalyptus trees were abundant, but useless to us. We had more hope for the fruit trees we carried from the Cape. We planted and carefully nurtured every tree. And the rats destroyed every tree, in turn.

The whole of nature appeared to be resistant to control. It was quite in keeping with the sense of fear, despair, hopelessness about the future, and animal sense of living in the present moment, that when the Lady Penrhyn arrived, thunder and lightning rent the whole welkin. Seamen and marines had their way with the women convicts in a scene of deplorable and unspeakable depravity. All those bibles that were landed would have been better given to the natives: the deadly sins were liberally displayed by our masters – they were on the lash, and we felt the lash.

But ink and paper run low, and I must inform you of the unfortunate adventures that befell two of my Gloucestershire comrades. To this I turn.

In short, Samuel Davis of Stroud and Thomas Oakey of both Painswick and Stroud had been ordered to cut rushes for thatch and roofing for our new cottages. Captain James Campbell of the Marines suspected them of laziness and an indolent aversion to labour, however, – and so he thought a visit their mangrove bush encampment would be in order too.

Alas!

A trail of blood ran from their tent to the bushes, where Oakey lay with three spears deep in his torso, his skull shattered, and his eyes gouged out (either by carrion or the Eora tribesmen).

Davis lay some distance away, and when discovered, his essentially untouched body was still warm. Captain Campbell surmised that Davis was dispatched by terror, as he witnessed the brutal murder of his old friend and cellmate from Gloucester gaol, whilst hiding in the mangrove bushes.

Much discourse followed on the deaths. Some thought the men might have used their tools of hatchets and bill-hooks as weapons against natives: their consequent deaths were retribution, it was argued. Others wondered if their deaths were retribution for a different reason – they had stolen a canoe, it was said, and canoes represented Eora souls in native folklore.

The surgeon, John White, and Governor Phillip himself, certainly thought so, for the Eora were customarily friendly and civil in their relations with the white men and women who had so recently arrived in their land. There had to be a reason for their violence, they thought.

In consequence, the Governor, the surgeon and armed marines and convicts followed a tribal path that led from the scene of the murder, right to the margins of Botany Bay. There they descried some fifty canoes on the sand, lined ceremonially. All the while they kept their eyes peeled for the dead men’s tools, but instead a meeting with some two hundred tribes people ensued.

The Eora men were heavily armed themselves with spears and clubs, but they were more intent on communicating through the symbolism of theatre rather than force of arms. One displayed a wound most likely caused by an axe. Another portrayed the murder of a friend by the slashing of the stomach by an axe of a rush-cutter.

Whatever the cause, the melancholy fact is that Samuel Davis and William Oakey met deaths far removed from what they might have expected if they had obeyed the law in their Stroud hills and valleys. Mangrove bushes and tribal bloody retribution under an alien southern sun, instead of the hoot of an owl in a yew-shrouded, moonlit churchyard on a Stroud-water hillside

Here endeth the account of ………………………. and my penmanship.

(Sources used: Transportees from Gloucestershire to Australia 1783 -1842, edited by Irene Wyatt and The Commonwealth of Thieves: The Story of the Foundation of Australia by Tom Keneally)

I was apprenticed early (probably at the age of 11 or 12, in 1830 or 1831) to one Toby Duffell, a gun-lock filer, and also a publican, living on the Leas, near the Ranters’ Chapel, in Darlaston … I … bolted, and, for the time, cut his acquaintance and lock-filing. Having made my escape, I wandered along the Leisures until I was lucky enough to find employment at half-a-crown a week on the fly-boat running to Worcester. My business was to take the shift either day or night in driving the towing horses. After some time I learned to steer the boat, and gave up the whip to another hand. In passing the locks it was my place to assist in opening and shutting the lock gates, and as I was deficient in strength for this purpose, my employer bestowed upon me heavier curses, and still heavier blows. So fearfully was I beaten that I determined to take French leave of this freshwater sailing. Learning from the lad on the boat that, in a tunnel through which we had to pass for a distance of two miles, there was a sort of landing place, I made up my mind to jump off the boat I was steering, unseen by the man who was ‘legging’ her through the tunnel.

This I succeeded in doing, and at once made off, guiding myself through the slime and ooze by groping with my hands against the damp and dripping wall. After what seemed to me to be hours of crawling along I came to a flight of steps … (William Derricourt, or Day, Old Convict Days, 1899)

Adapted from Strike the Bell (transport by road, canal, rail and sea in the nineteenth century through songs, ballads and contemporary accounts) Selected and Edited by Roy Palmer CUP1978

On Brimscombe Becoming a Port

Oh dear! Oh dear! This a curious age is,
Alteration all the rage is –
Young and old in the stream are moving,
All in the general cry improving,
From Stroudwater I’ve brought news down sirs,
For instead of mills and scarlet clothiers,
Nothing you’ll see but ships and sailors.

Thus it will be, I bet you a crown, sirs,
When Brimscombe becomes a sea-port town, sirs.

All over Brimscombe, there’ll be boats and barges,
Man-o’-war ships that never so large is,
Steamers backwards and forwards towing,
You’ll ride for nothing, and they’ll pay you for going,
Sailors swearing, spars a battering,
Heave-ye-hoing handspikes clattering,
Strange sails crowding every day, sirs,
Sailing and anchoring in Brimscombe port, sirs.

Thus it will be, I bet you a crown, sirs,
When Brimscombe becomes a sea-port town, sirs.

In a short time, you’ll have trade enough, sirs,
All over the world, you’ll send your stuff, sirs,
Goods of every clime and nation,
Will all come here for embarkation,
Machinery and cloth, coals and carrots,
In return they’ll get Polly Parrots,
Baboons, Racoons, and Spanish donkeys,
Jays, cockatoos, and ring-tailed monkeys.

Thus it will be, I bet you a crown, sirs,
When Brimscombe becomes a sea-port town, sirs.

In a few years, say, perhaps twenty,
Man-o’-ships will arrive in plenty,
Then as the tide of time approaches,
They’ll run ‘em about the street like coaches,
Over the marshes, stones and crosses,
Tars for Jarvies, Whales for Horses,
But I’ll be off, first I’ll make my bows, sirs,
For, ecod, I believe there’s a ship coming now, sirs.

Thus it will be, I bet you a crown, sirs,
When Brimscombe becomes a sea-port town, sirs.

Swindon: Canals in an Urban Landscape

The North Wilts Canal’s construction,
Almost mirrors those fraught years
From 1815 to 1819,
When the country seemed on the brink of revolution:
The Corn Laws, the Spa Fields Riots, the March of the Blanketeers,
The Pentridge Rising, the Spenceans, the Cato Street Conspiracy,
The suspension of Habeas Corpus, the Gagging Acts, the Six Acts, Peterloo,
And it’s easy to forget that in 1812,
More troops were stationed in the Luddite counties,
Than were used to oppose the French in the Peninsular War.

It wasn’t like the Byrds, Eight Miles High,
But it was eight miles long,
Connecting the Wilts and Berks Canal and the Thames and Severn Canal,
So, in a manner of speaking, it conjoined four rivers:
The Kennet, the Avon, the Thames and the Severn;
A dozen locks carried it sixty feet upwards from Latton,
To join the Wilts and Berks where you now might shop in Debenhams;
Tunnels and wharves and aqueducts and bridges,
Coal and grain and bricks and slate and salt and flour and malt,
And iron and timber and clay and warehouses,
And a reservoir at Coate Water,
And motorways and roads and shops and offices and houses –

But where do we go when the concrete comes to Coate?

A canal-cut reservoir at Coate Water,
A manuscript of field, sky and lake-land
For Richard Jefferies and his muse,
Wandering east from England’s Chicago.

Recreation for Railway families,
Who couldn’t afford the annual Trip,
Just trying to forget the Great War
And short-time working.

It’s where my mother dived deep into the waves
Wind-whipped and keen before the polio scare,
And where mum and dad courted before the War.
It’s where I paddled in the 1950’s,
Thrilled by miniature railway rides,
Egg sandwiches and ice cream cornets,
In long summer holiday equal measure,
Until the smell of creosote and Woodbines
Wafted through the wooden changing rooms,
With the 11Plus, The Beatles,
And Don Rogers on a thousand transistor radios.

It’s where young men impressed their girl friends
With a clean sweep of the oars from out the boathouse,
Cries of joy echoing in the willowed, muddied banks,
While the great crested grebe stared up to the Downs
And the thatched cottages up in Hodson,
“The Gamekeeper At Home”, still.

You can see all these memories reflected in the waters,
You can see all of yours too:
Take a walk and peer into the shifting surface,
There they are just waiting to be netted,
With the rod and line of recollection,
But where will they all go when the concrete comes?

The Old Curiosity Shop, 1841, Chapter 43, Charles Dickens

Before she had any more time for consideration, she and her grandfather were on board, and gliding smoothly down the canal. The sun shone pleasantly on the bright water, which was sometimes shaded by trees, and sometimes open to a wide extent of country, intersected by running streams, and rich with wooded hills, cultivated land, and sheltered farms. Now and then, a village with its modest spire, thatched roofs, and gable-ends, would peep out from among the trees; and, more than once, a distant town, with great church towers looming through its smoke, and high factories or workshops rising above the mass of houses, would come in view, and, by the length of time it lingered in the distance, show them how slowly they travelled …

They had, for some time, been gradually approaching the place for which they were bound. The water had become thicker and dirtier; other barges, coming from it, passed them frequently; the paths of coal-ash and huts of staring brick marked the vicinity of some great town; while scattered streets and houses, and smoke from distant furnaces, indicated that they were already on the outskirts.

Now, the clustered roofs and piles of buildings trembling with the working of engines, and dimly resounding with their shrieks and throbbings; the tall chimneys vomiting forth a black vapour, which hung in a dense ill-favoured cloud above the housetops, and filled the air with gloom; the clank of hammers beating upon iron, the roar of busy streets and noisy crowds, gradually augmenting until all the various sounds blended into one, and none was distinguishable for itself, announced the termination of their journey.

I was born in the parish of ———-, about the year brave General Wolfe fell at Quebec. My father worked on the new farms and fields of —————–. When wages were bountiful, he got 9 shilling a week. That went down to seven in the lean times. One winter-tide, he got fourteen pence a day only. No wonder we found bread and fuel scarce that year. Mother gave birth to eleven of us. Six survived.
The first work I ever did was to scare the crows. I got my breakfast and a penny a day. Then I started tending the sheep; then the cows; then the crops. By the time I felt my own strength, I was ready and waiting to leave the parish and go on the tramp.
I’d ask for work as I wandered the country, sometimes staying a few weeks with one master, but never much longer than that. Some nights I’d sleep in the barns and sometimes when it was clear and dry, the hedgerows. I struck up friendships readily, and my ready laugh got me the moniker, ‘Happy Jack.’
I met a mate one night down by the river, looking for eels, and he told me about the work you could get at the Stroudwater Navigation. I walked down there and met the gang and showed the men my muscles. We had a tankard together, and as I stayed on my feet, and pushed the barrow straight, I joined the industrious throng.
I was a tipper, working Sundays and all.

The Navigator on the Cut

I am a navigator, that’s tramped the country round,
To get a job of fruitful work, wherever it is found,
I left my native village, my family and relations,
To ramble up and down and work in various stations,
I am a navigator, the lock gates are quite shut,
I’m a nipper, I’m a tipper, working on the cut.

I left my native home on the first day of September,
That late summer day, I still can remember,
I bundled up my kit, Sunday smock and Sunday cap,
And wherever I do go, folks call me Happy Jack.
I am a navigator, the case it is quite shut,
I’m a nipper, I’m a tipper, working on the cut.

I got a job of navvy work in the lovely town of Stroud,
And working on the cut is a thing that makes me proud,
I can use my pick and spade, likewise my old wheelbarrow,
To dig upon the cut, be the margins broad or narrow.
I am a navigator, the lock gates are quite shut,
I’m a nipper, I’m a tipper, working on the cut.

But now I have to leave the splendid town of Stroud,
But finishing the cut, it makes me feel right proud,
So call for beer freely, and drink away the glut,
Here’s a health to Happy Jack, and his work upon the cut.
I am a navigator, the case it is quite shut,
I’m a nipper, I’m a tipper, working on the cut.

My point of starting was a Basin. Goods, bales, boxes, casks and cases … As we entered the large gas-lighted, roof-covered yard, amongst a group of Warwickshire, Staffordshire, and Lancashire bargemen, dressed in their short fustian trousers, heavy boots, red lush waistcoats with pearl buttons and fustian sleeves, and gay silk handkerchiefs slung loosely round their necks … We threaded our way between waggons, horses, cranes, bales, and men, until we stood before the black pool of water that ran up from the basin under the company’s buildings. Here … was the long thin form of the fly-boat Stourport … in which it had been arranged we should make our journey on the canal as far as Birmingham, or even beyond that town if we felt so disposed …

The Stourport may be taken as a fair specimen of the fly-boats which are now employed in the carrying trade upon the canals that intersect England in every direction, joining each other, and covering a length of nearly two thousand five hundred miles. For the conveyance of heavy goods that do not require a rapid transit, these boats still maintain, and are always likely to maintain their position, unaffected by railway competition; and it has been demonstrated that with the application of equal forces, canal carriage will move at the rate of two and a half miles an hour – (the average speed of fly boats) – a weight nearly four times as great as a railway carriage, and more than three times as great as turnpike carriage …

About one o’clock in the morning we reached the Islington tunnel … A couple of strong, thick boards … are hooked on to places formed on each side of the barge, near the head, from which they project like two raised oars. On these two narrow, insecure platforms, the two venturesome boatmen lie on their backs, holding on by grasping the board underneath, and with their legs up to their waist hanging over the water. A lantern, placed at the head of the barge, serves to lighten the operation which consists in moving the Stourport through the black tunnel by a measured side-step against the slimy, glistening walls; the right foot is planted in a half-slanting direction, and the left foot is constantly brought over with a sweep to take the vacated place, until the right can recover its footing. The Stourport, steered by its commander, Captain Randle, walks through the tunnel in the dead of night by the aid of its four stout legs and its four heavily hob-nailed boots that make a full echoing sound upon the walls like the measured clapping of hands but disturb not the sleeping inmates of houses and kitchens under which they pass; many of whom, perhaps, are ignorant of the black and barge-loaded Styx that flows beneath them.

We emerge from the tunnel at last, and tackle to our horse. Our progress is then slow and steady between the silent houses of Camden Town; past the anything but silent railway carrying establishment of the Messrs Pickford; round the outskirts of Regent’s Park; under the overhanging trees of the Zoological Gardens; and through Saint John’s Wood, to the termination of the Regent’s Canal, and the commencement of the Grand Junction Canal, near the Harrow Road, at Paddington.

John Hollingshead, Household Words, 1858, in Strike the Bell, edited by Roy Palmer