The stage coach was perhaps the most mysterious and romantic of all forms of transport. As Washington Irving put it - 'The stage coach carries animation always with it, and puts the world in motion as it whirls along.' Indeed the experience of a coach journey brought people in touch with nature in ways we can barely imagine nowadays. Yet its glory days were numbered and its reign short. The stage coach lasted perhaps fifty or sixty years as the main form of public transport in England, and its heyday covered no more than fifteen or twenty (c1820-1835), before it disappeared like a ghost in the face of the onslaught of iron and steam that was the railway system. There could be no comparison between the two. It was as far removed from the railway as the hot air balloon is from the supersonic jet.

This book describes stage coaches and coaching from the point of view of the English midlands - Warwickshire, Worcestershire, Staffordshire, Shropshire, Gloucestershire, West Midlands County. Beginning with slow, rudimentary carts on terrible roads in the early 17th century, through to the development of a large, complex industry during stage coaching's brief heyday (mid 1820s to mid 1830s), and finally its replacement by the railway from the late 1830s onwards. Here you'll find the magnificent Royal Mail coaches, the great road engineers, the Turnpike Trusts, the innkeepers, coach proprietors, footpads, highwaymen, spectacular accidents and appalling weather. There is also a Glossary of Stage Coaching Terms at the back of the book.