The coaching inn (also coaching house or staging inn) was a vital part of Europe's inland transport infrastructure until the development of the railway, providing a resting point (

layover 250px, Layover for buses at LACMTA's Los_Angeles.html" ;"title="Warner Center Transit Hub, Los Angeles">Warner Center Transit Hub, Los Angeles In scheduled transportation, a layover (also way station, or connection) is a point where a vehic ...

) for people and horses. The inn served the needs of travellers, for food, drink, and rest. The attached stables, staffed by hostlers, cared for the horses, including changing a tired team for a fresh one. Coaching inns were used by private travellers in their coaches, the public riding stagecoaches between one town and another, and (in England at least) the

mail coach A mail coach is a stagecoach that is used to deliver mail. In Great Britain, Ireland, and Australia, they were built to a General Post Office-approved design operated by an independent contractor to carry long-distance mail for the Post Office. ...

. Just as with roadhouses in other countries, although many survive, and some still offer overnight accommodation, in general coaching inns have lost their original function and now operate as ordinary pubs. Coaching inns stabled teams of horses for

stagecoach A stagecoach (also: stage coach, stage, road coach, ) is a four-wheeled public transport coach used to carry paying passengers and light packages on journeys long enough to need a change of horses. It is strongly sprung and generally drawn by ...

es and

es and replaced tired teams with fresh teams. In America,

stage station A stage station or relay station, also known as a staging post, a posting station, or a stage stop, is a facility along a main road or trade route where a traveller can rest and/or replace exhausted working animals (mostly horse riding, riding h ...

s performed these functions. Traditionally English coaching inns were apart but this depended very much on the terrain. Some English towns had as many as ten such inns and rivalry between them was intense, not only for the income from the stagecoach operators but for the revenue for food and drink supplied to the passengers. Barnet,

Hertfordshire Hertfordshire ( or ; often abbreviated Herts) is a ceremonial county in the East of England and one of the home counties. It borders Bedfordshire to the north-west, Cambridgeshire to the north-east, Essex to the east, Greater London to the ...

still has an unusually high number of historic pubs along its high street due to its former position on the Great North Road from London to Scotland.

Historic coaching inns

The Black Lion in Cardigan (established 1105) is probably the oldest Welsh coaching inn. Other historic inns in Wales include the Black Boy Inn (built 1522) and the Groes Inn (1573). The Bear, Oxford, was founded in 1774 as 'The Jolly Trooper' from the house of the stableman to the coaching inn 'The Bear Inn', on High Street. It acquired the name The Bear, and the history of the coaching inn, when The Bear Inn was converted into a private house in 1801. There were many coaching inns in what is now

central London Central London is the innermost part of London, in England, spanning the City of London and several boroughs. Over time, a number of definitions have been used to define the scope of Central London for statistics, urban planning and local gove ...

. The only remaining one with the galleries to the bedrooms above is

The George Inn, Southwark The George Inn, or The George, is a public house established in the medieval period on Borough High Street in Southwark, London, owned and leased by the National Trust. It is located about from the south side of the River Thames near London B ...

, owned by the

National Trust The National Trust () is a heritage and nature conservation charity and membership organisation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Trust was founded in 1895 by Octavia Hill, Sir Robert Hunter and Hardwicke Rawnsley to "promote the ...

and still run as a pub. Many have been demolished and plaques mark their location. The Nomura building close to the

Museum of London London Museum (known from 1976 to 2024 as the Museum of London) is a museum in London, covering the history of the city from prehistoric to modern times, with a particular focus on social history. The Museum of London was formed in 1976 by ama ...

London Wall The London Wall is a defensive wall first built by the Ancient Rome, Romans around the strategically important port town of Londinium in AD 200, as well as the name of a #modern, modern street in the City of London, England. Roman London was ...

commemorates the "Bull and Mouth" Inn. The Golden Cross House, opposite St Martin's in the Fields recalls the Golden Cross, Charing Cross coaching inn. Other coaching inns lost their customers when the railway replaced the mail coach routes, and were closed down. Chockerup Inn in Western Australia is one example: it was abandoned when the Great Southern Railway opened in 1889, replacing the coach route between Albany and Perth.

Cock and Bull

A pair of coaching inns along

Watling Street Watling Street is a historic route in England, running from Dover and London in the southeast, via St Albans to Wroxeter. The road crosses the River Thames at London and was used in Classical Antiquity, Late Antiquity, and throughout the M ...

Stony Stratford Stony Stratford is a market town in Buckinghamshire and a constituent town of Milton Keynes, England. It is located on Watling Street, historically the Roman road from London to Chester. It is also a civil parish with a town council in the Cit ...

are claimed to have given rise to the term " cock and bull stories". The claim is that stories by coach passengers would be further embellished as they passed between the two hostelries, "The Cock" and "The Bull", fuelled by ale and an interested audience. Hence any suspiciously elaborate tale would become a cock and bull story. However, there is no evidence to suggest that this is where the phrase originated. The phrase, first recorded in 1621, may instead be an allusion to

Aesop's fables Aesop's Fables, or the Aesopica, is a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a Slavery in ancient Greece, slave and storyteller who lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 564 Before the Common Era, BCE. Of varied and unclear origins, the stor ...

, with their incredible talking animals.

References

Bibliography

*''Coaching Era, The: Stage and Mail Coach Travel in and Around Bath, Bristol and Somerset'', Roy Gallop, Fiducia (2003), * 'The English Urban Inn 1560–1750', Alan Everitt, in ''Perspectives in English Urban History'', ed. By Alan Everitt, Palgrave Macmillan (1973), I

External links

Coaching inns
By Anne Woodley.
Stagecoaches and Coaching Inns
Cottontown.
Photos of examples of what may be considered coaching inns in geograph.org.uk
{{DEFAULTSORT:Coaching Inn Transport infrastructure Drinking establishments in Europe Tourist accommodations Horse-related professions and professionals Hotel types