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For this early bus crew,
all roads lead to ...
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Roads leading to the new town were originally little more than country tracks.
A "bye way to a few farm houses", was by 1815 carrying much traffic from
Pembroke to Paterchurch. The Mayor of Pembroke suggested a subsidy, and the Navy
Board contributed £ 200 towards "making the road" - today's Top Road, High St,
Belle Vue Terrace and Victoria Road.
From the 1830s, four-horse mail coaches sped along London Road. The route,
specified by master road-engineer Thomas Telford, was from the railway at
Gloucester, through St. Clears, past the tollgate near today's Tesco traffic
lights, to the new Irish packet-boat pier at Hobbs point.
George Mason describes the scene as a coach leaves Hobbs Point - "a sight to be
remembered, which was of course a daily occurrence... The townspeople used to
assemble to give them a send off, and also to welcome their arrival..". Despite
newspapers, people preferred to hear news "orally ... through the medium of the
mail coach drivers and passengers, who generally collected a fund of information
to be distributed at their journey's end".
In the 1850s the news was still arriving by coach - but now at the Victoria
Hotel. In Pembroke Dock as in other towns newspapers were expensive and people
often liked to listen in groups rather than read alone. Mrs Peters describes how
"one of these coaches brought a newspaper every week ... Alderman Hughes used to
stand on the steps of the Clarence Inn and read the paper to the people who
congregated there for the purpose of hearing it every Sunday. During the Crimean
War a crowd collected long before the arrival of the coach on the newspaper day,
anxious to hear the latest news". (Many soldiers had left friends, families and
loved ones in Pembroke Dock). Coachmen enjoyed their work and Mr Bramble, who
drove on the Pembroke Dock route, was so depressed when the railway put him out
of business that he hanged himself in a stable at Tenby.
The train replaced the stage coach for
long-distance journeys, but another kind of coach still runs along London Road
and other local routes. Small buses now operate where, in the days before
widespread car ownership, a substantial fleet of Silcox double deckers provided
everyday public transport.
(Sources:
Gibbs; Peters 34-5; Archer; Rose, J 84; Williams, Rebecca 181-23; Mason 38-9,
83; Hogg, Lost PD) |
