18th & 19th Century — History of Hereford

Celia Fiennes

The old town hall in Hereford as it would have appeared when Celia Fiennes visited the city.

Celia Fiennes visited Herefordshire in 1696. She saw a countryside in which apple and pear trees were growing everywhere 'even in their corn fields and hedgerows'. She described Hereford as a 'pretty little town of timber buildings' with well-paved streets 'handsome as to breadth and length'.

Daniel Defoe

A cider mill reconstructed near Hereford livestock market. The Normans had introduced cider into England and by this period cider-apple trees were even grown in the hedgerows of Herefordshire.

In the 1720s Daniel Defoe was less impressed with Hereford which he described as 'large and populous' but also as 'an old, mean built, and very dirty city'. However, in the countryside around he found things more to his liking when he discovered the purpose of all the fruit trees which Celia Fiennes had seen. Defoe developed a taste for the local drink, cider.

'We could get no beer or ale in their publick houses, only cyder; and that so very good, so fine, and so cheap that we never found fault with the exchange. Great quantities of this cyder are sent to London, even by land carriage 'tho' so very remote, which is an evidence of the goodness of it, beyond contradiction.'

The River Traffic

River traffic on the Wye at Hereford. In the early 19th century bargees drank in the Bell Inn in Gwynne Street (then Pipe Lane).

The Bishop's Palace and timber yard — The palace in the late 18th century. Timber is waiting to be loaded onto barges.

In the late 18th century much of Hereford's trade with the outside world was carried on barges on the River Wye. The Wye had been used for many years for transporting heavier goods, and stone for Hereford's larger medieval buildings would have been brought up it. There were wharves in Hereford by the mid 13th century, and acts of parliament for improving the navigation were passed in 1661, 1696 and 1727. In the early 1770s exports from the city included timber, wool, hops and cider. Imports included coal, slate and luxury goods.

River Wye barges were shallow draught vessels with sails. They carried between 18 and 40 tons. When sail could not be used men hauled the barges. Barge work was dangerous and many men were drowned. In February 1796 a bargeman was drowned at Foye. In early February 1804 another drowned when a coal barge sank at Eign below Hereford and at the end of the month one was killed unloading coal at a city wharf. In 1806 three men were drowned downstream at Monmouth.

At a time when employers could have their workers imprisoned for breach of contract, sometimes bargemen were given a difficult choice between going out in dangerous conditions and prosecution. In April 1771 Thomas Basset was imprisoned for a month for refusing to navigate a boat down the river.

The Wye was only tidal as far as Brockweir near Chepstow. Above that, the navigation was always liable to interruption either from insufficient water to float the barges or from floods. Even so the Wye was used for the transportation of goods to and from Hereford and above, to Moccas, Whitney and Hay. In 1805 it was estimated that about 500 men were employed in hauling barges up the Wye and bringing about 15,000 tons of goods annually to Hereford.

The Wye Invader at Hereford — In 1989 local businessman Frank Barton brought the 'Wye Invader' to Hereford. At 230 tons it is the largest vessel to have come up the River Wye.

The passing of the Rivers Wye and Lugg Navigation Act in 1809 permitted the creation of a riverside towing path as far upstream as Hereford. This meant that barges could now be towed by horses rather than men with a considerable cost saving. In January 1811 two barges belonging to Mr Crompten of Hereford completed the voyage from Lydbrook to Hereford by the new towing path, using two horses for each barge.

Piggot's Directory for 1830 lists six barge-owners in the town. One of these men, John Easton, also built barges. By 1830 Easton had progressed beyond barges. In February 1822, 3,000 people had watched as his first sea-going ship was launched into the Wye — a 47 feet long sloop called the Hereford. More followed, the Champion, the Collinoque, and the Paul Pry — the last a steam-powered tug.

Stage Coaches

The old Swan and Falcon in Broad Street, Hereford. The wing on the left was later demolished. The main building, later the City Arms Hotel, is now a branch of Barclays Bank.

In 1779 the Hereford stagecoach moved from the Redstreak Tree Inn in the High Town to the Swan and Falcon in Broad Street. Neither of these places are inns now; the Redstreak Tree site is now occupied by Hereford Butter Market and the Swan and Falcon by a branch of Barclay's Bank.

Road transport was slow and expensive. In 1780 the fastest coaches left the Swan and Falcon twice a week — Mondays and Thursdays — and took a day and a half to reach London. The fare for inside passengers was one pound and eleven shillings (£1.55p) and for those sitting outside fifteen shillings and sixpence. The Post Coach from Hereford to Shrewsbury left from the Green Dragon Inn every Tuesday and Friday at 7 am and arrived in Shrewsbury early evening to meet the Holyhead and Chester Coaches.

Stage coach accident illustration — An illustration of a stage coach accident — hazards of the road were a regular feature of 18th and 19th century travel.

Although usually fairly safe, journeys were not always completely without hazard. In May 1777 a highwayman stopped the London to Hereford coach three miles outside Oxford and robbed the passengers of their watches and money. Passengers on the Hereford coach were injured in an accident at Oxford in 1771. In May 1830 an outside passenger was seriously injured when the Carmarthen coach hit a post on the corner of Broad Street and Eign Street.

People who couldn't afford the stage-coach could ride on carrier's wagons. In the 1770s Thomas Yeates's wagon left Hereford for London every Sunday at midnight. Passengers paid just eight shillings (40p) with children sitting on their laps charged at half price. The wagon would be shared with goods bound for the capital — parcels under 12 pounds in weight cost 9 pence and geese, fowls, hares and other game could be sent for the same price. Yeates's wagons reached the Black Bear in Piccadilly on Thursday evenings.

The Horse-Drawn Railway from Abergavenny

Embankment of the old horse-drawn tramway — The trees stand on the embankment of the old horse-drawn tramway from Abergavenny as it approaches the River Wye at Hereford.

In 1825 Hereford's gas-works had been built in Commercial Road and in October gas lighting was lit in the streets and city-centre shops. The only way to get coal to the gas-works was by river barge to Hereford and by horse-drawn wagon through the city streets.

Before October was out £25,000 had been raised to connect the horse-drawn tramway from Monmouth Cap on the Monmouthshire–Herefordshire border with the city and an application made to parliament to obtain an act.

The Hereford and Gloucester Canal

In January 1796, the Oxford Arms Inn in Widemarsh Street was for let. The newly renovated inn boasted stabling for 30 horses and was sited 'nearly opposite the spot where the basin of the intended canal is to be formed'. Waiting for trade generated by the canal would have required some patience. 49 years later, in 1845, the canal from Gloucester and the River Severn, the last main line canal to be built in southern England, reached Hereford.

By March 1844 the canal had reached Withington, a few miles to the east of Hereford. In May 1845 the last sections were filled with water. The opening of the new basin generated little interest in the town. By now it was the age of Railway mania and a canal was not going to satisfy the locals.

The canal, although not profitable to its owners, nonetheless was an asset to the city. The council was able to purchase road gravel for half its previous cost after it opened. Barges continued to use the canal well after the opening of the railways. On the night of the 1881 census, two barges, both working the timber trade, had people sleeping on board in the basin at Hereford.

The canal is currently being restored by the Hereford and Gloucester Canal Trust. A slight deviation from the original course has been constructed at a retail park at Newtown Road, north of the city centre.

1853 — The Year the Railways Came

Design for Barton station — An illustration showing James Clayton's design for Barton station for the Newport, Abergavenny and Hereford Railway.

By 1841 the railway had reached Gloucester in the form of the Birmingham and Gloucester Railway. In 1844 the Bristol and Gloucester Railway connected Gloucester to Bristol. These lines were of the standard gauge of 4 feet 8½ inches, but the Great Western Railway of Isambard Kingdom Brunel used the broad gauge of 7 feet.

Proposals for building a railway connecting Gloucester with Hereford pre-date the construction of the lines connecting Gloucester to Bristol or Birmingham. These were two plans of 1836: one for a route through Newent and Ledbury and the other for a route through Ross-on-Wye. Later in the year a plan for connecting Hereford with Shrewsbury was launched.

A train steams south from Barton Station, over the Hunderton Bridge towards Abergavenny and Newport.

Royal assent for a line connecting Hereford to Gloucester was given in 1845 and connections to Shrewsbury and to Newport on 2nd August 1846. In April 1852 the railway line from Shrewsbury to Ludlow opened and the first ever timetable was printed in the Hereford Times with the warning that the times shown were Greenwich Time not the local time.