coaching world when the mail coach system was at its zenith. He
worked 600 coach and post horses--a number only exceeded by the great
London coach proprietor Chaplin, with his 1,300, and Horne and Sherman
with their 700. Of the twenty-two daily coaches between Bristol and
London the greater proportion made the White Lion their headquarters.
Amongst other coaches with which Isaac Niblett was especially associated
were the "Red Rover" and the "Exquisite." The "Red Rover" ran from
Bristol to Brighton through Bath, over Salisbury Plain, on to
Southampton and Chichester, and covered the distance of 140 miles in
fourteen hours. The "Exquisite" used to run from Birmingham to
Cheltenham, thence on through Bristol to Exeter. In the _Bristol
Directory and Gazette_ of 1859, Mr. Niblett's innkeepership is alluded
to thus:--"Isaac Niblett, White Lion and British Coffee House, family
commercial and posting house; hearse and mourning coach proprietor." The
White Hart, family and commercial hotel, Broad Street, was at that time
kept by one Charles Smith.

Mr. Isaac Niblett, like John Weeks, of Bush Inn fame, had a country
place near Bristol. He owned, and stayed from time to time at the
Conigre House, Fylton. Mr. Niblett was for some time the owner of the
old Bush Inn stables in Dolphin Street, according to evidence given in a
recent trial before the Judge of Assize at Bristol. That site, as well
as the Conigre Farm, Fylton, is, it is believed, still in the possession
of his lineal descendants.

The Grand Hotel, one of the largest in the West of England, and most
central in the city of Bristol, now stands on the sites of both the
White Lion and the White Hart Hotels. Erected in 1869, it was known as
the new White Lion until 1874, when its name was changed to that of the
Grand Hotel. The accompanying illustration of the White Lion and the
White Hart Inns, taken from a lithograph engraving of about 1880 by the
well-known Bristol firm of lithographers, Messrs. Lavars, must have been
copied from a picture produced subsequent to the old coaching days, and,
judging from the costumes of the pedestrians depicted, the period was
probably about 1860, or a few years before the demolition of the old
inns. The figure of a white hart appears in the picture over the
entrance door of that hostelry but the statue of a white lion, which for
very many years stood over the entrance gateway to the inn of that name,
and which is recollected by many persons