avel the North Road, through Royston, from the North
to the Metropolis, to return with other wares of a smarter kind from
the London Market for the country people. The arrival of such caravans
was the principal event which varied the life of Roystonians in the
last century, for was not the Talbot a very caravansarai for
Pack-horses! This old inn, kept at the time of which I am writing by
Widow Dixon, as the Royston parish books show, then extended along the
West side of the High Street, from Mrs. Beale's corner shop to Mr.
Abbott's. The Talbot formed a rendez-vous for the Pack-horses known
throughout the land, and in its stables at the back of the new Post
Office, with an entrance from Melbourn Street, known as the Talbot
Back-yard, there was accommodation for about a score of these
Pack-horses.

{7}

Occasionally a rare sign-board at a way-side public-house bearing a
picture of the Pack-horse may be seen, but it is only in this way, or
in some old print, that a glimpse can now be obtained of a means of
locomotion which has completely passed away from our midst. But
besides the Pack-horses being a public institution, this was really the
chief means of burden-bearing, whether in the conveyance of goods to
market or of conveying friends on visits from place to place. As to
the conveyance of goods, we find that as late as 1789, even the farmers
were only gradually getting on wheels. A few carts were in use, no
wagons, and the bulk of the transit in many districts was by means of
Pack-horses; in the colliery districts, coals were carried by horses
from the mines; and even manure was carried on to the land in some
places on the backs of horses! trusses of hay were also occasionally
met with loaded upon horses' backs, and in towns, builders' horses
might be seen bending under a heavy load of brick, stone, and lime!
Members of Parliament travelled from their constituents to London on
horseback, with long over-alls, or wide riding breeches, into which
their coat tails were tucked, so as to get rid of traces of mud on
reaching the Metropolis! Commercial travellers, then called "riders,"
travelled with their packs of samples on each side of their horses.
Farmers rode from the surrounding villages to the Royston Market on
horseback, with the good wife on a pillion behind them with the butter
and eggs, &c., and a similar mode of going to Church or Chapel, if any
distance, was used on a Sunday. Among the latest in this dis