THIS IS FINDON VILLAGE created by Valerie Martin, contains scenes from her home village of Findon, West Sussex, U.K.

LUKE BERRINGTON'S COACHING DAYS

Copyright Valerie Martin 2000

First published in Along the Furlong in June 2001.

Luke Luther Berrington was born in Findon in 1815 and was the son of the local huntsman and spent his early childhood in our village.

Young Luke's first employment was that of a "stand-in" guard on a night coach from London to Gloucester when the regular guard had been taken ill.   The coaches in those days boasted various odours, varied and unpleasantly mingled..... the same went for the passengers inside.   Perhaps a half drunken sailor squashed next to a snoring old woman.  One shudders to contemplate the perpetual danger to the passengers perched so precariously atop a coach also.

Following this, I think Luke's expertise at bugle playing began to attract attention and he was very soon engaged on a northbound coach – one from London to Lincoln. He worked long hours that rolled into long days. The coach departed from the capital at 6 a.m. and did not arrive in Lincoln until 8 p.m. It was on Luke's third trip that the coachman failed to make an appearance and it was down to the Findon lad to take up the reins on the long journey of over a hundred miles.

Despite the rigours of the previous day, Luke had to drive the return coach back to London again. His energy was soon restored and he had a good complement of passengers on board as well as luggage and parcels – no mean feat. The road to London was long. All went well until bowling along at a fair pace a short distance out of the city of Peterborough, when the road divided in two. One track bent to the left and one curved invitingly and slightly to the right. On arriving at the junction, Luke could not remember for the life of him which way to go. Fog had entered his brain and hesitation flickered across his face — the horses were of no help either. Not wanting to appear a novice to his passengers, he took a quick glance at the various ways and thinking one looked the most likely, proceeded forth with a gulp of apprehension.

The coach bucketed down the trail with an almighty rattling of the axles, swingle bars and coach-lamps. The route soon became narrow and pitted with deep potholes, and abruptly ended at a stretch of grass in front of a farmhouse. The horses came to a halt and Luke's heart plummeted. It was impossible to turn the large coach and there was much muttering from inside the vehicle. The weary Luke could only rattle down another muddy rutted track and by more luck than judgement, and most fortuitously, found himself out on the highway again.

The Belle Sauvage on Ludgate Hill had been a great coaching inn as early as the mid-1680s when the establishment was making £15 a day from a rhinoceros — a marvel indeed for those days. I understand that the management charged one shilling for a "look" and two shillings for a ride. During the reign of Henry VI, a deed had been drawn up dated 1453. In this John French made over to his mother for her life "all that tenement or inn, with its appurtenances, called Savage's Inn". The famous Belle Sauvage, it seems, had been a going concern as long as the Gun Inn in Findon.

It was at the Belle Sauvage in 1833 that a gentleman by the name of Robert Nelson started a new coaching enterprise. His venture ran to Portsmouth and he employed Luke as a guard on the coach. It was a night service and summer time and the undertaking proved successful. A number of ships' crews were being paid off at Portsmouth — and all the men wanted to get to London. This involved Luke in many adventures, including when sailors danced on top of the vehicle to the music from his bugle while it was bowling along at ten miles an hour.

Having considerably improved his bugle playing, Luke now joined another new coach from the same Belle Sauvage yard. This was the famed Red Rover that had started up in 1831 and travelled south to the Clarence Hotel in Brighton. Each day with a flourish it departed at 4 p.m. for the Sussex coast. It had a good reputation for competent horses and was always driven by crack whips — gentleman and even noblemen, (the Duke of Beaufort's name among them). A good run down to the Brighton coast took a little over four hours.

The Red Rover also operated a service from Brighton to Bath and Bristol, and had a pick-up point at Offington Corner — which was handy for anyone from Findon who wanted to travel in that direction. Luke, no doubt, allowed his gaze to wander up the road as he remembered his birthplace in Findon and recalled the house where he had lived.

The Red Rover was an elegant coach, low slung and much nearer the ground than its rivals. Luke was smartly dressed on these occasions in a bright red coat, and a white hat completed the stunning ensemble. He thoroughly enjoyed playing a melody on his bugle at intervals on the journeys.

It was a sight to see the horses changed at the roadside, the whole procedure done in a few minutes and without the coachman leaving his box seat. By the time the Red Rover was discontinued, Luke had saved more than a hundred sovereigns, a tidy sum in those days, which he kept under his bed, (a fact only shared at the time with his trusted Brighton landlady).

Another of his experiences as a guard was on the Telegraph coach that travelled to Brighton, and yet another on the route to Tunbridge Wells, both under Robert Nelson of the same famed Belle Sauvage coaching yard.

It was while Luke was living in Brighton that a new coach was started from Brighton to Bristol by way of Chichester and Southampton. It left Brighton at 6 p.m. and on occasions in the winter months it was so cold that apparently his bugle was painfully frozen to his lips. This coach only continued for a few months and Luke was then engaged for yet another coach to London.

By now, Luke's coaching experience was vast and he decided to accept an offer in the 1840s to join the travelling world-famed Menagerie of Wild Beasts under the direction of George Wombwell.  It was one of the earliest and largest menageries and his employment was to last for five years.

The "Concern", as the Menagerie was called, also included a brass band and Luke was taken on as their second bugler. It was the depths of winter and he journeyed through heavy snow in a slow coach to join the Menagerie in Wellington, Shropshire.

Travelling the countryside to various sites and playing in the band, he wore a handsome uniform, a coat of red and gold embroidery. Journeying with the "Concern" was far different to his coaching days. Sometimes four, six or even eight heavy horses pulled the wagons of animals behind them. Nine horses were employed to pull the oak and iron built "elephant wagon" containing the six-ton beast as it rolled along the roads from town to town.

Coincidentally, another gentleman of the Victorian era also spent some time with the same Wombwell's Menagerie of Wild Beasts. This was the Findon artist, Edwin Douglas, who as a young man visited the animals and used them as subjects for his paintings when he lived in Edinburgh.

The above print sold for £135 at the auction.

From Wombwell's Menagerie, Luke then turned to the final stage of his life.  This was to be at Westminster Abbey and can be read in Strange Job for a Findon Lad.

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