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Marlborough as a Coaching Town (1657 - 1841)

As early as the 17th century Marlborough had developed a reputation as a coaching town.  Onesiphorous Tapp is listed as a victualler in the list of sufferers of the 1653 fire claiming £256.  His main claim to fame was, however, as a transport operator.  In 1657 the “Public Advisor”, a London weekly newspaper, advertised Tapp’s business,

“If any be desirous to go from London to Redding, Nubery, Marlborough, Bath or Bristol, they may please to take notice that at the Red Lyon in Fleet street, upon any Thursday, they may be accommodated with a Coach and 4 Horses to carry them to or from any of the said places at reasonable rates by Onesiphorous Tapp of Marlborough.”

The 18th century saw a rapid rise in road traffic as the turn-piking of the London to Bath and Bristol road allowed faster, safer and more comfortable travel.  The first mail coach in Britain passed through Marlborough on 2nd August 1784, heralding the golden age of coaching, which was to last until the advent of the railway half a century later.  Timeless images of these “coaching days” often appear today on Christmas cards, and images of olden England, evoking tradition and longevity, when, in fact, the period only lasted for two generations before the steam locomotive destroyed it. 

Bath's popularity as a spa town helped to increase the wealth and prosperity of Marlborough's innkeepers and farriers.  At its height, 44 coaches a day changed their horses in Marlborough.  The town’s inns, taverns and stables did a roaring trade.  In other respects, however, the town never got over the disasters of the 17th century.  Marlborough’s cloth trade declined and died as the textile revolution hit the west Wiltshire and east Somerset towns of Trowbridge, Bradford-on-Avon and Frome.  The Kennet and Avon Canal, opened in 1810, providing inland navigation between London and Bristol, missed Marlborough passing through Devizes instead.  The industrial revolution had the effect of moving production away from small towns like Marlborough.  Because of this the expanding Bath stone and the growing Somerset coal mining industries had little impact on Marlborough.  The later sarsen stone industry was to prove to be too little, too late to have much impact on the town’s economic fortunes.

When the railway came, it too missed Marlborough.  Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s Great Western Railway from London to Bristol was opened in 1841.  Its route took it through Swindon, twelve miles north of Marlborough, in a great loop to avoid the Marlborough and Berkshire Downs.  At a stroke it killed the lucrative coaching trade.  To Marlborough people, the initials GWR meant not Great Western Railway but “Great Way Round”.

Nearly all that matters is Georgian”, Revolution in Architecture (1714 - 1830)

In 18th century Marlborough increasingly became a stop en route to the fashionable spa town of Bath.  The Georgian style that Bath inspired took root as Marlborough copied it.  The High Street contains many old buildings, a high proportion from the 18th century.  Nikolaus Pevsner in his “Buildings of England” commented, “Nearly all that matters is Georgian.”  At that time it was fashionable to build high classical facades to the front of town buildings, which had the deliberate effect of hiding the roofline, which was considered vulgar.  The Royal Oak has the base of its roof hidden in this way.  Many of Marlborough's buildings started with heavily pitched roofs "modernised" in the 18th century.  Looking behind the roofline can reveal more about a building than the much-altered front.  Wykeham House, in blue and red brick trim, displays lead rainwater pipes bearing the date 1761.  It has a pedimented doorway on classical Doric columns, the pediment being the triangular structure above: in the 18th century it was the “in thing” to have your front entrance embellished in this way.  The "Ivy House Hotel", a very elegant mid-Georgian building, also has a pedimented doorway and the “Merlin” has a fine early 18th century front with segment-headed windows and a centre bay flanked with paired pilasters imitating the classical style that was flourishing in Bath.  The use of Venetian windows, those with a central round-arched light flanked by oblong ones either-side, reflects the fashion of the Georgian period.  Venetian windows are sometimes known as Palladian windows after the style of the 16th century Italian renaissance architect, Andrea Palladio.

Post-War distress, the “Swing Riots”, and Political Reform (1815 - 39)

In the years after Waterloo Marlborough was suffering from severe social and economic problems.  In November 1830 was at the centre of the last great labourers’ revolt, better known as the “Swing Riots” (after a legendary “Robin Hood” type figure known as “Captain Swing” from the swinging action of the hand-flail traditionally used to thresh corn).  Half-starved agricultural labourers rioted and destroyed threshing machines that were depriving them of essential winter work.  Incendiary fires were started on the hayricks of farms where the owners were known to be hostile or unsympathetic to the labourers’ plight.  On 22nd November special constables were sworn in at a meeting held at the Duke's Arms Inn in Marlborough.  The disturbances were eventually suppressed by a combination of mounted yeomanry and special constables organized by the landowners.  

Amongst numerous incidents, on 23rd November 1830, a crowd of working people came to blows with the forces of law and order at Rockley.  They were intent on destroying the threshing machines at Temple Farm.  During the affray Oliver Codrington, a special constable from Marlborough, was struck and wounded by a hammer thrown by one of the rioters, Peter Withers a 23 year old blacksmith from Ogbourne St Andrew.  A county magistrate Thomas Baskerville, who was involved in the disturbance at Rockley, is cited as seconding a resolution to immediately ask for help from Bow Street to investigate the causes of fires.  Requests were also made for troops to be sent to the neighbourhood and rewards offered for information leading to the conviction of fire-raisers.   

Of the 339 Wiltshire cases heard at the Salisbury special commission in January 1831, 152 resulted in transportation to the penal colonies in Australia, more than from any other county.  Peter Withers was sentenced to death.  It emerged in court that Codrington had been only slightly injured and the hammer which struck him had been thrown by Withers after a ferocious attack by Codrington with a hunting whip loaded with iron at the end.  Despite facing exile or, in Withers’ case death, the rioters stood up to their accusers in court.  Comparing the bearing of the Wiltshire rioters with the Hampshire rioters at the Special Commission in Winchester, the special correspondent of the “Times” newspaper reported,

“The prisoners here turn to the witnesses against them with a bold and confident air: cross-examine them, and contradict their answers, with a confidence and a want of common courtesy, in terms of which comparatively few instances occurred in the neighbouring county.”

Withers had his sentence commuted to transportation for life.  Sadly, he never saw his wife and five children again.
 
The “Swing Riots” were linked to the growing social and political crisis developing in Britain at this time.  The parliamentary system was urgently in need of reform as it was unrepresentative and disenfranchised the vast majority of the population.  Before the 1832 Reform Act, Marlborough's two Members of Parliament were elected by a maximum of ten electors.  Under the 1832 act, in which the middle classes achieved the vote, the electorate was increased from 10 to 299 but, unlike other small towns, Marlborough retained the right to return two MPs until the second reform act of 1867. 

In 1830 William Bankes and Thomas Estcourt were elected MPs for Marlborough.  The Whig government subsequently introduced the reform bill amidst a furore of opposition from the Tories and a groundswell of popular demand.  The upshot was that King William IV dissolved parliament and called for a general election.  Bankes and Estcourt were re-elected in April 1831 against the wishes of the majority of Marlborough people.  Thomas Merriman proposed and Stephen Brown seconded their election, which took place in public.  Thomas Estcourt provoked shouts for “reform” when he publicly condemned the reform bill and William Bankes’ attempts to address the crowd were rendered inaudible.  Immediately after the election, effigies of the two successful candidates were carted through the town accompanied with tin kettles and horns, and burnt at the cross-roads (where George Lane and London Road joined Salisbury Road).  The church bells were rung backwards.  After the Reform Act was finally passed both were replaced by Lord Ernest Bruce and Henry Bingham Baring.    

The difficulties didn’t end with the Swing Riots and the Reform Act.  Poverty and lawlessness continued to be major problems.  When the Marlborough Workhouse was built at the top of Hyde Lane in 1837, poverty itself seemed to have been made into a crime.  Perhaps it is no surprise that Wiltshire had the first County Constabulary in the country; established in Devizes in 1839.

The Unreformed Corporation (1690 - 1835)