After the conclusion of the CAA’s trip to the Royal Windsor Horse Show, Jill and several others traveled to Norfolk to spend a couple of days enjoying coaching runs, lessons, and the neighborhood hospitality at the driving facility owned by John Parker and Susan Townsend.
Today, the travelers arrived back in Eton (where there is a working Internet connection!), and so Jill sent this report and the these photos. Tomorrow, everyone heads home.
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Royal Mail Coach N205 with CAA members aboard (photo by Susan Townsend)
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N205 is probably the most famous coach in Great Britain today. The history of the N205 Royal Mail Coach can be traced back to 1870, but the coach is believed to be considerably older.
The coach weighs 1.25 tons without passengers, is equipped with wooden wheels and steel tires, and has a fifty-two-foot turning circle. It is built on a perch undercarriage with two sets of platform springs and mail axles attaching the wheels to the body.
Like all Mail Coaches, it is painted black with scarlet wheels and undercarriages. The notation “GR” identifies the reign in which it was built (that of King George IV), and the upper quarter panels feature the four stars of the Order of Knighthood. The number N205 identifies the route traveled as London-to-Norwich.
The coach was re-registered in 1969, enabling it to carry the Royal Mail. It is the only coach currently accorded this honor in the modern era.
In order to make the postal service viable, the coach was also one of the first built to accommodate passengers, and it can carry twelve plus the coachman and the guard, who protected the mail and passengers from highwaymen. The guard also acted as the horn-blower, alerting people to the arrival of the mail. Mail Coaches traveled at ten miles per hour, had right of way over everyone else on the road, and paid no tolls.
It is known that N205 was owned by James Selby, who drove it until his death in 1888. Thereafter, its career is a little unclear but records show that it was owned by Bertram Mills, who sold it in the late 1950s. In 1966, John Parker found the coach languishing behind a pub in Wales; he brought it home, and the rest is history.
James Selby himself had two entries in the record books: one for the longest distance ever driven by one coachman, and the other for the fastest time a team of horses could be changed for another — namely, 47.2 seconds, a record set in 1888.
A century later, N205, driven by John Parker, broke both those records. John’s grooms reduced the time for the team change when in a challenge on TV’s You Bet, they changed horses in an incredible 21.2 seconds!
In June 1996, John broke the long-distance record when he drove the coach nonstop from the Guildhall in London to Norwich Cathedral — a distance of 139 miles — in twenty-one-and-a-half hours.
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Anna grooming one of the coach horses before the group sets out on a coaching run (photo by Jill Ryder)
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(photo by Jill Ryder)
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ready to head out! (photo by Susan Townsend)
The Slower Road 