A golden age

The arrival of the railways made fieldsports more accessible, writes Graham Downing

It is hard to imagine a time when it took three days to get from London to Manchester by road and when the height of express travel was an 8mph ‘Flying’ coach.

Such was the case in the mid-18th century. Even 80 years later, with stagecoach travel at the peak of its development and with relays of horses available at coaching inns the length and breadth of the country, the average speed of passenger travel had accelerated merely to a giddy 12mph. But lurking in the wings was a fire-breathing, spark-spitting monster that was to drive the stagecoach out of business: the railway locomotive.

During the 1840s, the building of railways proceeded at breakneck speed and by the end of the decade most towns and cities across lowland Britain were interconnected. The transport revolution had arrived, for freight, commerce, leisure and sport. Rail travel mirrored the new-found wealth of the middle classes and made possible the fashionable Scottish sporting holiday, which took off in the 1850s following the blossoming of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert’s love affair with the Highlands.

Sportsmen and women were now able to travel from Euston and King’s Cross to shooting lodges across Scotland. George Earl’s famous picture Going North, which shows a crowd of ladies and gentlemen with their guns, dogs, rods and luggage waiting to board the Highland sleeper in August, illustrates how central rail travel was to Scottish field sports by the 1890s. Landowners were initially concerned about the impact that the railway lines might have upon their estates, but they quickly learned to welcome the new stations from which guests could be transported directly to their lodges.

Getting connected