The Holyhead Road: The Mail-coach Road to Dublin. Vol. 2 — A Reader’s Guide

Abandoned Roads and Toll-House Lives

Harper devotes careful attention to stretches of road that have been superseded. In Shropshire, he describes a track 'in every rut proclaims “old road,” and “disused” in the grass and rubbish.' The new Parliamentary Road, broad and straight, bypassed it entirely. At the far end, rotting canal wharves and a row of cottages stand as evidence of a vanished traffic. The toll-house at Belmont Bar, built on land donated by the Lovetts with a reversion clause, became private property after the gates were abolished in 1883. Harper sketches the old man who lives there rent-free, his only excitement the tramps who try the doors at night. One anecdote tells of two navvies and a woman who camped in the garden, were taken in, and left a gift of sugar, loaf, and tea. Such vignettes give the road a human texture absent from official histories.

Strategic Crossings: Chirk and the Ceiriog

At the 'Bridge Inn,' where the old road meets the new, the River Ceiriog foams in its ravine. Crossing the bridge puts the traveller into Denbighshire and Wales—but only after a steep climb to Chirk. Harper notes that the village crowns a plateau, and Chirk Castle commands a cleavage in the hills where Castell Crogen once stood. He recalls the battle of Crogen, fought seven hundred years earlier when Henry II led his army this way. The king's choice of route is criticised: 'Henry Plantagenet was the Buller of his age, and his rank bad luck and ill generalship combined caused him to lead his army the hardest way.' Harper's eye for military topography—the 'readiest road by which to enter North Wales'—shows how the coaching road followed ancient lines of movement, and how the landscape still bears the marks of medieval conflict.

The Catalogue's Limits: What the Excerpts Reveal and Conceal

The Project Gutenberg record lists subjects: 'England — Description and travel; England — Social life and customs; A5 Road (England and Wales).' The excerpts confirm that Harper describes places along the A5 corridor, but they also show a book far more discursive than a modern travel guide. He lingers on abandoned infrastructure, toll-house contracts, and the sound of tramps at night—details that belong to social history rather than straightforward topography. The catalog does not capture the book's strong narrative voice, its dry humour, or its willingness to digress into medieval battles and canal decay. Readers expecting a dry road log will find instead a layered account of how a route accumulates stories. The excerpts, however, cover only a few pages; the full volume may shift tone or structure in ways these samples do not reveal.

Harper's second volume rewards readers who enjoy unhurried observation and a willingness to stop at the side of the road. The excerpts suggest that the book is best approached not as a systematic itinerary but as a series of linked essays on place and memory. Pay attention to the small details—the reversion clause, the gift of tea, the rutted track—because they are where Harper's real interest lies. The catalog subjects are accurate but incomplete; the book's character emerges from its digressions.

Reading about the coach road’s abandoned stretches and quiet toll-houses, I kept thinking of the dusty, overlooked paths in To Mesopotamia and Kurdistan in disguise — Reading Notes. Both books seem to prefer the forgotten corner over the grand destination, finding more truth in a broken milestone or a shuttered post than in any monument. A gentle companionship of place.