A Primer on Regency Landmarks Beyond London

After last week’s post about Regency London Landmarks, I realized there are a ton of places beyond Town that also get mentioned or visited all the time in historical romances.

So, let’s look at a few of the top spots to see and be seen around the British Isles during the Regency Era.

Richmond – The hero is often seen offering to drive the heroine down to Richmond for a picnic or they travel to some ball being held there. Richmond is now part of London, proper, but it used to be a posh destination several miles southeast of Town.
Bath – Located in Somerset, this spa destination was established by the Romans in A.D. 43 by the name of Aquae Sulis. Early 19th century references to Bath include taking the waters at The Pump Room or visiting the mineral baths next door. Other places to see and be seen were The Royal Crescent, The Circus, and Pulteney Bridge (across which Jane Austen would have looked from her lodgings on the other side of the river). And of course, the hub of fashionable Bath, the assembly rooms would have been a required visit. For a full list of landmarks there, see Wikipedia’s full list of places of interest in Bath. Of course, Sally Lunn Buns were a treat to be had there.

Bath seen in the distance, circa 1802
Brighton – This quaint seaside town is located in East Sussex on the southern coast. The Royal Pavilion is a former royal palace expanded and renovated as a home for the Prince Regent during the early 19th century, under the direction of the architect John Nash. The Pavillion is notable for its exotic Oriental exterior and interior and at the time, a source of tension between the Prince Regent and Parliament as it was an enormous drain on funds.
Cornwall – The rugged and fierce Cornish coast is the perfect spot to find pirates and smugglers.
Dover – The white cliffs, check. Close enough to minimize crossing time and danger when the hero or heroine must cross the English Channel into France, check! The packets (smaller, quicker ships generally used to transport mail) sailed between Dover on the English side of the Channel and Calais on the French.
Portsmouth – Another busy port on the southern shores of England. This was much more of a merchant’s port with a deeper harbor. If your hero or the heroine’s family is involved in shipping, you can bet they have offices in Portsmouth.
Educational Centers, or where aristocratic sons were shipped off to school — women were not educated at public schools and the bluestockings who were educated had private tutors and extraordinary situations
- Eton – Young boys of the ton began their education here, across the river from Windsor, home of Windsor Castle.
- Cambridge – Applied mathematics was the name of the game at Cambridge from the late 17th century and well into the 19th century. Mathematics was required for graduation and sending your hero here, means he’s quite intelligent and versed in mathematics.
- Oxford – A bastion of classical studies which saw a growth in science during the 19th century. The academic year is divided into three terms. Michaelmas Term lasts from October to December; Hilary Term from January to March; and Trinity Term from April to June. Young men were “sent down” which was akin to suspension or expulsion depending on the nature of their transgressions. Student were expected to dress in full academic regalia until the 1960s.
Scotland – North of Hadrian’s Wall, home of sheep, Reavers and manly men in kilts. Only not so much by the Regency Era.
- Gretna Green – Once the Marriage Act of 1753 was passed and required parental consent for anyone under the age of 21 to marry. The Act did not apply in Scotland. Gretna Green lies just over the line in Scotland. Many couples eloped without parental consent and were married “over the anvil” at the popular blacksmith’s shop in Gretna Green. After 1856, Scottish law changed to require 21 days’ residence for marriage.
- Edinburgh – The capital city of Scotland with its own booming university and social scene. All those Scottish earls would be flocking there.
Wales – If there’s mining, quarrying or iron manufacturing involved, it likely occurred in Wales. Cardiff and Swansea were important industrial ports during the Regency.

To explore further, the Wikipedia entry covers a number of places of interest and importance during the British Regency.

If you’re lucky enough to travel to the UK, you might want to visit some of these historic places:

Richmond
Bath
Brighton and The Royal Pavillion and Museums
Cornwall
Dover
Portsmouth
Oxford and Oxford University
Cambridge and University of Cambridge
Windsor and Eton, home of Eton College
Scotland
- Gretna Green — more on the history of Gretna Green.
- Edinburgh
Wales

More information regarding a variety of other Regency-themed topics can be found on my Regency Resource page. If you’d like more information on a specific place or topic, please let me know in the comments section below.

Regency Era Horse Sense

Writing and Horses

In a previous Regency Resource post, I briefly introduced different modes of transportation in the Regency Era. One mode that crossed class boundaries was the horse. From pleasure and sport riding among the nobility to the working horses pulling carts and wagons for the working class, it’s easy for modern authors to ascribe unrealistic feats and abilities to these background ‘characters’.

So what’s an author to do if she wasn’t raised around horses? Research, just like anything else we haven’t experienced firsthand. As an author, you want to make sure your details are believable. Beyond the different ways in which Regency Era horses were used, you also need to know what you should expect in terms of speed and endurance from the animals doing these different tasks. Luckily, there are numerous sites sharing details that can keep your story authentic and keep the equine police off your back.

Regency Era Horses as Transportation

As noted, horses were put to a variety of uses. For work, they’re well-suited to pulling carriages, wagons and carts. A great resource that links Regency period conveyances and their economic status can be found at the Jane Austen Society. Generally, the larger the vehicle to be pulled, the larger the number of horses would be required to pull it. This lead to terms like “two-in-hand” and “four-in-hand” which refer to the number of horses controlled by the ribbons or reins. Larger coaches might require a team of six or more.

On the side of pleasure, horseback riding was popular with the nobility as a form of exercise as well as transportation. From very young ages, affluent boys were taught to ride astride, while girls were taught to ride aside or sidesaddle. Thoroughbred racing was also a popular sport during this era, as was fox hunting, which emphasized jumping and endurance over short bursts of speed.

Realistic Speed

So what is a realistic speed for a horse? Without getting into a pedantic dissertation on what a “gait” means in expert horse talk, the layman best understands the term as the equivalent of “gears” or different speeds one can expect from their mount. The four basic speeds for horses are: walk, trot, canter and gallop.

Walk: You can safely estimate this as roughly 3 to 4 miles per hour.
Trot: Depending on the horse’s stride and weight carried or pulled, you can estimate this as 8-10 miles per hour. A horse pulling a cart typically moves at this speed.
Canter: A decent speed, but not pushed as hard as possible, this speed averages 10-17 miles per hour.
Gallop: This horse is going flat out top speed. The depends on the horse’s condition and athletic ability. Some horses are not built to run fast and may only do a fast canter at their best; however, the gallop is about 30 mph. Thoroughbreds, which are bred for running distance but not speed, have been clocked at over 40 MPH.

Great, we know have an idea of how fast a horse can go. So your hero’s ready to hop on his trusty steed and gallop off after the heroine who’s being whisked off to Gretna Green in a coach by the villain.

Realistic Endurance

Woah, there! It’s possible for him to catch up with them, but he probably won’t ride the same horse the whole way. Likewise, the villain will also have to stop to change horses along the way.

An average riding horse in good condition can travel 20 to 30 miles in a day. The actual distance covered will also depend on road and weather conditions as well as availability of food and water. Horses properly trained and conditioned for long distances can be expected to go 50 or 60 miles in one day. By the Regency Era, only serious working horses in the Army or in service to the post might fall into this category and even then it would be more likely that the horses would be changed out on a regular basis instead. The common event of stopping to change horses was a reality of the times. Unlike an automobile, horses can’t be pushed hard for 20 miles and then simply stashed in the stable for the night. A horse, overheated by exertion, must be walked until it cools down and rubbed dry before it can rest.

In light of these general parameters, you might better appreciate this feat in 1808, when the Marquis of Huntley rode from Aberdeen, Scotland, to Inverness (a distance of 105 miles) in 7 hours with only 8 changes of horses. This works out to each horse averaging 15 mph for about 13 miles.

Unless you’re writing fantasy and the horses have magical abilities, travel involving horses should work with your story, serving it and perhaps defining it, never straining the plausibility of it for readers who are in the know.

For more information regarding Regency Era Horses, Carriages and Transportation and a variety of other Regency-themed topics can be found on my Regency Resource page.

Transportation in the Regency Era

On Monday, I spoke of a need for structure in writing a story or novel. Today, I’m going to talk a bit about worldbuilding and transporation. When writing about another time period or indeed even in fantasy and science fiction settings, the author needs to consider the infrastructure of their setting and the effects that will have on their characters and stories from the time travel takes, to sensible clothing choices to relevant status symbols. Today, we’ll be taking a look at transportation in the Regency Era.

Travel and transportation have only increased in speed, comfort and horsepower since the Regency Era. We take for granted the speed at which we dash from place to place in hours instead of days. Likewise, different sorts of conflicts and obstacles crop up with different modes of travel. Instead of a flat tire, the heroine’s carriage might break an axle or one of the horses might go lame near the hero’s manor house. She can’t just call for a taxi or even a rideshare and be off again. An invitation creates forced proximity and increases tensions between them.

Types of Transportation in the Regency Era

Moving Raw Materials, Good and the Mail

Transportation in the Regency Era: Regent's Canal, Limehouse 1823 Before the 1830s, trains had not yet spread widely across the English country side and many factories still relied on canals to transport of raw materials and goods to market. The postal system needed to carry mail and people along particular routes. And by the late Regency, the aging infrastructure required improvement. The work of Scottish engineers Thomas Telford and John McAdam (of the Tar-McAdam or tarmac fame despite his not using tar in his construction, but possibly because of family business in the 18th century involving tar and shipbuilding) led to widespread renovations and improvements (in terms of the roads taking people where they wanted to go) on the Roman roads, including the Great North Road, the corridor between London and Edinburgh that is now called the A1.

Moving People

One’s economic prosperity usually determined one’s mode of transportation. However, walking was universal. The poorest people walked because they had no other alternative. The more affluent walked for exercise and, one suspects, freedom from the bumps and jolts of traveling over rough roads. Riding in a carriage was more fashionable than riding horseback, but some gentlemen surely preferred the maneuverability and freedom.

Carriages & Coaches

Transportation in the Regency Era: a coach and four The designs of the various carriages during the Regency Era reveal the inadequacies of the roads for which they were meant to compensate. Climbing the rungs of the economic ladder, vehicles move from heavy and ponderous to lighter and more lavish. Lighter, well-sprung carriages were the sports cars of their day.

The Royals and many wealthy peers custom ordered their carriages and coaches. However, one could also visit a carriage builder’s show room and purchase new vehicles similar to modern car dealerships. Without the hard-sell, one would hope. Few Regency Era carriages survive today. Rapid advances in design meant owners either scrapped or renovated older vehicles.

I go into more detail on the different types of Regency carriages as well as more information about horses in other posts.

Velocipedes: Entertainment or Transportation?

Transportation in the Regency Era: a picture of early bicycle In January 1818, the first ‘running machine’ was patented by a German named Karl Drais. This contraption was wooden and one straddled it, propelling it using a running motion. This prototype was of little practical use as it was only suitable on well-maintained paths in parks or gardens. Others promptly copied it and they became popular in England and France. This ‘running machine’, ‘swiftwalker’ or ‘dandy horse‘, as it was often called in Britain being favored by the dandies, gained in popularity and the term ‘velocipede’ was first used in the 1860s when Pierre Michaux, Pierre Lallement and the Olivier brothers built the first bicycle equipped with pedals, the ancestor of the modern bicycle.

Which travel nightmares do you think you would hate to have encountered the most in the Regency Era? Or which would you gladly avoid by trading the speed and comfort of now to travel back in time?

For more information regarding Regency Transportation, Carriages and Horses and a variety of other Regency-themed topics can be found on my Regency Resource page.