Travelling by road in 1949 .......... the Daily Express Road Book and Gazetteer of Great Britain

I am looking at a Road Book and Gazetteer of Great Britain which belonged to my dad.

I don’t have a date but I think it will be from after the last war.

This was the period when travelling by car began to take off as more and more people managed to buy, rent or hire a car.

But dad would have used it for work for he was a coach driver engaged in the luxury end of motoring  holidays.

Not for him the day excursion trips he was employed taking customers on seven and even fifteen days tours of Britain taking in the scenic views stopping for a midday meal and every night finishing at a good hotel.*

Later in the 1950s when Glenton’s began tours on the Continent dad was one of the two drivers who did the business of taking the “middling people” off for sight seeing holidays across northern Europe as far as the Italian and Swiss Lakes.

So this Road Book and Gazetteer of Great Britain, published by the Daily Express was one of his working manuals, along with his own notes and postcards of places as close as Stratford Upon Avon and as distant as Geneva.

It has lain in a suitcase for nearly twenty years along with countless sticky luggage labels.  These were standard issue in the 1950s and before and stuck to the side of your suitcase marked you out as a serious traveller.

Dad collected them but never used them which I guess was the sign of the professional traveller.

As for the book it has been well thumbed and I can see why.

Here as with all good gazetteer’s stretching back into the 18th century are snapshots of cities, towns, and interesting villages along with a road atlas minus all motorways and containing the plan of a rail network which train enthusiasts could only wish for.

Manchester is afforded 17 lines and makes reference to “’Cottonopolis,’ centre of densely populated Lancs industrial area, linked with sea by 35½ m. Ship Canal taking 15,000 ton ships” goes on to sum up our history and recording some of the key buildings.

His city centre map shows London Road, Central, Victoria and Exchange Stations along with a tram network far more extensive the one we have today.

That said the old trams were on their way out and those great steel and glass towers of commerce were still a developers dream.

All of which is very different today.

We are no longer ’Cottonopolis,’ no 15,000 ton ships lay up at Salford Docks and the Free Trade Hall is now a hotel.

And in the course of the last 70 years “much war damage including the Cathedral and Free Trade Hall” have been  sorted and I doubt my Dad would recognise whole swathes of the city from Spinningfields to the Northern Quarter.

All of which makes his Road Book and Gazetteer of Great Britain such a priceless piece of history.

Pictures; from the Daily Express a Road Book and Gazetteer of Great Britain

*Glenton Tours, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Glenton%20Tours