YOU could travel from Oxford to London for just £1 by stagecoach, but there was a catch – the journey would take you seven hours 45 minutes.

Timetables uncovered by Memory Lane reader David Brown show that a stagecoach service was operating between the two cities as late as 1928.

You could take the stagecoach from Oxford to London, then catch a train back to Oxford, or vice versa.

As you can see from the timetable published, the Old Berkeley stagecoach ran between the Mitre Hotel in High Street, Oxford, and The Berkeley Hotel in London.

It carried passengers from Oxford to London on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and in the opposite direction on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.

They were promised a “65-mile drive with seven teams of six horses through the picturesque counties of Middlesex, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire”.

The horses were changed at Wheatley, Aston Rowant, West Wycombe, High Wycombe, Beaconsfield, Uxbridge and Isleworth.

The fare for the whole journey was £1, with box seats available at £1 10s (£1.50). It cost 10 shillings (50p) if you got off at High Wycombe and sixpence a mile for intermediate journeys. The whole coach could be booked for 10 guineas (£10.50).

While the coach took seven hours 45 minutes, the train completed its journey in just over two hours. The stagecoach proprietors were Claud Goddard and, intriguingly, Bertram Mills, the circus owner, who was apparently one of the coach drivers.

It appears that the stagecoach service at that time was coming to an end. A notice at the bottom of the timetable said that all 35 horses were to be sold at auction the following month.

Mr Brown, of Jordan Hill, Oxford, has also sent a photograph of stunning quality of the Mitre Hotel in August 1894.

He writes: “When the photograph is enlarged, you can read ‘Great Western Railway’ above the horse carriage.

“I believe there may have been a GWR booking office next door or as part of the Mitre Hotel.

“The most interesting subject here is the horse and carriage. The wording on the carriage appears to read ‘A GARDNER, Headington?, Oxford, Carrier Daily’.

Can anyone tell us more about A Gardner?