For Marlborough is a flowery and
umbrageous town in its "backs," however dull it may appear to the
traveller by the railway, from which dis-vantage point most English
towns look their very worst.
Although the river was never wide enough to bring credit or renown to
Marlborough, the borough had another channel of profit and good
business in its position on the Bath Road. The part that great highway
played in the two hundred years which ended soon after Queen Victoria
commenced her long reign seems likely to have a renewal in these days
of revived road travel. Ominous days are these for the iron ways that,
for almost a century, have half ruined the old road towns of England,
but at the same time left them in such a state of suspended animation
that they are mostly delightful and unspoilt reminders of another age.
The fine and spacious High Street that once echoed with the horns of a
dozen coaches in the course of an afternoon now hums with the
machinery of half a hundred motors in an hour, and if they do not all
stop, some do, and leave the worthy burgesses a greater amount of
wealth and a cleaner roadway than their more picturesque predecessors.
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