The Hackney Coach & Waterman

Loretta reports:

Some time ago, while researching a London-set story, I was astonished to discover how many hackney coach stands existed during the early 19th century.  Which leads us to another lost occupation—the hackney coach waterman. 

The following excerpt is from my much-loved, hard-to-find Pyne’s British Costume (originally published 1805 as The Costume of Great Britain), a book I cited a while back in my post about London’s Dustmen.  Hackney coachmen, who drove individuals to specific destinations, mainly in London, are not to be confused with stage coachmen, who traveled the King’s highways according to preset routes and schedules.
~~~
Hackney coaches appear upon the stand for hire, at seven o’clock in the morning in summer, and at eight in winter: twelve hundred are allowed to be kept in London and its vicinity, and each is numbered.  The prices of fare are regulated; and no coachman can refuse to carry passengers for any distance short of ten miles, however stormy the weather, or however the horses may be fatigued.  A certain number are reserved to relieve those that have been employed during the day, which are called night coaches, and they attend at their stands till sun-rise.  Public houses are kept open during the night for the accommodation of the coachmen.  The figure represented upon this plate is employed as waterman to the stand, who is licensed, and wears a badge with his number engraved thereon: his business is to feed and water the horses, and to open the door for the passengers, that the driver may remain upon his box: he also has charge of the coaches during the time that the coachmen take their meals.

The office for licensing hackney coaches was erected in the year 1696, under the direction of commissioners; they have a code of regulations, which subjects the drivers to penalties for extortion, carelessness, rude behaviour, &c. by which the public is much benefitted; as the mode of redress is rendered simple and expeditious.

Visiting the Ruins of Marie Antoinette's Petit Trianon at Versailles, 1803

Susan reporting:

The English have always been intrepid travelers, and for hundreds of years, they have eagerly crossed the Channel in search of the enlightenment, entertainment, and edification to be found on the Continent. The 18th c is the heyday of the famous "Grand Tours", that final finishing touch to a young gentleman's education, and not even the hazards of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars could keep the determined tourist in Britain.

One of the more famous travelers of this era was a lawyer-poet-travel-writer named Sir John Carr (1772-1832.) Undeterred by inconvenient current events, he traveled widely throughout Europe in the early 19th c. and wrote a series of travel books that documented his journeys. The books were popular, and sufficiently influential to earn him a knighthood from the Duke of Bedford in Dublin in 1806. Styles in writing change, however, and while his detailed descriptions remain interesting, it's also painfully clear that he believed that no noun or verb should go unmodified, ever, ever.

Still, where else would we find this description of the tattered remains Marie-Antoinette's Petit Trianon at Versailles, which Carr visited less than a decade after her death? This excerpt and the illustration, above, are both from The Stranger in France, published in 1803 – and, if you'd like to read more, it's available on-line free as a Project Gutenberg Ebook here.

    "I approached, with increased delight, the enchanting little palace and grounds of the late queen, distant from Versailles about two miles, called the Petit Trianon, to which she very justly gave the appellation of her "little Palace of Taste." Here, fatigued with the splendours of royalty, she threw aside all its appearances, and gave herself up to the elegant pleasures of rural life. It is a princely establishment in miniature. It consists of a small palace, a chapel, an opera house, out offices and stables, a little park, and pleasure grounds; the later of which are still charming, although the fascinating eye, and tasteful hand of their lovely but too volatile mistress, no longer pervade, cherish, and direct their growth and beauty. By that reverse of fortune, which the revolution has familiarized, the Petit Trianon is let out by the government to a restauranteur. All the rooms but one in this house were preoccupied, on the day of our visit in consequence of which we were obliged to dine in the former little bed room of the queen, where, like the Idalian goddess [Venus], she used to sleep in a suspended basket of roses. The apertures in the ceiling and wainscot, to which the elegant furniture of this little room of repose had once adhere, are still visible.
    "After dinner, we hastened through our coffee, and proceeded to the gardens. After winding through gravelled walks, embowered by the most exquisite and costly shrubs, we entered the elegant temple of Cupid, from which the little favourite of mankind had been unwillingly, and rudely expelled, as appeared by the fragments of his pedestal. 
    "Thy wrongs little god! shall be revenged by thy fair friend Pity. Those who treated thee thus, shall suffer in their turn, and she shall not console them!...."


Above: Ruins of the Queen's Farm-house in the Petit Trianon, Engraving in aqua tint of sketch, published in The Stranger in France, 1803

The English Stage Coachman

Loretta reports:

~~~

Cruikshank illustration from  the magazine

 . . .wherever an English stage coachman may be seen, he cannot be mistaken for one of any other craft or mystery.

He has commonly a broad, full face, curiously mottled with red, as if the blood had been forced by hard feeding into every vessel of the skin; he is swelled into jolly dimensions by frequent potations of malt liquors, and his bulk is still further increased by a multiplicity of coats, in which he is buried like a cauliflower, the upper one reaching to his (heels. He wears a broad-brimmed low-crowned hat, a huge roll of coloured handkerchief about his neck, knowingly knotted and tucked in at the bosom; and has in summer time a large bouquet of flowers in his button-hole; the present, most probably, of some enamoured country lass. His waistcoat is commonly of some bright colour, striped, and his smallclothes extend far below the knees, to meet a pair of jockey boots which reach about half way up his legs.

All this costume is maintained with much precision ; he has a pride of having his clothes of excellent materials; and, notwithstanding the seeming grossness of his appearance, there is still discernible that neatness and propriety of person, which is almost inherent in an Englishman. He enjoys great consequence and consideration along the road; has frequent conferences with the village housewives, who look upon him as a man of great trust and dependence; and he seems to have a good understanding with every bright-eyed country lass. The moment he arrives where the horses are to be changed, he throws down the reins with something of an air, and abandons the cattle to the care of the hostler; his duty being merely to drive them from one stage to another. When, off the box, his hands are thrust in the pockets of his great coat, and he rolls about the inn yard with an air of the most absolute lordliness. Here he is generally surrounded by an admiring throng of hostlers, stable-boys, shoe-blacks, and those nameless hangers-on, that infest inns and taverns, and run errands, and do all kind of odd jobs, for the privilege of battening on the drippings of the kitchen and the leakage of the tap-room. These all look up to him as to an oracle; treasure up his cant phrases; echo his opinions about horses and other topics of jockey lore; and, above all, endeavour to imitate his air and carriage. Every ragamuffin that has a coat to his back, thrusts his hands in the pockets, rolls in his gait, talks slang, and is an embryo Coachey.
—George & Robert Cruikshank, The Gentleman's Pocket Magazine, 1827.

Traveling in America in 1829

Loretta reports:

~~~

TRAVELLING IN AMERICA.

The above represents an American stage coach, and a view of the Waterloo inn, the first inn from Baltimore to Washington. Of the "comforts" of an American inn, Mr. De Roos gives the following picture in his travels.

We lodged at the City Hotel, which is the principal inn at New York. The house is immense, and was full of company: but what a wretched place! the floors were without carpets—the beds without curtains; there was neither glass, mug, nor cup, and a miserable little rag was dignified with the name of towel. The entrance to the house is constantly obstructed by crowds of people passing to and from the barroom, where a person presides at a buffet, formed upon the plan of a cage. This individual is engaged, " from morn to dewy eve," in preparing and issuing forth punch and spirits to strange-looking men, who come to the house to read the newspapers and talk politics. In this place, may be seen in turn, most of the respectable inhabitants of the town. There is a public breakfast at half past seven o'clock, and a dinner at two o'clock; but to get any thing in one's own room is impossible.

Of the state of society in New York, Mr. De Roos gives a tolerably perfect idea in the following:—
. . . We dined with an English merchant at his country-house, about four miles from the town. The environs are thickly interspersed with villas, the generality of which are constructed upon a very paltry scale. Both houses and gardens are arranged without taste or neatness; indeed, horticulture seems to be a science utterly unknown in America.

—George & Robert Cruikshank, The gentleman's pocket magazine, Volume 3, 1829

Motoring across the U.S. in 1903

Loretta reports:

I was interested in seeing Horatio’s Drive, a Ken Burns documentary on PBS, when it came out, but my TV viewing time being extremely limited, I simply didn’t get around to it until last week.  Which means this will be old news to some of you.  But not to all.

The early automobile was viewed as a rich man’s toy.  Many thought it was a passing fad.  There were enthusiasts, however, who saw the motor car as the future of transportation.  Horatio Nelson Jackson was one of them.

In 1903, Dr. Jackson bet some other gentlemen $50 that he could drive from San Francisco to New York City in less than 90 days.

This was plain crazy, and I’ll tell you why.  He barely knew how to drive and he’d never owned a car.  The one thing you could rely on early autos for was breaking down.  Even going short distances, tires blew out, engines blew up, and parts fell off or broke.  Constantly.  And this happened on smooth roads—which existed only in metropolitan areas.  Dr. Jackson was proposing to drive across the country—where, in many places, the roads barely accommodated a horse and wagon--and where rivers and streams didn't always have bridges spanning them. There were no auto parts stores or gas stations.  Broken parts had to be repaired by one’s trusty mechanic, or rebuilt by the local blacksmith (ah, irony) or ordered from the factory and sent on by train.

Horatio's Drive DVD

Bud

Dr. Jackson bought a somewhat used Winton Touring Car and hired a mechanic to go with him.  Everything that could go wrong did, yet Jackson persevered.

The PBS site offers the story summary as well as a map and pictures.  You can also find a story summary on Wikipedia.  The actual car, and other artifacts, are at the Smithsonian, along with info about the trip.  But the film is well worth watching, for a sense of the man's vibrant, optimistic personality, as so wonderfully voiced in his letters to his wife.

Dr. Jackson brought along a camera, and his photos capture the world he, his driving partner Sewall Crocker, and the bulldog Bud traveled through . . . a world their journey changed irrevocably.

Illustrations:
Top left from Motor, 1903
Below right from Amazon
Below left from Wikimedia commons

The New Moon Motor Car for 1917

Loretta reports:

Nearly 100 years after the Czar of Russia gave the Prince Regent a droschki, the motor car was becoming available to those who weren't massively wealthy.  This doesn't mean the cars were cheap, especially the ones known for high quality parts and construction.

I'd never heard of the Moon Motor Car until I happened on an enquiry in the local newspaper.  Naturally, nerdy historical sleuthing was in order—and you'll easily imagine my excitement at finding advertisements like this one in a WWI-era magazine.

In case you were wondering about monetary values:  According to dollartimes, "$1.00 in 1916 had the same buying power as $21.28 in 2011."  In today's dollars, therefore, the "New 1917 Six-66" was $33,516.

—The World's Work, Volume 32, Advertisements for August 1916.

An elegant vehicle for August 1820

Loretta reports:

In case you were wondering what sorts of gifts emperors gave kings, here’s an example—and another nice illustration of a Regency-era vehicle.

~~~
Plate: 9.—A RUSSIAN DROSCHKI.

We inserted in our number for January last (p. 43)*, a notice of a gift received by his present Majesty from the Emperor of Germany: it consisted of a four-wheeled carriage, called a droschki,** with Ackermann's patent moveable axles.

The annexed engraving is made from a drawing of a vehicle in many respects similar, and also called a droschki, received by his Majesty very recently from the Emperor of Russia. The chief point of difference between this carriage and that sent by the Emperor of Germany is, that the former only accommodates one person in the body ; but the shape, as will be seen, is peculiarly elegant, and the whole is of the most excellent workmanship. It is to be remarked, that although carriages of this convenient description are rare in Great Britain, yet in Russia they are extremely common, and are used by all classes, from the Emperor himself down to the humblest citizen.
—Ackermann’s Repository, 1820

*I searched in vain for this.  The first volume of Ackermann's for 1820 (Jan-June) isn’t yet up at Google Books. 

**Also spelled droitska, droshky.

A perfectly safe vehicle for 1819

Loretta reports:

Those of us who need to transport our aristocratic characters hither and yon are always excited to find detailed illustrations of fashionable vehicles.  A phaeton was analogous to a Ferrari—but not nearly as safe.  Whether this later version is as safe as claimed is anybody's guess.  You can read a fascinating testimonial here.
~~~
Plate 3.—A LIGHT PHAETON WITH PATENT MOVEABLE AXLES.
The plate which accompanies the present article, represents one of the most elegant, and, at the same time, one of the safest vehicles of the kind ever constructed. The accidents so frequently occurring to phaetons upon the old construction, were so frequent, and generally so inevitable, as to have led to their almost total disuse; but the important improvement in them by the application of Mr. Ackermann's Patent Moveable Axles, is likely to bring them again into fashion with gentlemen who are fond of the exercise of driving their own horses with perfect security.

Independent of the other beauties of the vehicle represented, its peculiar shortness and compactness are particularly striking: in a phaeton upon any other plan, this would undoubtedly be a disadvantage in all respects but appearance; for the inevitable consequence would be, that in turning and what is called locking, the carriage must be overturned. The following letter from the builder of this phaeton, to Mr. Ackermann, the proprietor of the Patent Moveable Axles applied to it, will sufficiently explain this singular advantage.

—Ackermann's Repository, July 1819

Paris-London Steam Packet

Loretta reports:

Years of researching Regency era stories made me familiar with England's coaching roads, along which the mails sped.  To get to France, one generally traveled the road to Dover.  From there, sailing packets crossed the Channel to Calais, France, a distance of approximately 30 miles.

Though I knew my hero and heroine in 1835 would travel under steam power,  I hadn’t realized, until I studied travel guides for the period, that it was possible to go from Calais to London by boat.
~~~
ROUTE BY STEAM PACKETS.
The route by the London Steam Boats from the Tower Stairs, is less expensive, and, during the summer months, preferred by many. Those who are not subject to sea-sickness, will find this route, in fine weather, a most delightful voyage ; the vast variety of objects it affords, the crowds of shipping through which you imperceptibly glide, castles, barges, trees, in short, every object calculated to excite admiration and heighten enjoyment, present themselves, during your passage through the Thames. The Steam Company usually print monthly lists, stating the time of their leaving both London and Calais . . . In favourable weather, the passage is made in about twelve hours, but sometimes they are from sixteen to eighteen; the fare for best cabin passengers, is 33s.; fore cabin, 1£. 2s. 6d.; refreshment may be had on board at the following prices: breakfast consisting of cold meat, eggs, tea and coffee, 2s. dinner of plain roast and boiled, with vegetables, &c. 2s.; tea, 1s.; bottled porter, 1s.; wine, spirits, &c. equally reasonable, and of the first quality; there are beds on board, and every accommodation for ladies . . . Gentlemen who prefer travelling in white hats, will do well to wear either a hat cover, or a travelling cap, whilst on board the packets, as the smoke from the funnel of the vessel will discolour it.
__ Francis Coghlan, A guide to France, explaining every form and expense from London to Paris, 1830.

Print illustration:  The steam ship President in gale, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
Photo:  Detail of an image from the Illustrated London News (10 May 1851), a cutaway of a packet ship, displayed at the Smithsonian; photo courtesy me.

The Miseries of Travel 1806

Loretta reports:

James Beresford’s The Miseries of Human Life, originally published in 1806, was reprinted many times.  And I’ve offered excerpts many times: here, here, and here.  This one is from the section, The Miseries of  Traveling.

~~~

16.
A coach-window-glass, that will not be put up when it is down, nor down when it is up.
17.
On arriving, with a foundered horse, at a lone inn, with the intention of taking a bed,—every room occupied; so that you are under the necessity of passing a frosty night in a chair by the side of a sullen fire, while you solace yourself, hour after hour, with a succession of abortive attempts to feed it into a blaze;—
 . . .
18.
In travelling on horse-back through an uninhabited country, enquiring your way, as you proceed, of different rustics, each of whom, besides giving you unintelligible directions as to your road, represents the place in question as many miles farther off than it had been reported by the last; thus making you seem to recede in your progress;—not to mention your expence of time and temper, from their anxious and useful enquiries as to the point from which you started, together with their rigmarole wonderings and lamentations at the number of miles which you have travelled out of your way.
19. 

After having, with the utmost difficulty, closed, and locked, and corded, your crammed trunk— being obliged to undo all, in order to get at something which lurks at the very bottom :— this, two or three times over.
20.
Attempting to pencil memoranda in a curricle, on a single piece of paper placed in the palm of your left hand :—cross road.
21.

The moment of discovering that you have dropped a highly-valued hereditary whip or stick out of an open carriage, without knowing when or where.

Both illustrations courtesy Ancestry Images:
Thomas Rowlandson, "Doctor Syntax loosing his way"  from the second edition of The Tour of Dr. Syntax in Search of the Picturesque, by William Coombe, 1812.
Isaac & George Cruikshank, "Bull & Mouth Inn. Bob bidding adieu to his friends & Life in London," from Life in London, 1822.

High speed travel in 1801

Loretta reports:

As often happens, while looking for something else, I made an unexpected discovery.  Since I’m not a sports aficionado, I’d never expected to find early 19th century sporting magazines terribly useful or interesting, and certainly not entertaining.  I was wrong.  Yes, they’re filled with reports of sporting events (races are covered at length and in detail), as you’d expect.  But the writing tends to be crisp and direct, and they offer funny little stories, dumb jokes, gossip, and wonderful insights into the male world of the era.
~~~
EXTRAORDINARY MATCH, TO RIDE AGAINST TIME.

CAPTAIN Newland, of the Sussex Militia, having betted a considerable sum that he would ride one hundred and forty miles in twelve successive hours, he started on Long-down Hill, on Thursday morning, April the 2d, and handsomely performed the distance in seven hours and thirty-four minutes, (principally on hack-horses from the Swan at Chichester) to the astonishment of a very great assemblage of sporting Gentlemen.

The 1st hour he rode 21-1/3 Miles.
2d       -       18
3d       -       20
4th       -      18
5th       -      20
6th       -      16-1/2
7th       -      17-1/2
34 minutes   -   8-1/2
                     - 140
N. B. He rode the hundred miles in five hours and five minutes, in which he met with a fall, was once obliged to change his horse, as he became restive, and was once run away with a considerable distance out of the course.—The posts were placed on the admeasured line of the two miles, and he went very considerably without them, so that he certainly went a much greater distance than one hundred and forty miles; which is looked on as a most extraordinary performance.
—The Sporting Magazine, Volume 18, 1801

Illustration:  Horses & Riders, from Henry Alken scrapbook, 1821, courtesy Ancestry Images. 

Florence Nightingale in Cairo

Loretta reports:


The Egyptians have a long history of despotic rulers—a situation 19th century Europeans deplored in nearly every journal and travel account I read while researching Mr. Impossible. Florence Nightingale grieves for the oppressed Egyptians, too, but the following passage is more typical of her vibrant writing in this fascinating book—a surprise when I stumbled on it.  As with Queen Victoria, one tends to see Florence Nightingale as an institution.  But here she is as a young woman of twenty-nine, discovering an exotic world.
~~~
No one ever talks about the beauty of Cairo, ever gives you the least idea of this surpassing city.  I thought it was a place to buy stores at and pass through on one’s way to India instead of being the rose of cities, the garden of the desert, the pearl of Moorish architecture, the fairest, really the fairest, place of earth below.  It reminds me always of Sirius I can’t tell why, except that Sirius has the silveriest light in heaven above, and Cairo has the same radiant look on earth below . . . Oh, could I but describe those Moorish streets, in red and white stripes of marble, the latticed balconies, with little octagonal shrines, also latticed, sticking out of them, for the ladies to look straight down through; the innumerable mosques and minarets; the arcades in the insides of houses you peep into ,the first stories meeting almost overhead, and yet the air with nothing but fragrance on it, in these narrowest of narrow wynds!...

We strode down again into the city, swarming with life . . . you cannot imagine how you will get through the streets; you expect to run over every child, and to be run over by every camel, who, gigantic animals! Loom round every sharp corner just as you are coming to it, and are the tallest creatures I ever saw: there does not appear standing room for a fly.  You address your ass in the tenderest terms, and in the purest Arabic; you adjure him by all the names of friendship to stop: but he understands no Arabic except his drivers, and on he goes, full trot, while you are making hairbreadth ‘scapes at every corner, yet receiving hardly a knock.
~~~
Florence Nightingale, Letters from Egypt: A Journey on the Nile, 1849-50.

Illustrations:  David Roberts, Bazaar of the Coppersmiths
 Florence Nightingale about 1845

Courtesy wikimedia.

The Crystal Palace in the Palm of Your Hand: 1851

Susan reporting:

The concept behind the GPS – where am I, anyway? – is nothing new. Guidebooks and maps have been available for centuries to aid travelers. Few maps, however, are as unique as this one: a Victorian lady's glove that promised to keep the wearer from becoming lost by placing directions literally in the palm of her hand.

The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations that took place in Hyde Park, London, in the summer of 1851 was one of the first of the grand international exhibitions of the 19th c. Over six million people attended the Exhibition, streaming into London from every corner of the world. These gloves were created by George Shove as a fashionably discrete way for an out-of-towner to find her way about town. The map printed on the palm shows not only the famous Crystal Palace, the center of the Exhibition, but also other popular tourist destinations like Kensington Gardens, the British Museum, and St. Paul's Cathedral: an amusing, useful souvenir of London.

Those are the facts behind this handy map. But, being a writer with the usual writer's over-active imagination, I can't help but think of other, fictional purposes for such a glove. What about a pair for the hapless maidservant who, although fleet of foot while on errands for her mistress, could never quite recall directions to his destination? Or even more intriguing, why not for the young gentleman setting out on a night of entertainment, his gloves ready to guide him home again no matter how much he over-indulged?

Glove Map of London, George Shove, 1861, The National Archives of the United Kingdom

Coaching Inns

Loretta reports:

Readers of my novels will be aware of my fondness for road books.  I’ve taken my characters to Albania and Egypt (the road in the latter case being the Nile), but my favorite place to travel is along the coaching roads of England.

Over the years I’ve acquired copies of Paterson’s Roads—the precursor of the railroad timetable—and its Victorian followers, like Black’s Picturesque Tourist, as well as Charles G. Harper’s loving studies of coaching roads in general and in particular, and, of course, Cecil Aldin’s beautifully illustrated The Romance of the Road.  Nowadays, many of these 19th C works can be found on Google Books.  While this does make traveling with my characters easier, it also increases the danger of my wandering into fascinating side roads.

Crucial to the coaching road is the coaching inn, which played a much larger role in travel than today's hotels and motels.   Among other things, your average motel does not change your tires, put gas in your engine, or serve as a mail stop.  In London in particular the great coaching inns were the Grand Central Stations of their time--if you add some thousands of horses, in underground stables, to the mix.

Although you might today dine and/or spend the night at any number of former coaching inns in the U.K. countryside, this is not the case in London.  Of the galleried inns, only the George* remains, and it wants determined digging to get a clear sense of what those great coaching inns looked like, inside and out, how the traffic of people, vehicles, and horses flowed, and so on—all the information one needs to move characters through a scene.

The books above cited, along with many others, offer illustrations of the old inns, though not enough, never enough.  That’s why I was so very excited when NHG Susan called to my attention this wonderful blog, Spitalfields Life, whose beautiful display of late 19th C photographs of London includes a few of of London’s old inns.

Yes, they’re looking shabby, as one would expect.  After all, by the time these pictures were taken, the railroad had taken over.  But for anyone enamored of the golden age of coaching, they offer a touching glimpse of what used to be.

*The before and after photos in a follow-up blog show us the venerable George Inn.

Illustrations:
Above, from “The Olden Time, Fore’s Coaching Recollections," and below, The Edinburgh Mail Coach and Other Coaches in a Lamplit Street, both by Cooper Henderson, courtesy Wiki Gallery.

The Balloon Stone

Loretta reports:

From Last Night’s Scandal:
~~~~~    
“There it is,” he said.
      As they neared, she saw the metal plaque set into the stone.
      “A rock,” she said.  “You’ve stopped the carriage and taken me to see a rock.”
      “It’s the Balloon Stone,” he said.  “The first balloon ascent in England landed here.”
      “Did it, really?”
~~~~~
Yes, really.*  I can’t make these things up.

"It was not until almost a year after the invention of the balloon that the English were convinced of man's conquest of the air. A number of attempts were made but they turned out so badly that people were skeptical of the craze for flying which had swept over France.

"On September 15,1784, Vincent Lunardi, a young Italian, demonstrated the success of his French predecessors before a great multitude in London including the Prince of Wales and many eminent statesmen. In a hydrogen balloon, brightly decorated, Lunardi ascended with a dog, a cat, and a pigeon, and traveled 24 miles. "

This quotation is from the Fiddlers Green website, where you'll find lots of illustrations, more information about Lunardi and his balloons--and where you can even buy a paper model of the balloon.   

*There's more about Lunardi here, where you'll also learn why Peregrine says, "Actually, there's a prior claim."

The British Museum site provides more pictures.

As to the Balloon Stone...

“Midway between the hamlets of High Cross and Collier's End, at the second of the two left-hand turnings sign-posted for  'Rowney Abbey and the Mundens,' is the other hamlet of Standon Green End—if the two cottages and one farmhouse in a by-lane may so be dignified. Some three hundred yards along this lane, in the centre of a meadow, stands the singular monument known in all the country round about as the 'Balloon Stone,' a rough block of sandstone, surrounded by an iron railing, placed here to record the alighting on this spot of the first balloon that ever ascended in England. Tradition still tells of the terror that seized the rustics when they saw 'a summat' dropping out of the sky, and how they fled for their lives.

“On lifting a hinged plate, the astonishing facts of this antique aeronautical adventure may be found duly set out in an amusingly grandiloquent inscription, engraved on a bronze tablet let into the upper part of the stone—"

From The Cambridge, Ely, and King's Lynn Road, by Charles G. Harper.  The information about the Balloon Stone is here, along with the inscription, which I quoted in my book.

As these photos demonstrate, the Stone is still there.  You can even read the plaque Olivia read aloud to Peregrine.

Above left:  The English balloon and appendages in which Mr. Lunardi ascended into the atmosphere from the artillery ground, Sepr. 15, 1784

Below right: This ticket will admit one person into the ... on the day of Mr. Lunardi's ascension, price three shillings

Both illustrations are courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA.  Clicking on the picture titles will bring you to their respective information pages, where you can find large scale versions.