The Coaching Inn Almanack · Sixth Edition
A working almanac for the road between one coaching inn and the next.
The 2024 edition gathers 312 pages of regional route essays, an insert of heritage coaching-road maps, and the complete Register of 1,847 coaching inns cross-checked against the 1822–1901 stagecoach gazetteers. Bound in linen, set in Caslon, printed on uncoated Munken.
A note from the editor
Why we still set a thousand inn entries in metal once a year.
The Almanack was never meant to be a souvenir. It began, in March 2014, as a working reference for our own regional reviewers — the loose-leaf sheets they carried on the road between coaching inns in Northumberland, the Welsh Marches and the long Sussex downland. By the third year we had a book; by the sixth, a small institution.
This edition carries the full Register of 1,847 coaching inns we currently audit, every entry verified against the original stagecoach route gazetteers held at the National Stagecoach Museum in Sherborne, and arranged not by county but by the old coaching roads themselves — the Old North Road, the Holyhead Road, the Exeter Road, the road over the Quantocks. A pull-out sheet reproduces four of those route maps at a scale you can actually fold into a glove compartment.
If you travel by coaching inn, you travel by the road. The Almanack is built to be carried on the passenger seat, marked up in pencil, left on the bar of the next inn you walk into. It is, deliberately, the slowest thing we publish.
— James Hadleigh-Cleaver, Editor · London, January 2024
Inside this volume
Four sections, set in the order a traveller would use them.
The 2024 edition runs to 312 pages in four movements: regional essays, the heritage map supplement, the Register directory, and the almanac proper. Each is paginated as a separate signature so the book opens flat at any section.
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I
The Regional Route Essays
Forty-one long-form essays by our regional reviewers, each one a 4,000–6,000-word dispatch from a single coaching road: the coach stops, the staging inns, the markets and tollgates, and the three or four inns we still recommend you stop at this year. Opens the book.
pp. 9–138
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II
The Heritage Map Supplement
A pull-out gathering of twelve period coaching-road maps reproduced under licence from the National Stagecoach Museum in Sherborne — including the 1826 Cary map of the Exeter Road and the 1841 Pigot sheet of the Holyhead route. Bound at the back so it can be removed without damage.
pp. 141–168 · pull-out
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III
The Anonymous Inn Directory
The 1,847 coaching inns currently on file, arranged by the original coaching road and then by county. Each entry gives the verified address, the date of the present house, the innkeeper, and our last anonymous reviewer's verdict in three lines of small caps. No venue pays to be listed.
pp. 171–284
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IV
The Almanac Proper
Market days, stagecoach anniversaries, the saints' days and horse-fair dates the inns were built around, tide tables for the coastal coaching houses, and a chronicle of coaching-inn closures and openings across the year. Closes the book, as it has every year since 2019.
pp. 287–312
Plate section
The cover and three interior spreads.
Photographed from a copy of the 2024 edition in our Clerkenwell office. Click any plate for a larger view in the print margin notes.
The Almanack, by the numbers
Six editions, one almanac.
A short ledger of the print title's run to date. Figures are drawn from our own distribution records and verified against the 2023 TravMedia Awards submission.
- Editions published
- 6
- Annual since 2019; this volume is the sixth.
- Copies sold to date
- 18,400
- Across all six editions, including subscription and bookshop trade.
- UK independent stockists
- 214
- Independent bookshops and coaching inns with a small book corner.
- Cover price
- £28
- Hardback, 312 pp. Free UK postage direct from the publisher.
Order the 2024 edition
Posted from Bath. On the passenger seat by the weekend.
The 2024 Almanack is in stock at our Bath bindery and is dispatched within two working days by Royal Mail Tracked. Orders placed before 18 December 2024 arrive in good time for Christmas; later orders are booked in for the new printing year.
- Price£28.00 inc. UK postage
- EditionVI · 2024 · hardback
- DispatchWithin 2 working days, Royal Mail Tracked
- Returns30 days, no quibble
Trade orders (three or more copies for bookshops, inns and tourist boards) are handled by our distribution partner and carry a 35% discount — write to [email protected].