Prior to the coming of the railways much of the transport in Herefordshire had been via muddy roads only usable on horseback and goods could only be carried via groups of packhorses, which meant that transportation and communication was slow.

The only public transport that was available on the roads were the horsedrawn coaches. Thomas Burke described them as 'long, lumbering, springless, six-horsed vehicles, which could take days on a journey from London to Winchester' (Thomas Burke 16th Century Travel in England).

Stagecoaches were very uncomfortable for long journeys and although in Hereford there was a stagecoach known as Pruen's Flying Machine, which had a twice weekly service to London in 1774, he journey took 36 hours and cost the large sum of £1 5s.

This coach later became the Royal Mail coach and the ticket prices were reduced to £1 inside and 10s outside.

By 1795 the journey time from Hereford to London had been cut to 26 hours and in 1815 the coach could leave the City Arms Hotel in Broad Street (now Barclays Bank) and reach London by 5am the next morning. by 1821 it was possible to leave Hereford at 5am and reach London the same day.

In 1837 one London coach was taking around 15 hours to complete the journey one way. The last stagecoach that ran in Hereford was the Hereford to Hay-on-Wye coach, which ran for the last time in 1863, 10 years after the railways had arrived in the county.

By 1841 the journey to London could be done by coach as far as Birmingham and then from Birmingham to London by train. The journey took 10 hours, but by 1844 passengers on this journey could catch the train at Gloucester, cutting the journey time down somewhat.

At the beginning of the 1850's the nearest railway station to Hereford was at Abergavenny, which again was reached via coach.

With all the traffic because of the coaches something had to be done about the condition of the county's roads. Since the 1780's Turnpike Trusts had been formed to improve the roads form their muddy state to proper surfaces of graded levels on foundations that helped to improve drainage. From 1816 John Loudon McAdam introduced the use of coal tar and compressed stones to make durable road surfaces. This new road surface was known as Tarmacadam, taking its name from the man who invented it.

Up until the arrival of the railways in Herefordshire the River Wye had been an important trade route for the county, however this was often hazardous and liable to flooding and fast flowing water. By using the River Wye goods such as wool, cider, hops and timber could be carried in a south westerly direction towards the Forest of Dean and the Bristol Channel and by the return route coal and limestone could be brought in.