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Title: The Road
Author: Belloc, Hilaire
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Road" ***
Transcriber’s Notes:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_), and text
enclosed by equal signs is in bold (=bold=).
Additional Transcriber’s Notes are at the end.
* * * * *
THE ROAD
* * * * *
Profit, Conveniency, and Pleasure, to the whole Nation.
Being a short Rational Discourse, lately presented to His Majesty,
Concerning the
High-ways of ENGLAND:
Their _Badness_, the _Causes_ thereof, the _Reasons_ of those
_Causes_, the impossibility of ever having them _Well-mended_
according to the _Old way_ of _mending_.
But may most certainly be done, and for ever so maintained (according
to _This New way_) substantially, and with very much _Ease_.
And so, That in the very depth of _Winter_ there shall not be much
_Dirt_, no _Deep-Cart-rutts_, or _High-ridges_; no _Holes_, or
_Uneven Places_; nor so much as a _loose stone_ (the very Worst of
Evils both to Man and Horse) in any of the _Horse-Tracts_.
Nor shall any Person have cause to be once put out of his way in any
hundred of miles Riding.
_To mend_ High-ways, _loe Here the way is shewn,
No better way than This, shall e’re be known:
A Firm and Certain way, of no great Cost,
In all wayes else their Labour’s wholly lost.
The Old way ne’re could do’t, ’twas meer Deceit,
As may be prov’d, it was a very_ Cheat.
Printed for a Publick good in the Year 1675.
AN OLD TITLE PAGE showing the antiquity of the Road Problem
* * * * *
THE ROAD
_By_
HILAIRE BELLOC
_Printed & Published for_
THE BRITISH REINFORCED
CONCRETE ENGINEERING CO. LTD.
_By_ CHARLES W. HOBSON, St. James’s Sq., MANCHESTER
1923
THE CONTENTS
§ I THE ROAD IN GENERAL
_Page_
CHAPTER I The Origin of Roads
_How Did the Road Come into Existence: The Experimental or
the Scientific Method: The Haphazard Road: The Case for
Design in Road Construction_ 3
CHAPTER II The Crossing of Marsh and Water
_Physical Factors Modifying the Formula of the Road: Marsh
as the Chief Obstacle to Travel: The Political Results of
Marshes: The Crossing of Water Courses: The Origin of the
Bridge: The Effect of Bridges upon Roads: The Creation of a
Nodal Point: The Function of the Nodal Point in History_ 13
CHAPTER III Passability
_The Choice of Soils: Following the Gravel or the Chalk:
Conditions in the South and East: The Obstacle of Gradient:
The Early Vogue of Steep Gradients: “The Other Side of the
Hill”: The Modern Importance of Gradient: Passes or Gaps in
Hill Country_ 33
CHAPTER IV The Obstacle of Vegetation
_The Special Expenditure due to Forest: Roads which Skirt
Woodlands: Roads which have been Deflected by Forest:
Proximity of Material as a Final Main Cause Modifying the
Trajectory of a Road: Cost of Transporting Material and its
Effects in Ancient and Modern Times_ 47
CHAPTER V Political Influences
_The Factor of Cost Resulting in the “Strangling of
Communication”: Congestion which leads to decay: A Great
Modern Problem: The Compulsory Acquisition of Land: Old
Roads Serving New Objects_ 56
CHAPTER VI The Reaction of the Road
_The Physical Effects of Roads: The Way in Which the Road
Compels Communication to follow it: The Formation of Urban
Centres and the Urban Habit: The Spread of Ideas by Means
of Roads: History Deflected by the Deflection of the Road:
The Example of Shrewsbury and Chester: Towns which are
Maintained by Roads: The Road in Military History: Results
of the Decay of Roads: The Road as a Boundary_ 63
§ II THE ENGLISH ROAD
CHAPTER VII The Road in History
_Through the Dim Ages: The Characteristics of the English
Road: Absence of Plan: A Local instead of a National System
Leading to the Present Crisis_ 81
CHAPTER VIII The “Blindness” of English Roads
_The Two Causes Governing the Development of English
Roads--Waterways and Domestic Peace: The Relation of the
English Road to Military Strategy_ 92
CHAPTER IX Five Stages
_The “Potential” in Political Geography Examples: The
Primitive Trackways: The Roman Road System: The Earlier
Mediaeval Period: The Later Mediaeval Period: The Turnpike
Era_ 107
CHAPTER X The Trackways
_The Three Divisions of the British Pre-Roman Road
System--the System of which Salisbury Plain was the
“Hub”: The System Connected with London: Cross-Country
Communications--The Three Factors which Have Determined
Travel in Britain_ 116
CHAPTER XI The Making of the Roman Road
_The Great Initiative: The Mark of the Roman Military
Engineer: The Theory and Practice of the Straight Line:
Modifications of the Straight Line: How it was Carried Out:
The Method of Odds and Evens_ 133
CHAPTER XII The Dark Ages
_The Decline of the Roman Road: The Period at its
Occurrence: Gaps: Roman Roads which Fell into Disuse: The
Relationship of the Modern to the Roman System: Watling
Street: Stane Street: The Short Cut Between Penkridge and
Chester: Peddars Way: The Coming of the New Civilization in
the Twelfth Century_ 147
CHAPTER XIII Wheeled Traffic and the Modern Road
_The Transition from the Horse to the Vehicle: The
Distinctive Mark of the Later Seventeenth Century: The
Turnpike System: The Underlying Idea of the Turnpike: Its
Decline and the First Emergence of the General National
System in 1810: Thomas Telford and His Work: The Movement
Connected with the Name of Macadam: The Coming of the
Locomotive and its Results on Canals and Roads_ 179
CHAPTER XIV The Future
_A New Vehicle Compelling us to Make New Roads: Arterial
Roads for the New Traffic: The Five Necessities of these
Roads: Ways and Means: A National Fund: Taxation according
to Fuel Used: The Question of the Land Contiguous to the New
Roads_ 194
THE ILLUSTRATIONS
_Page_
_FRONTISPIECE: An old Title Page showing the antiquity of the
Road Problem_ 4
_ICKNIELD STREET_ 27
_TYPICAL ENGLISH LANE_ 87
_THE EARLIEST ROAD_ 111
_WELSH SECTION, HOLYHEAD ROAD_ 123
_DERELICT ROAD, SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS_ 151
_ERMINE STREET NEAR ROYSTON_ 171
_TOLL HOUSE ON THE BATH ROAD_ 181
_The text is also elucidated by fifteen maps and diagrams_
AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION
_We are arrived at a chief turning-point in the history of the English
highway. New instruments of locomotion, a greater volume of traffic, a
greater weight in loads, and vastly increased rapidity in road travel
have between them brought us to an issue: either some very considerable
and immediate change in the character of the Road, or a serious and
increasing handicap in our rivalry with other nations through the
strain and expense of an out-worn system._
_The moment therefore calls for some examination of the Road, its
theory and history. That need has prompted me to write this essay;
but I must say at the outset that I approach my task with no expert
qualification. My only equipment for the general sketch I intend is
historical reading and the experience acquired in the writing of
certain monographs upon the_ topography _of the Road in the past. I
can do no more than suggest lines of thought which, if they lead to
practice, need a detailed science I do not possess._
_The Road is one of the great fundamental institutions of mankind.
We forget this because we take it for granted. It seems to be so
necessary and natural a part of all human life that we forget that it
ever had an origin or development, or that it is as much the creation
of man as the city and the laws. Not only is the Road one of the great
human institutions because it is fundamental to social existence, but
also because its varied effect appears in every department of the
State. It is the Road which determines the sites of many cities and
the growth and nourishment of all. It is the Road which controls the
development of strategics and fixes the sites of battles. It is the
Road that gives its frame-work to all economic development. It is the
Road which is the channel of all trade and, what is more important, of
all ideas. In its most humble function it is a necessary guide without
which progress from place to place would be a ceaseless experiment; it
is a sustenance without which organized society would be impossible;
thus, and with those other characters I have mentioned, the Road moves
and controls all history._
_A road system, once established, develops at its points of
concentration the nerve centres of the society it serves; and we remark
that the material rise and decline of a state are better measured by
the condition of its communications--that is, of its roads--than by any
other criterion._
_The construction, the trace, and the whole character of the Road
change with new social needs and habits, with the facilities of natural
science, their rise and decline. But this perpetual change, which
affects the Road as it does architecture and every other work of man,
is specially marked by certain critical phases, one of which, as I
said at the opening of this, we have now entered. There are moments
in the history of the Road in any society where the whole use of it,
the construction of it, and its character have to be transformed. One
such moment, for instance, was when the wheeled vehicle first appeared:
another when there first appeared large organized armies. It occurred
whenever some new method of progression succeeded the old. It occurred
at similar critical turning-points in the history of the Road not
only when any of these things arose, but also when they declined or
disappeared. The appearance of great cities, their sudden expansion
or their decay, or the new needs of a new type of commerce--and its
disappearance--bring a whole road system to one of these revolutionary
points. We have had (as I shall develop in more detail)_ five _great
moments of this kind in the history of the English road system: the
moment when the British trackway was superseded by the Roman military
road; the moment when the latter declined in the Dark Ages; the moment
when the mediaeval system of local roads grew up on the basis of the
old Roman trunk roads and around them; the moment when this in its turn
declined in the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; and the
re-casting of the road system by the turnpikes of the eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries. To-day the sixth great change is upon us._
_It is incumbent upon us then to-day to get ourselves clear upon the
theory and the history of the Road, and I propose in this essay to take
them in two sections: first, the Road in general; next, that special
institution the English Road._
A PREFACE
The British Reinforced Concrete Engineering Co. Ltd. recently became
acquainted with the fact that Mr. Hilaire Belloc was engaged in the
production of an essay on the history of British Roads. In numerous
writings Mr. Belloc has treated various aspects of Road history, and
his learning on the subject and his method of communicating it are
in high repute among wide circles of readers. He is, in fact, an
outstanding literary authority on the topic. It therefore seemed to the
Company that if they could acquire the copyright of the work, in which
Mr. Belloc was treating the whole subject not indirectly, but directly
and systematically, and if they could issue this work to people who
are professionally engaged in the construction of roads, a very
considerable service would be done to the cause of road development
in the country. The future always becomes a little clearer if we
thoroughly understand the past, and the Company feel that everybody
who is giving much of his mind and life to road problems will be glad
to have in his possession a book which brings out the historical
and social, not to say the romantic, interest which lies beneath the
surface of the English highway. Mr. Belloc was accordingly approached
on the subject and agreed to sell the publishing rights of his work
to the British Reinforced Concrete Engineering Co. Ltd., who now have
great pleasure in issuing it to the surveying and civil engineering
profession, believing that it will at once assist and beguile the work
of those to whose hands the future of the English Roads, and with it
much of the economic and social prosperity of the country, is largely
entrusted.
* * * * *
THE ROAD
§ I THE ROAD IN GENERAL
CHAPTER I THE ORIGIN OF ROADS
_How Did the Road Come Into Existence: The Experimental or the
Scientific Method: The Haphazard Road: The Case for Design in Road
Construction._
i
In order to understand any matter, especially if we have to understand
it for a practical end, we must begin by the theory of the thing: we
must begin by thinking out why and how it has come into existence, what
its function is, and how best it can fulfil that function. Next we must
note its effect, once it is formed, and the results of the fulfilment
of its function.
What then, to begin with, is the origin of the Road? Why did this human
institution come into existence, and how does it tend to develop? How
may it best be designed to fulfil its function?
When we have decided that we can go on to the next point, which is: how
does the Road, once formed, react upon its environment; what physical
and (much more important) political results flow from its existence?
The answer to the first question, “How did that human institution, the
Road, come into existence, and why?” is simple, and will be given in
much the same terms by anyone to whom it is addressed. The Road is an
instrument to facilitate the movement of man between two points upon
the earth’s surface.
If the surface of the earth were uniform in quality and in
gradient--that is, if it were of the same stuff everywhere, of the same
degree of moisture everywhere, and everywhere level--the Road between
any two points would clearly be a straight line (to be accurate, the
arc of a great circle) joining those two points. For when we say that
the Road exists “in order to facilitate” travel over the surface of
the earth from one point to another the word “facilitate” includes, of
course, rapidity in progression, and the straight line is the shortest
line between any two points.
But the surface of the earth is highly diversified in quality as in
gradient. Therefore the _trajectory_ or _course_ of the Road is not in
practice, and should not be in theory, a straight line from point to
point. That straight line has to be modified if we are to give to the
Road an ultimate form such that it shall best serve its end; and when
we come to look into the problem we shall see that it is one of very
great complexity indeed. That is where the study of the theory even
in its most elementary form becomes of such value to the execution in
practice. We discover by studying the theory of the Road how many and
how varied are the elements of the formula we have to establish. We
become prepared in that study for the discovery, in each new particular
problem, of any number of novel modifications not present in problems
previously attacked.
So true is this that the whole history of progress in road-making is a
history of discovering methods for dealing with obstacles either novel
in character or only appreciated after lengthy use. Let us begin at the
beginning, with the very elements of the affair.
The first element in the theory of the Road may be put thus: _To find
a formula of minimum expense in energy for communication between
two given geographical points under given conditions of travel and
carriage._
The diversity of geographical circumstance moulds the formula into its
final shape through balanced modifications of the direct line.
The most obvious modifications to a direct trajectory arise from the
two primary circumstances of surface and gradient. It is easier to
go over one kind of soil than another; easier to go over one kind of
surface in summer and another in winter; easier to go over one kind of
surface in wet, and another in dry weather; easier to go over one kind
of surface with a heavy load and another with a light load; over one
with sumpter animals, over another on wheels, and so on.
Again, it is for all kinds of travel easier to go upon the flat than
uphill, and this element of gradient is much more complicated than at
first it would appear. Thus travel of one kind--travel on foot, for
instance--can take a sharp gradient for the sake of a short trajectory
more easily than can traffic with burdens; and traffic with burdens
carried by animals can take a sharper gradient with advantage than can
wheeled traffic; and wheeled traffic differs according to the character
of the vehicle in this respect.
Again, a road of diverse use must strike a compromise in its formula
between the various needs subserved. If the great bulk of its use is
to provide for rapid military advance by marches, you must sacrifice
to shortness some of the easier gradients which would be demanded for
traffic mainly civilian, yet if of three main users even the least
important is incapable of more than a given gradient, your formula
can never exceed that gradient, and so forth. So we have even in this
simplest and most primary of all analyses of the Road considerable
elements of complexity appearing.
As the study progresses an indefinite series of further complexities
arises, and one soon reaches that _crux_ in the theory of the Road
which has led to so much discussion and which some still call unsolved:
whether the formula of the Road is best left to the unconscious or
half-conscious action of experiment, which in time should lead to an
exact minimum of expense in energy, or whether it is best to arrive at
it by a fully conscious, exact, and (as we say to-day) “scientific”
examination of all the conditions and a deliberate and immediate
conclusion upon them.
Should the road _grow_ or should it be _planned_? The discussion is
not idle. The clash of opinion upon it is at the root of the contrast
between national systems, and a right answer will make all the
difference between success and failure in our approach to a new road
system such as is now upon us.
ii
I maintain that of the two theories the second is just: that a gradual
experimental growth in its roads, a method coincident with local
caprice, burdens with imperfect communication the society adopting it;
that conscious design is essential to efficiency. And this I propose
to illustrate by a single example. Take two points A and B, such that
a line joining them must lead across a marsh, a river, and a range of
hills. Let some primitive wanderer make his way from A to B, knowing,
when he is at A, the direction of B by, let us say, a distant peak
overtopping the range between. That primitive wanderer would first of
all skirt about the marsh and, finding its narrowest place at C,
would set to work and make his causeway there. Having crossed it, he
would come to the river. He must either swim or ford it. Supposing him
to prefer, through the necessity of a pack or what not, to ford it, he
casts about for a ford. He finds one at D, and perhaps he also, if he
takes time to look about him, finds another deeper one at E and another
at F, but as his causeway is near D he takes that ford.
[Illustration: Sketch I.]
Then he has to make for the hills. We will suppose that the peak
directing him from beyond B is still visible. He takes his new
direction from it and looks towards the base of the hills at G. There,
in the direct line to the peak, the contours are so steep that the
trouble of getting up would more than counterbalance the shortness
of the cut. He casts about for a better chance, and at last finds a
gradient just worth his while at H. He climbs up that; but though
the gradient is easy on the A side at H on the far side it is very
difficult, so he turns along the ridge to K, where he finds an easier
down gradient: a spur leads him on by its gentle slope, and from the
bottom of the spur he makes straight for B, which is now right in front
of him and plain sailing.
Now, look at that track as established by our primitive wanderer and
see how lengthy and inconvenient it is, how ill fulfilling the object
of the traveller compared with what would have been established by
even a moderately intelligent and cursory survey of the ground as a
whole and the making of a plan. To begin with, it would have paid our
traveller to take a little more trouble in crossing the rather wider
gap in the marsh at L and the rather deeper ford at F, because he would
have gained very much in time and space with comparatively slight extra
effort had he surveyed the whole ground and thought things out. He was
only led on to the ford at D because it was suggested by the crossing
of the marsh at C. The first opportunity made the second. But to
continue the plan: F is nearly opposite the easier up gradients of the
hills, but, having surveyed that bad steep on the far side, he slightly
modifies his road, crossing the ridge at M behind a summit which hid
this way from the first traveller. Then he goes down the practicable,
though steep, slope at N, and so reaches B. The first road produced
haphazard by successive chances gives the lengthy and roundabout
trajectory A--C, D, H, K--B. The second, with very little extra labour,
gives him the far shorter and better trajectory A--L, F, M, N--B.
We see from this elementary example how the thinking out of the theory
of the Road is of advantage in practice. It may be urged that the
discovery of advantages as time goes on gradually improves the Road,
and in this way half-conscious development will always give you the
best road in the long run without studying its theory. But history is
against that view. Europe is full of roads thus established haphazard,
confirming themselves by use and by expenditure, and for centuries
neglecting opportunities which would have been present to the eye of
the most cursory and moderately intelligent survey.
This conflict of principle between _growth_ and _design_ in the
creation of the Road is at the root of half our modern crises in
road-making. The real issue is between those who would gradually add to
or develop from custom and those who would radically impose new plans,
and on a right decision the economic future of this country may well
depend.
When we come to consider even the first of succeeding modifications
we see still more clearly the complexity of any road-formulæ and the
corresponding advantage of plan over habit. The marsh, the river, and
the hill are but the beginning of the affair. There is a modification
due to the fact that the marsh may not be permanent, nor the depth of
the river; that the Road may be of special use at moments when the
river is shallow or flooded, when the marsh is dry or, exceptionally,
impassable. There is the modification of surface. Clay, for instance,
is fairly good going in dry weather, but the worst in wet. There
is the modification due to vegetation: the balancing of the effort
involved in going round a dense scrub against that of cutting through
it and of maintaining the cutting when it is established. There is the
modification introduced by the instruments and science available for
construction and for cutting. In one stage of development it will pay
to take a road by a bridge across a deep river where in earlier stages
of development it would have been necessary to seek a ford. In one
stage of development it would pay to make a cutting through a scar too
steep to climb where, in a lower civilization, it would have paid to go
round it. The whole formula increases in complexity the more we examine
it. It is a formula for the discovery of a minimum of effort. But in
the establishment of that minimum you have to consider not only a very
great number of factors, but the respective value of each to the whole,
and your success in establishing the Road depends upon the accuracy of
your judgment both as to the presence and as to the comparative value
of all those factors.
CHAPTER II THE CROSSING OF MARSH AND WATER
_Physical Factors Modifying the Formula of the Road: Marsh as the Chief
Obstacle to Travel: The Political Results of Marshes: The Crossing of
Water Courses: The Origin of the Bridge: The Effect of Bridges upon
Roads: The Creation of a Nodal Point: The Function of the Nodal Point
in History._
i
So much for the first principle of all: that the Road, like all other
human institutions, is best made with brains, and for that second
immensely valuable, but too often forgotten, political principle: that
if you begin by making your thing wrong it is likely to take root and
to remain wrong.
A catalogue of the more important physical factors modifying the
formula of the Road (I will come to the political and economic in a
moment) is as follows:
_Marsh to be traversed; water courses to be traversed; differences
of surface other than marsh and water courses; gradients to be dealt
with; the obstacle of vegetation to be dealt with._
To these five one may add a factor common to all, and to the making of
every road, even in its most primitive stages: (6) the proximity of
material (meaning by “proximity” the congeries of all the factors which
make for the cheapness of material, for the advantage of using it in a
particular place).
Let us take these physical points in their order.
* * * * *
ii
MARSH. It is not always appreciated that the chief obstacle to travel
from the beginning of time has been and still remains marsh, which
may be defined as soil too sodden for travel, as distinguished from
the lands which are boggy in wet weather but passable. Marsh is less
striking to the eye, especially to the modern eye, than a stretch of
water, much less striking than the apparent obstacle of the sea, or
of a bold hill range: it is nevertheless the chief problem presented
to the making of a road, because of all natural obstacles _it is
the only one wholly untraversable by unaided man_. Man unaided can
climb hills, swim water, work his way through dense undergrowth. But
marsh is _impassable_ to him: it is the great original obstacle to
progress. If this has not been recognized in the past, and is still
little recognized, it is not only because marsh is less striking to the
eye than water or hills, but still more because, the original roads
established by man in forming his cities, markets, and all the rest of
it, being compelled to avoid marsh, we do not often come across the
problem even to-day. Partly, also, because very extensive marsh is a
rare phenomenon, especially in Western Europe.
But if we look at the map and at history we shall see what that
obstacle means. It was marsh which cut off Lancashire from the South
of England, and left Lancashire the stronghold of old institutions,
especially after the Reformation. It was the marsh of the Lower Thames
estuary, now upon the right, now upon the left bank of the river,
which forbade a crossing below London. It was marsh which protected
the growth of Venice at the earliest and most dangerous moment of its
existence. It was marsh which cut off the Western (Polish) civilization
from the Eastern (Russian) civilization, and was the main geographical
cause of that sharp division in culture which has affected the whole
of later European history. We may say that the Russian Orthodox Church
and the last Revolution would neither have been, save for the Pinsk
Marshes. To take lesser examples, we can see to-day the way in which
even our modern ways avoid marsh. The large district of Gargano in
Southern Italy has remained largely isolated through marsh upon its
flanks.
You may see all over Europe, and even in this well-drained country,
primitive roads deflected through marsh as they are not by any other
obstacle, and this deflection stamps our road system to this day, in
spite of our enormously increased opportunities of road construction.
We shall see on a later page the way in which marsh deflected in the
dark ages Roman roads at the river crossings in this island.
If a special example be required of a road having grown up and remained
on an uneconomic trajectory on account of marsh moulding its earlier
history, one of the best in England is that of the Arundel road south
of Pulborough. Seawards from Pulborough (a landing and crossing-place
on the upper River Arun of great antiquity) the next considerable
inhabited spot was the port and fortified spur of Arundel. The distance
as the crow flies is a short day’s march or less, some ten miles. Now,
the road could have been taken in a fairly direct line and everywhere
upon the level had it not been for marsh. The marshes bordering the
Arun prevented such a construction in early times: the road had to keep
to a high, dry bank, then to climb right up to the top of the Downs and
fall again upon Arundel. So it remained--having taken root--through all
the advances in science: so it still stands to-day. The railway takes
the obvious line, but the road, established centuries ago, remains on
its former trajectory, climbs up many hundreds of feet, and then drops
down again to Arundel, involving in the short distance of ten miles
gradients of one in eight and heavy hill-climbing over more than half
the distance. A neighbouring example of the extreme importance of _the
first experiment_ in the history of a road is seen at Bramber, in the
next valley eastward. There a similar situation--the approach landwards
from the port of Shoreham--avoids the hills, because at some unknown
but very early period a causeway was built at Bramber to negotiate the
marsh; and that was because the isolated hill at Bramber afforded such
a good opportunity of fortification and blocking the pass that a road
was bound to reach it, and even under primitive conditions men were at
the labour of making an embankment.
[Illustration: Sketch II]
iii
WATER COURSES. The crossing of water courses does not seem to have been
originally _in the main_ a search for a ford. It seems to have been
rather a search for _good taking-off places upon either side, however
deep the water in between_. The ford was used, of course, wherever it
could be, and in it also the hardness of the passage under water was
of even more importance than the depth of water: below, say, 4 feet.
But the point to note is that often, and probably in the majority of
cases, man in the early times took his short cut across water either
by swimming or by taking advantage of floating material, and was much
more concerned with the hard bank upon either side than with the depth
of the stream.
If you take such a very old road as that of the primitive British
trackway whose two branches, from Stonehenge and Winchester, unite in
what is called the “Pilgrim’s Way” and make for the Straits of Dover,
you find this trackway crossing the Mole, the Wey, and the Medway, as
also the Darenth, at places where the obvious consideration has been
a dry approach upon either side, and not the local shallowness of the
stream. (We must remember in this connection that the word “ford” is
used at plenty of places where the stream is too deep for crossing on
foot: it means simply “a going.” A false etymology here has misled many
historians.) Of more importance to the first makers of the Road than
the depth of a water course was its swiftness. We have in this country
few examples of swift streams of any magnitude, and none of streams
so swift as to be impassable or passable with great difficulty, but
where such examples occur abroad it is easy to see what a boundary and
obstacle a rapid current afforded. It works in all manner of ways to
the disadvantage of travel, it makes both swimming and ferrying more
difficult (or impossible), it makes bridging either more difficult or
(in early times) impossible, it usually connotes great differences of
level, sudden floods, etc., and it also usually connotes changes and
variety of currents, as well as the destruction of the banks.
At an early stage in the development of the Road came the use of the
bridge, and with the bridge the original chief consideration--a dry
approach from either side--was emphasized. It is true that fords
were bridged as roads developed, but the bridging of a ford is not
the normal origin of the bridge. The normal origin of the bridge, if
we judge by any one of the original great roads of Europe, is the
replacing of a ferry. Men took the obstacle of a river (on account
of its length) as something hardly to be turned, save perhaps in its
higher reaches. They made straight for it, seeking only firm ground
from which to embark and disembark, and established a boat crossing. To
_this_ rather than to the ford the bridge succeeded. They bridged it
with increasing success as their material science increased in power,
and you may see all over Europe the great bridges thrown, not where the
river was shallowest nor where it was easiest to traverse for any other
reason, but chiefly where the main road led. In other words, the bridge
is a function of the Road rather than the Road of the bridge.
Two outstanding examples of this in Europe are London Bridge, perhaps
prehistoric, certainly not much less than two thousand years old, and
the bridge at Cologne, to which one might add the bridge at Rouen and
the bridges of the Island of Paris, which we know to be more than two
thousand years old. But it must be remembered that the bridging of a
river, even in primitive times, was the next easiest thing to a ferry,
and in some circumstances easier even than a ferry. A bridge need not
be built of piles. It may be built of boats, and in principle, even
over a broad stream, once you could build a boat bridge at all you
could build it of almost indefinite length. What would militate against
the effort to make a pile bridge were depth and rapidity of stream, but
even these, unless the rapidity were very great indeed, did not prevent
the throwing of a bridge of boats.
The bridge as an element in the Road plays a very large part which
needs some detailed examination: it develops a whole series of results.
The object of a bridge is to give _continuity_ and _security_ to travel
across an obstacle of depth: usually an obstacle of running water,
sometimes a dry ravine. _It is but rarely that a bridge is essential
to the mere trajectory of a road._ In much the greater number of cases
its function can be supplied, though far less perfectly, by a ferry, or
a ford, or a graded way down into and up from a depression. What the
bridge does is to permit of continued traffic, especially continued
wheeled traffic, across such obstacles without delay and without
trans-shipment, and at the same time to add, up to a maximum of weight,
to security; for it is obviously an instrument more secure than the
ferry or the ford, especially for heavy weights.
But the bridge has always represented a special economic effort,
greater yard for yard than that of the average of the road of which
it was a part; and that is why you almost always find it the mark of
civilization. A primitive culture can exist for centuries without
bridges. The proportion of bridge-building effort to road-building
effort varies very much with the physical science of various times. It
is less to-day, and was less in Roman times, than in primitive times
and in the Middle Ages, because we, like the Roman engineers, expend a
far greater economic effort upon the average of the Road, so that the
comparative cost of the bridge is less. In primitive times the bridge
was something of a feat, its construction as measured in effort was
equivalent to many miles of road, its builder a public benefactor, and
its building an event of note. This is so true that in some languages
which have come down but little changed from primitive times the word
for “bridge” is found to be a foreign word, as though the institution
were not sufficiently common before the advent of some civilized
conqueror to have acquired a special name; and in all primitive
societies the bridge is rare.
This comparatively high cost of the bridge has had certain effects on
the history and in the appearance of our roads which are worth noting.
In the first place, the bridge tends to be a “gut.” When the throwing
of a bridge was equivalent in expense to several miles of the existing
road it was a great saving to make it narrow: only one vehicle to pass
at a time, with side refuges at the piles when the passage of two
vehicles in opposing directions was unavoidable.
Again, bridges tended, especially in times of low economic development,
to introduce a sudden high gradient. The elliptical arch was, if not
unknown, at any rate very rare before the Renaissance, and where the
plain semi-circular arch alone was used a flat bridge involved, if the
crossing were of any width, a great number of piles, and therefore
an added expense. The difficulty was met in the majority of cases by
lessening the number of piles, especially towards the centre, where
there was a greater depth, consequently increasing the span there,
and consequently, in a semi-circular arch, increasing its height
correspondingly. The result was that the bridge introduced a sudden
hillock into the Road, and that feature you find all over Western
Europe up to quite modern times, with many survivals remaining,
especially in Spain. In some of the very early bridges in the poorer
districts, or on the less used roads, the exaggeration is fantastic. I
know of one over the Gallego, near Huesca, where the pitch is so steep
that it baulks a car.
There were particular structures--that of London is an example in
point--where the disadvantage of a gradient was avoided at great
expense because a mass of traffic and merchandise made it worth while.
London Bridge was carried on a great number of arches precisely in
order to avoid this element of gradient. A side-effect of this was the
blocking of the stream and great difficulty for boats in “shooting” the
arches on a tide; but this drawback to river traffic was thought worth
while as the price of a level road.
Another reason which often led to the expensive flat stone bridge was
its replacing an old wooden pile bridge. The wooden pile bridge had no
cause for creating a gradient. On the whole it was cheaper to keep it
exactly level, and as low as possible consistent with the rise of the
water. Where such a structure had preceded a stone bridge the habit
of a level road was continued, even at the expense of many piles and
arches.
A third effect of the bridge upon the Road, also due to its comparative
expense, was the convergence of roads towards bridges, established
or even only planned. You will perpetually find up and down Europe
the approaches to a town from two or more directions merged into
a common road just at the entry to a bridge, in order to save the
expense of two crossings, though at an extra expense of space and
time; thus, Abbeville, Caen (a very striking example, with _three_
converging roads on each side of the bridge), London--the chief example
in Europe--Saragossa, with the two main roads from south and west
converging on its bridge--all “gather” roads after this fashion.
But the effects of the bridge upon the mere trajectory of a road,
upon its surface and contour, were far less than were its political
and military effects. Though land armies were always tied to roads
more or less, it was possible to leave the road for short distances
under stress or for the sake of strategy. Cavalry continually did so
for great stretches, and infantry could do so occasionally. But a
bridge acted like a magnet. The defence of a bridge was the defence of
a point which an army in force was always compelled to use, and the
term “bridge head”--that is, the holding of the space on the _further_
side of the bridge, thus commanding the passage--is an example of its
permanent military function.
A bridge was, for the same reason, a natural place of toll.
Merchandise had to use it, and the same requirement of continual repair
which often entailed a permanent post at a bridge gave the opportunity
for using that post for the raising of taxation. All through the end
of the Roman Empire and the Dark and Middle Ages this function of the
bridge is most prominent.
iv
But most important of all the effects of the bridge is its creation
of a _nodal point_, that is, a knot or crossing of ways. The bridge
effects this in two fashions: firstly by that tendency to a convergence
of roads upon the bridge which I have just noted, and secondly, and
much more important, by the transverse of the bridge and the river. A
river is also a high road if it is in any way navigable. Therefore,
wherever a land road crosses a river and establishes a bridge you get
a crossways of communications. At such a point, where many avenues of
approach meet, and whence opportunities of travel to different places
radiate, you have what is called in political geography a Nodal Point.
[Illustration: ICKNIELD STREET in the Oxfordshire Chilterns]
Now, the nodal point is of such importance that it merits particular
attention. The nodal point, especially if it is established by a
bridge, has two great functions in history. It determines the strategy
of campaigns (and alters even the tactics of actions), it determines
the growth of towns. It has been said that London was made by its
bridge. Whether there was a settlement (there probably was) upon the
gravelly hill which approached the river from the north, before any
bridge was thrown across the tidal Thames, we do not know; but it is
certain that the throwing of this bridge gave London its opportunity
for development, and what is true of London is true of Paris, of Rouen,
of Maestricht, of Cologne, and of twenty other great urban centres in
our civilization. Strategically, a commander holding a nodal point
retains the opportunity of moving along any one of many lines of
movement, and at the same time denies the opportunity of junction to
his enemies. To put it in its simplest form, a commander holding a
nodal point and concentrated there can prevent the concentration of two
fractions of his enemy along any two roads radiating from that nodal
point. He can himself march up each of these consecutively and defeat
the two fractions of his enemy in detail. That is the simplest possible
case, and it can be developed into any amount of detail and intricacy.
The bridge is the point where the commerce up and down stream crosses
the road-commerce transversely to the river-commerce, and the nodal
point of the bridge establishes a market. But that nodal point has
other characters even more important to civilian life. It creates a
point of _trans-shipment_, where goods must be transferred from the
water vehicle to the land vehicle. In their transference you have the
political opportunity of examination and toll, and, if necessary,
interception; and you also have, of course, the whole of the middleman
business of dealing with and passing through the goods--you have the
depot and the warehousing and all the adjuncts of a built-up commercial
centre and a market.
But the bridge as a nodal point has yet another occasional function
which has marked all history. That function it exercises when it is the
lowest bridge upon a great navigable river. Such a bridge--the bridge
of Rome for instance, the bridge of London, the bridge of Gloucester,
the bridge of Newcastle, etc.--has been the making of inland ports. It
must be remembered that before the advent of the railway, or at any
rate before the organization of rapid and easy road travel, it was to
the interest of sea-borne trade to penetrate into the heart of the
country as far as possible. You avoided the cost of trans-shipment,
and you had a much cheaper means of conveyance than anything that went
by land. But the first permanent bridge across a waterway blocked the
further progress up-stream of sea-borne traffic. Therefore there was a
tendency to keep this first bridge well up-stream. Further, whenever
it was made, it tended to create a glut of traffic at this point of
section. The cargoes from the sea came here and could go no further,
and this last function of the bridge is perhaps of all its historical
functions the most important. Even where a river is very rapid, as the
Tiber, the first bridge has some effect. Where it is tidal it is, of
course, as in the cases we have just quoted, of the greatest effect,
and usually on the great tidal waterways the first bridge will be
found not indeed at the limit of the tide, for there the water would
be too shallow, but in the last reaches. There are cases (Rochester is
one) where the road has proved more important than the stream, where
a bridge was imposed very low down in the tideway, but it has there
fulfilled the same function of creating a market and a town. There
are cases (Antwerp, Bordeaux, and Philadelphia are examples) where
a secure harbour and good wharfage made the inland market and town
in the absence of such an obstacle as the first bridge; but in the
greater number of navigable rivers, even in so narrow a stream as that
of Seville, the bridge makes the port and the town, as one can see by
adding to the examples already given Nantes, Montreuil, Glasgow, etc.
There is a little note on the crossing of water courses which is
curious and interesting in the history of roads. Since the crossing
is always an effort, or, in economic terms, an expense, to be avoided
as much as possible, the Road naturally avoids a _double crossing_,
but, on the other hand, an island is a stronghold, and even a peninsula
where two rivers meet is a potential stronghold. Therefore you have in
the history of all early European roads a sort of dilemma, the first
travellers debating, as it were, whether the occasion were sufficiently
important to warrant the double crossing of the stream. At Reading,
Lyons, Melun, notably at Paris, and in dozens of other places, the
presence of the stronghold made it worth while for the Road to visit
the place in spite of the double crossing, whether to an island or to
the meeting of two streams. But in much the majority of cases the Road
was deflected from its simplest line to a point below the meeting of
two streams so as to avoid the double effort, and the occasion explains
many a deflection which otherwise would seem to have no reason.
CHAPTER III PASSABILITY
_The Choice of Soils: Following the Gravel or the Chalk: Conditions
in the South and East: The Obstacle of Gradient: The Early Vogue of
Steep Gradients “The Other Side of the Hill”: The Modern Importance of
Gradient: Passes or Gaps in Hill Country._
i
To the next physical factor modifying the formula of the Road we have
given the name: DIFFERENCES OF SURFACE OTHER THAN MARSH AND WATER
COURSES. The differences of surface other than marsh or water courses
affect the trajectory of a road in several ways: first and originally
in its passability to human travel on foot or with beasts of burden, or
later with wheeled vehicles, and here the two factors were hardness and
evenness. But there was a great contrast in the obstacles of the North
and the South of our civilization. In the North, and especially in
England, damp was the enemy. For a trajectory to be used in all seasons
and in all weather sand and chalk at once suggested themselves. Clay
can be used only in the dry season. The various soils determined the
first trackway and impose themselves visibly upon the map of our oldest
roads.
For instance, the road down the upper Wey to Farnham is, in its oldest
form, a deliberate picking out of long gravelly stretches in the bed
of the valley. On a geological map you can trace this road picking its
way from gravel patch to gravel patch almost as a man crosses a stream
by stepping stones. It leaps, as it were, from one gravelly stretch to
another, and in each keeps to the gravel as long as it can. For the
same reason a primitive road will follow the South, or sunny, side of
a wood or of a ridge of land, so that the surface may dry as soon as
possible after rain.
When the use of artificial material for the surface of the track became
common this question of quality of soil was somewhat modified, but its
essential was retained; for what made bad going (in the North, and
particularly in Britain) being heavy soil, that same kind of land,
which interfered with foot or pack-horse travel, swallowed up material.
It was a less grave inconvenience than in the times before artificial
material was used, but it was still an inconvenience expressed in the
shape of expense; and nearly all the original trackways continued to
take account of this factor long after the use of artificial material
had been introduced. The earliest of all, of course, follow the dry
ridges, and in particular the chalk.
One may say, with slight exaggeration, that the chalk was the essential
factor in the building up of British communications before the Roman
civilization came. If you take a geological map of England you may see
the great chalk ridges radiating in a sort of whorl from a centre in
Salisbury Plain, and providing dry going to the Channel, the Straits of
Dover, and across the Thames valley at Streatley right on to Norfolk.
Another example of a road taking advantage of dryness of surface is the
straight line leading to Lincoln northwards, everywhere following that
peculiar isolated ridge, with low-lying ground upon the left and marsh
upon the right. Another very striking one is the Hog’s Back, where from
one low-lying point to another (Guildford to Farnham) the primitive
track deliberately rises and follows the summit of a high hill between
rather than the wetter ground upon the slopes, though here there is an
alternative upon the southern, or sunny, slope where the trackway leads
through to St. Catherine’s Chapel. This is a modern example of the way
in which a primitive track imposes itself upon posterity. To this day
your motorist climbs up that roof of a house out of Guildford and goes
down the steep on to Farnham because countless generations ago his
ancestor could only be certain upon that height of dry ground.
In the South (which does not concern this essay) the great obstacle in
the way of soil is not marsh, but sand. That is something of which we
have here no experience, but the tracks of nearly all Western Islam
are dependent upon it. Drift sand is not so impassable as marsh by
any means, but it is terrible going. North and South of Atlas the
knowledge of how this kind of soil may be avoided is half the business
of establishing a primitive road.
An interesting case of surface (but one which is rarely met with in
this country) common in dry countries where the rare rainfall is sudden
and intense, and where temporary water courses carve out the friable
soil, is the inconvenience due to what are called in some parts of the
East “nullahs”--that is, the dry beds of such water courses or the
sudden depressions made by what were formerly water courses now dried
up through a change of climate. The banks of these are often so steep
and their depth so considerable that the making of a plain, straight
trajectory across such a country would, even under modern conditions,
not be worth the labour expended. It would mean continual bridging,
or continual embankment. One of the effects of this type of surface
is the inordinate winding of all the roads, and even, alternatively,
the absence of roads perpendicular to the fall of the land, and the
establishment of communications along the line of fall rather than
across it. One can see this very conspicuously in Morocco, where there
are whole districts, a couple of days’ march across, the trails of
which are determined by this accident. A special example of the same
kind of thing is to be found in any hill range where a number of narrow
spurs project towards the plain. The Road hardly ever runs parallel to
the range across these spurs. It nearly always runs down the valleys
or along the plain at their foot, and that although there be, as there
usually are, in each valley centres of population which need to be
linked up with the neighbouring parallel valleys.
ii
GRADIENTS. The obstacle of gradient the “minimum of vertical effort”
is the most evident of all the factors which modify the trajectory
of a road; yet it is, upon the whole, the most complex. To determine
the minimum of effort you have to find a formula consisting of many
factors, some of which I have already enumerated in the opening words
of this essay. In the first place, you have to consider the _average_
nature of the travel to be served. The Road used by men on foot without
burdens, by men on foot with burdens, by pack animals, by wheeled
vehicles, etc., must conform itself, on the whole, to the _least_
gradient useful to those who travel by it, but that “on the whole”
least gradient is a factor by no means easy to determine. It depends
not only upon the nature of the instruments of travel, but upon
habit, upon vigour, and to some extent upon surface. It depends also
on the proportionate use of the Road. You cannot sacrifice ninety-nine
travellers to the special weakness of one.
There is also the question of durability. A primitive road, taking a
very steep gradient, will be more durable than one taking a lesser
gradient round the slopes of a hill and subject to falls from above
and to degradation down the slope below; it will need less upkeep, for
it is always shorter--and this last consideration explains what would
otherwise be inexplicable: the extraordinarily steep gradients which
primitive roads and even the roads of a high civilization will take.
One of the best examples of this in England is the behaviour of the
Fosse Way in the neighbourhood of Radstock in Somerset. Here the
original road was presumably a prehistoric track, but we know that it
was carefully remodelled by the high Roman civilization. It must have
been used for the great mass of travel during four hundred years from
the first occupation of the West of England by the Romans about A.D.
50 to the breakdown about 450, and right on into the Dark Ages--that
is, for not less than one thousand years. During the first half of this
time (and especially during the first third) it had to carry the travel
of a very full, well-developed, and complex society to one of the most
important centres of its wealth, the town of Bath. Yet the road goes up
the most astonishing gradients.
[Illustration: Sketch III]
Somehow or other, these gradients were normally used--but it is a
puzzle to say how. The modern road has frankly abandoned the effort,
and takes a long sweep round both sides of the valley at a gradient of
about 1 in 12. Even so, it is quite steep enough for our modern methods
of travel.
The question of gradient is complicated, again, by another variable
which makes the solution of the problem much more intricate than the
discovery of minimum effort upon a particular gradient. You have
to consider not only the uphill or downhill upon a given slope,
but the type of further uphill and downhill to which your road,
once established on that slope, is leading you. It is not enough to
determine your best formula under such and such conditions of travel
for overcoming one side of the obstacle. You have also to ask yourself
whether, having got your best uphill road, you may not have led the
traveller to an impossible position on the further side. Extreme cases
of this one often sees in the Jura range, where the hills are shaped
like waves in a storm: a steep escarpment upon the eastern side, very
difficult to go up or down, and an easy slope upon the western. Here
you have to balance the advantage of your gradient upon the one side
with the advantage of the gradient that you will find upon the other,
and, of course, to direct your line principally with a view to travel
on the more difficult steeper side. That is why you often find yourself
following in the Jura a road which goes up the easy western side by an
apparently over-steep trajectory: you wonder why the road does not take
some obviously easier line which lies below you. The reason you only
discover upon reaching the summit and seeing the precipitous escarpment
overhanging the eastern valley--your road has made for some exceptional
advantage down this cliff, some cleft, which an easier advance from
the west would not have hit. A balance has to be struck between the
advantage of gradients on both sides of the hill, save in the rare
cases where a range (such as the Vosges) is symmetrical and gives you
equal gradients upon either slope.
That balance is always a matter of careful calculation. Where it has
been brought to a fine art is, of course, in surveying for a modern
railroad, for there the slightest differences of gradient make such a
vast difference in the expense of working that the discovery of a true
minimum over an obstacle of hill country is of the first importance.
iii
There is hardly any factor in connection with the theory of the
road which needs more material modification as civilization changes
than this factor of gradient. The sharpest contrast in the whole of
history is that which I have just mentioned: that of the railroads.
Men suddenly found themselves possessed of a new instrument which
enormously multiplied their power on the flat and yet was quite
incapable of anything like the old gradients. Going level or on
very slight gradients it could give them travel far more rapid and
inexpensive than any that had been known before, but one in fifty
bothered it badly, one in thirty was wholly unnatural, and the existing
gradients of one in ten, eight, six, were out of the question. Further,
the least inclination increased all difficulties, and the addition of
inclination produced these difficulties in more than a geometrical
progression. The result was the revolution whose effects we see about
us everywhere: the tunnel, the cutting, the embankment.
To-day, a couple of generations after that revolution, there comes the
new problem of the internal-combustion engine, where the gradient again
appears in a new light.
The motor takes gradients far steeper than the rail. Its difficulties
are not increased in the same ratio. But it cannot always deal with
the horse road. Lynton and Lynmouth and their Devonshire valley form
perhaps the best example of this in Great Britain. You have here
terrible gradients which were just possible for the horse vehicle and
are hardly possible for the motor vehicle, and you have the new road
round by Watersmeet attempting partially, but not entirely, to solve
the problem.
A special case in this general category of gradients, and one much more
complex than appears at first sight, is the case of the pass, or gap.
Men have always naturally made for any notch in a line of hills to save
themselves the effort of higher climbing. It began with foot travel,
and has continued right on throughout the history of the Road. In high
mountains provided with low passes the use of a saddle in the range
was obvious and often necessary; but there were disadvantages even in
that apparently unexceptionable rule. One was the question just dealt
with of the double slope: the consideration of the other side--the most
obvious pass from the one side did not necessarily lead to the best
descent upon the other.
Another was the conformation of many ranges, which is such that the
approach to the ridge is much steeper at the _summit_ of a “col” or
pass than it is by tracks to one side.
This is a paradox which people living in easy hill-lands have
difficulty in appreciating. The Alps especially show roads which puzzle
us (who are of a gentler landscape) when we follow them: yet the
principle is simple and dependent upon the geological formation of most
_new_ mountain ranges, which present a hard core, forming their central
ridge. The softer ground wears away on either side of the valley: the
ridge remains. The effect is that a _direct_ approach to the notch in
the range would give impossible gradients in the last few hundred
yards, and therefore the road must gradually curve round by a side of
the valley.
A third exceptional case is that of trajectories where the minimum of
effort is only to be found by going _right over the very summit of
the highest hill in your neighbourhood_. Lastly, there is the curious
case of a pass where it is to the advantage of the road to _avoid_ the
lowest passage of the range and to take a line to one side above it.
As examples of these last two paradoxical points I may quote the pass
of Sallent in the Pyrenees and the exceedingly important road from the
valley of the Moselle to the valley of Belfort in the Vosges.
In the case of the pass of Sallent there was an obvious notch in the
range, which was used from the very earliest times till just the
other day. It was through this that the armies of the Moors poured in
the eighth century for their attempted conquest of Europe, when they
invaded France and nearly reached the Loire. So late as within living
memory it was the regular track from the valley of the Gallego to
that of Gabas. Now, the modern road, after careful survey, has been
constructed to cross the mountain summit somewhat to the west, and a
good three hundred feet higher than the old pass. Why was this? It was
because the notch of Sallent had a very steep approach in the last few
hundred yards upon either side, and the minimum of effort, at any rate
for wheeled vehicles of the modern type, was found in taking a lesser
gradient to one side, although it involved a much higher climb. The
case of the road from the Moselle valley to Belfort in the Vosges is
even more remarkable, for one would have said at first asking that no
such case could exist: one would have said that a minimum of effort
could never be reached by going over the _very highest summit_ in your
neighbourhood, but it is so when you deal with what I will call a
“star” mountain, as will be seen at once from the following elements.
[Illustration: Sketch IV]
Here the contours are such that had the road deflected to the west or
the east in order to avoid the highest summit, it would have been
compelled either to a very long detour (involving in any case _nearly_
as high a climb) or to a series of steep and profound ups and downs
over the spurs of the mountain. The line taken from the Moselle to
Belfort on the other side goes within a few feet of the highest point
on the hill, and is yet the line of least effort from one point to the
other. It is an excellent example of the way in which the formula of
_minimum effort_, when it is thought out, may be quite different from
what mere habit would have produced.
CHAPTER IV THE OBSTACLE OF VEGETATION
_The Special Expenditure due to Forest: Roads which Skirt Woodlands:
Roads which have been Deflected by Forest: Proximity of Material
as a Final Main Cause Modifying the Trajectory of a Road: Cost of
Transporting Material and its Effects in Ancient and Modern Times._
i
The obstacle of vegetation, which is our next cause modifying the
trajectory of a road, is two-fold. There is the obstacle presented by
forests or permanent vegetation (which includes in some climates very
high grasses) and the obstacle presented by intermittent growths. We
are not, in this country and in modern times, well acquainted with
the obstacle of vegetation to a road and with the modification of
trajectory which it imposes. We have no _large_ forests left: we have,
in common with all Northern Europe, no exuberance of growth. The dense
population and very high road mileage of modern England have put this
factor in the development of communication out of sight, and it is so
unrecognized that the mention of it here may seem superfluous. But
it is still a grave element in the calculation of a road even in the
European world, and a graver one in the new countries. And it has
had its part in framing our own system in its earlier stages. In damp
tropical countries it is all important, and even in temperate climates
where large forests exist it has its place.
(a) _Forest._ Two special expenditures attach to this obstacle: First
the effort of clearing a way, second the effort of maintenance, and
particularly through the effect of wood upon surface. The effort of
clearing, always an expense, made the forest in very early times an
insuperable obstacle to any great or considerable road. The forest had
tracks, but the main road was compelled to skirt the denser woodland,
or at the least to take a tortuous trajectory for the advantage of
natural clearings. With the development of civilization that difficulty
disappeared, and it disappeared early, although I can call to mind
no broad primitive track through any dense woodland. The Roman roads
hewed their way through forests where it was necessary, and found in
the value of the timber felled an economic compensation for the effort
made. But even with them, and even with modern roads, it remains true
that the forest governs and modifies road construction. There is case
after case where a Roman road, and even a modern road, will skirt a
forest rather than be at the effort of overcoming the obstacle: for
instance, the case of the forest of Mormal in Northern France. Here
the main Roman road from the centre of Northern Gaul to the crossings
of the Rhine cuts along the edge of the great wood like a knife, with
no growth on its western side. Further, cause and effect reacting on
one another, the lack of roads preventing clearing, and the lack of
clearing keeping down habitation and so ways, there is no great forest
possessing a system of roads anywhere in Europe. All considerable
stretches of woodland, where agriculture or other economic effort has
not cleared them, have a minimum of roadway.
In our northern climate, the larger stuff once felled, upkeep is not a
grave economic matter. The use of artificial material, which comes in
at the very first stages of road-making, renders the problem here even
less important. But in other climates, and particularly in the tropics,
it becomes the dominating factor. There are whole districts--as,
for instance, on the Amazon basin, or, again, in Central and West
Africa--where the problem of communication consists not in the cutting
of the original track, expensive as that is, but in its maintenance;
and in the greater part of those districts even modern civilization,
with its immense material advantages, and with its strong economic
inducement to the transport of tropical material, has been unable or
unwilling to make and maintain forest roads, at any rate for ordinary
wheeled traffic.
With the railways it is otherwise. The economic effort required for the
construction of the track is such that the added expense of clearing
the forest is a much smaller fraction of the whole, and the type of bed
which has to be established for the track partially solves (but only
partially) the question of upkeep. Even the railway can be overcome by
the vigour of tropical vegetation, but it has a better economic basis
in the densely wooded country than has the Road.
One of the most curious facts in the history of roads due to the
obstacle of wood is the deflection of the Roman Road through this
cause after the decline of civilization. One can find many instances
of this even in England, light as is the afforesting of this country,
and small as are the districts affected. Thus the Great North Road
making for Stamford is a broad, unmistakable way raised high above
the neighbouring country, and looking like some great double rampart,
from the crossing of the Welland for miles to the north and west. It
approaches a small patch of wood on a hill and disappears. It remains
lost for a mile after its destruction by the wood, and is not found
again in anything like its earlier sharpness of outline till Stamford
is reached. That is because the upkeep through the wood became too
difficult in the Dark Ages, and men turned the obstacle by developing
a new road round it. Another very clear example is to be found on the
Stane Street north of Eartham, where the great _Nore Wood_ through
which the Roman road was driven usurped it in later times, overgrew
it, and deflected the modern road round by Duncton Hill. We have here
probably not so much a case of keeping down the new growth as of the
wetness of the track when artificial material ceased to be used, and of
the difficult going thus made between the trees. The occasional fall
of trees across the road left unremoved, and the danger in such times
from any close cover must not be neglected. But, whatever the cause,
woodland perpetually deflects a Roman road after the breakdown of the
old civilization. It deflects it almost as often as does the marsh of a
river valley.
(b) The obstacle to the making of a road due to intermittent
vegetation is one which plays no part in our system, and is unknown
to our climatic conditions. Nor is it of any great effect save in a
few special highly characterized regions of the world. The track,
once established, can commonly keep down even the riot of spring
vegetation in open land. Such exceptions as there are, due to the
exceptional development of grasses, affect no part of the world where
communications need high development. The factor exists, but needs no
more than a mention.
ii
The last main cause modifying the trajectory of a road is the relative
proximity of material for its construction, using the word “proximity”
in the wider sense to include all economic effort: what to-day we call
the “cheapness” of the material.
Even in the very simplest and most primitive form of roadwork
material enters. There is always the necessity of hardening some bit
of soft ground or of smoothing some bit of unevenness, and from the
beginning of travel you have had the transportation of material to the
established road for the improvement of its surface, for the bridging
of its water obstacles or flooring of fords, for the making of its
causeways over marshes.
In what may be called the middle period of road construction--that is,
in periods of high civilisation, but civilisation not provided with
modern instruments--the immediate neighbourhood of material introduced
a considerable modifying factor into the trajectory of a road. This
was often masked, from the fact that the same soil which provided good
going and therefore developed early tracks usually also provided, in
the nature of things, good material for hardening the surface, for
the building of causeways, and even for the throwing of bridges. It
was also masked by the fact that the bridge, if it were to be built
of wood, could get its material from a considerable distance, as the
river was its avenue of supply. But though transport of material has
gone through a revolution in the last hundred years, and material for
road-making is now brought half across the world (_e.g._ Colonial wood
pavement), yet the way neighbourhood of material tells can still be
seen everywhere upon the road map of Europe. Thus the absence of main
roads in the Fens for centuries was not only due to the necessity of
continual artificial work, embankments, and bridges (this would not
have deterred the Roman road-makers nor the great effort of the early
Middle Ages from attempting a full network of roads). It was rather
due to the absence of hard material. And you have the same phenomenon
in the Landes of South-western France, where to this day only one
great road serves an immense district whose loose and sandy soil fails
to provide a cheap and sufficient material. The traveller in Holland
notices the same thing: here are roads ultimately depending upon brick
paving and narrow, where, had there been abundant material available,
they would have been broad, for they had to carry a great deal of
traffic. The alternative water traffic by their side was largely
developed by the difficulty of making the road.
The Romans fought this difficulty with singular tenacity. They made
all their great public constructions to last, as it were, for ever;
and they made their roads with such a strong political and military
object that they would not be deterred save, as in the Fenlands, by
the gravest difficulties in the obtaining of material. Thus in such of
their roads as start anywhere near a sea-beach of shingle you will find
them using that material up-country for miles, and they will make deep
foundations for roads that have to cross clay, using, sometimes, hard
stone brought over a couple of hundreds of miles of sea and some thirty
of land travel. It is a difficulty which has not disappeared to-day.
It has been very greatly lessened by modern means of transport, but it
still appears. We see it throughout modern Europe: for instance, in the
varying surfaces of the different soils. The ideal surface of broken
granite is not nearly universal even in England, as one would think
modern transport would have made it long ago, over such a small area
with such masses of granite close at hand and accessible by sea. The
relative cost of transport still makes diversity of surface the rule.
One can make a sort of economic barometer based on the use of granite.
It extends farther and farther from the sources of supply as public
wealth expands, and recedes towards them as public wealth diminishes.
We have a first-class example of this in the case of flint versus
granite. Flint has its advantages over all other material in hardening
a roadway. It is at once hard and easily broken: it is superficial, and
therefore cheap: it is abundant in supply in the districts where it is
used. On the other hand, it has the gravest possible disadvantage for
modern motor traffic, which is its effect upon the tyres indispensable
to that traffic. One could draw a graph, I think, to cover the last
ten years showing the fluctuations of this material and granite upon
the main roads of Southern England, and the curve would follow the
opportunities of supply and of public expenditure as affected by the
Great War.
CHAPTER V POLITICAL INFLUENCES
_The Factor of Cost Resulting in the “Strangling of Communication”:
Congestion which Leads to Decay: A Great Modern Problem: The Compulsory
Acquisition of Land: Old Roads Serving New Objects._
i
So far we have been considering the material conditions of the Road:
the physical circumstances which determine its trajectory. But these
alone do not completely account for its trace in practice or theory.
There is another category affecting this, the political or moral
category: the various effects of society in modifying what, but for
them, would be the formula of least effort. These political causes of
modification are of less effect than the physical, but they merit a
brief mention.
The political factors modifying the trajectory of a road (that is,
the factors due to man’s social action and not to material causes
alone) are three in number. Firstly, the factor of cost--which is, the
economic tendency to avoid as far as possible the destruction of old
economic values in the making of a road; secondly, legal restraints
against the Road’s following its line of least resistance; and thirdly,
the presence of a variety of objects to be served, which variety again
interferes with the simple rule of finding the trajectory of minimum
effort.
The first of these political factors, the factor of cost, you find
even in the primitive road, which avoids the cultivable land if it
can, or crosses it at the narrowest point available, and you find
it at the other end of the scale in our complicated modern world,
where the Road tends to avoid the destruction of economic values
in highly concentrated town life and thus keeps narrow when it is
established, and also fails to develop new communications. The effect
of this political restraint is constant throughout history, great in
all periods, but increasing cumulatively with the increase of wealth
and the economic development of society. There follows from this a
most interesting historical phenomenon, which I shall deal with at
greater length in my second section--“The English Road”--because it
would appear to be upon the point of recurring in this island. That
phenomenon is the “strangling of communications” in the old age of
a wealthy state from the very effect of its wealth. It is a paradox
of profound effect which you get over and over again in the history
of great mercantile cities: their wealth--which should be their best
advantage in developing and changing communication--crystallizes them.
Their ways are laid out for a particular phase of traffic. The land
on either side of the streets becomes enormously valuable. The traffic
changes in character. New ways are demanded by the new conditions, but
they are not built because the compensation required for disturbance
terrifies the reformer. There follows a phase during which you have
heavy congestion of traffic, and then, unless reform comes in time, a
succeeding phase of decay.
It is very rare in the history of great urban centres to find the
problem tackled at the right moment and solved: to find governors
of sufficient daring to take the economic plunge. The Government of
Napoleon III did so to some extent in the case of modern Paris (though
it left a great number of congested streets unrelieved), and there are
not a few modern Italian towns where similar action has had its effect:
for instance, Bari. But the general rule in history is that a city
having reached its highest point of wealth becomes congested, refuses
to accept its only remedy, and passes on from congestion to decay.
How strong the influence is you may observe in one particular
historical example where its influence is more clearly discovered than
in any other--that is, the example of the City of London after the
Great Fire of 1666.
Here was the finest opportunity for rebuilding that ever a Government
had. It might have done what was done at Turin and laid out a new city
altogether. Two men of genius, Sir William Temple and Sir Christopher
Wren, produced magnificent plans with broad ways, round places for the
crossings, and a carefully thought-out scheme of transverse streets.
Vested interest and economic peril proved too strong for them. The city
was rebuilt on its old lines with narrow lanes and alleys, courts,
tortuous trace, the mark of all which it carries to-day.
There is a good side to this, of course. No one can regret the
conservation of tradition. Everyone who knew the old Paris mourned for
the antiquity which was swept away under Napoleon III, and even in our
slight changes in modern London we are shocked at the desecration they
involve. I confess that I myself have never got over the loss of Temple
Bar, though I only knew it as a child. If this were the main motive
at work one would criticize less strongly the hesitation to make our
town streets meet the modern great change. But it is _not_ the main
motive. The main motive is a blunder in the science of economics. It is
the idea that the destruction of a number of imaginary economic values
(“imaginary” because they form no part of the total real wealth of the
State), to wit, the urban site values, is in some way an expenditure of
real wealth. So far is this from being the case that there is perhaps
no example in all history of a congested street-system being reformed
without the wealth of the city increasing after the change.
Of the minor political questions which confront us to-day in England
this stands in the first rank. If we do not reform our main roads we
shall handicap ourselves against our competitors, but if we do not
broaden and change our town streets we may rapidly strangle and atrophy
our most vital centres of commerce.
ii
The effect of the second point, legal restraint in modifying the line
of least resistance, will be found under two forms: the first is
negative; the lack of public powers of coercion for the acquirement
of land by which a road should pass. The second is positive; legal
restraint against the road through ownership or privilege.
This political factor in the modification of roads, the negative and
positive effect of legal restraint, works in an opposite fashion
to that we have just examined. The older, the wealthier, the more
complex a civilization the _less_ this modifying factor is present.
Thus in England for many centuries we had no compulsory power in the
hands of public authority for the making of a new road. Such powers
are, as we shall see when we come to the story of the English Road,
a comparatively modern development. On this account the Road was,
until modern legislation brought in a new system, compelled to follow
existing established ways. It could not even be broadened, let alone a
new trajectory enforced; and the only compulsory powers in the hands of
the authorities were those permitting the levying of labour, and later
of money, for repair.
The same is true of the second form of legal restraint, though in
lesser degree. Privilege (such as the deflection of an old line of road
by Act of Parliament in order, for instance, to add to the privacy of a
park--there were not a few examples of this some generations ago) and
the positive legal restraint imposed by existing right of ownership
obviously decay _pari passu_ with the development of public powers for
driving new roads or broadening existing ones.
The third political factor modifying the trajectory of roads is that
of a variety of objects imposed upon communications by varied social
uses. As society grows more complex and at the same time wealthier, as
new centres of population arise, new forms of travel and new needs to
be satisfied by travel, the simple formula of the line of least effort
from one point to another suffers increasing modification. You have
to consider not only the line of least effort between two terminals,
but the due weight to be given to intervening points which do not lie
precisely upon that line. As a rule, of course, these new centres
exercise their pressure or attraction automatically, and you get a
deflection arising not from plan but from gradual necessity. The same
thing happens with new needs (as, commerce replacing arms), but it is
curious to note how slowly the modification takes place.
We have a good example of this along the south-eastern coast
of England. Our ancestors felt no attraction for living in the
neighbourhood of the sea. To use the shore as a recreation and the sea
air as a remedy is quite a modern idea. The result is that all the
old roads connected with the sea as a terminal ran perpendicularly to
the coast, uniting a port to the inland country. There is not a main
road in England over one hundred years old and leading from the sea
which does not start from a port. For good communication connecting up
a line of ports laterally there was little need. The result is that
to this day, when the south coast has become one long line of great
watering-places, many of which are fully developed modern towns on a
very large scale, there is still no complete lateral communication.
Many of the port bridges, as I point out elsewhere in this essay,
are but recently established, many sections of the line are served
by imperfect, ill-kept pieces of road; in one or two places it fails
altogether (as round Selsey), while in others it is built up (as at
Romney Marsh) of patchwork--old lanes running criss-cross to each other
haphazard to make the modern line.
CHAPTER VI THE REACTION OF THE ROAD
_The Physical Effects of Roads: The Way in which the Road Compels
Communication to follow it: The Formation of Urban Centres and the
Urban Habit: The Spread of Ideas by Means of Roads: History Deflected
by the Deflection of the Road: The Example of Shrewsbury and Chester:
Towns which are Maintained by Roads: The Road in Military History:
Results of the Decay of Roads: The Road as a Boundary._
i
So far we have considered the origin and development of the Road: that
is, the effect of its environment upon the Road. We must turn, in
conclusion, to the converse aspect, which may be called “The Reaction
of the Road”--that is, the effect of the Road upon its environment.
A road once formed immediately begins to affect in some degree the
physical circumstances surrounding it, and in a very much greater
degree the human relations which it subserves.
The physical effects of the Road are few and may be briefly mentioned.
They are all connected with the action of water, save for very rare
instances where a particular cutting has precipitated a landslide and
one or two other exceptions of the sort. The effect of the made road
upon physical circumstances is, in fact, dependent upon the conflict
with precipitation in which it is engaged.
It is a general rule in all man’s economic activity that the human
effort is at odds with the general tendency of nature. Nature
perpetually tends to reassert herself, and to undo what man has done in
her despite. The Road is no exception to this rule, and the particular
way in which it works you can see by examining typical cases. One of
these we shall come across more particularly later on when we discuss
the Roman roads of Britain, but it may be worth while to give its
general character here.
The Road, finding a small stream, crosses it by a culvert: the Road,
finding a ravine with too sharp a gradient on either side, traverses
it by an embankment; and then, even if there is no stream at the
bottom of the ravine, it leaves a culvert or other drain for the water
accumulated after rainfall to soak through. Now, when human effort
slackens and the upkeep of a road is no longer sufficient the culvert
gets blocked and the Road begins to act as a dam. The lake so formed
will in time destroy the obstacle, but before this the Road will change
the countryside by the creation of such a lake succeeded by permanent
marsh. To-day the phenomenon passes unnoticed because we are still
living in a high civilization. But it has affected history strongly
in the past. Whenever civilization breaks down you begin to get a
series of marshes, with all their accompaniments of fever and the rest
growing up along the roads. The greatest examples of the growth of
marsh during the Dark Ages were found in Italy, but there are countless
examples of the same thing all over the north and west of the Roman
Empire, and this spreading of marsh (due also to other causes, such as
the abandonment of drains in the fens and the breakdown of locks and
sluices on river ways) is largely caused by the special action of the
Road.
The same thing on a lesser scale is to be seen where a bridge falls
out of repair. The ruins will often half-block the current and make an
overflow on either side, where, if the land is flat, a wide belt of
marsh spreads and the approaches are ruined; so that what was a point
of special opportunity for, becomes a point of special obstacle to,
communication.
ii
On the political side--that is, in relation to its human service--the
reactions of the Road are exceedingly important, and they are not
always as clearly noticed as they might be. There is a whole group
of historical social phenomena which could be connected under the
one heading of the “attraction” of the Road, meaning by the word
“attraction” the way in which the Road compels communication to follow
it once it is established. This attraction produces a quantity of
effects countering or crossing general economic tendencies, and it acts
in countless ways.
One interesting aspect of this is the draining of population down on to
the Road. When a map is drawn up showing the density of population we
see upon it separate areas of density, sometimes far apart, and between
them areas marked by lesser density or even void. But if one should
make an accurate population map of any one moment, plotting down every
individual upon it, you would not get this effect of isolated dense
districts; you would not get the effect of an archipelago, but of a
network; for upon the communications between these districts would be
marked a dense chain of units in progress from the one to the other:
and one would at once grasp how permanent lesser nuclei arise between
the two terminal towns. This aspect of the Road suggests a far more
important one. The Road--in the sense of a means of communication--in
proportion to its excellence differentiates human society
(_a_) Into areas of density and void;
(_b_) Into the urban political habit and the agricultural political
habit.
This is a very important reaction of the Road, which must be allowed
for in every historical and contemporary problem.
Granted an urban centre, with its special opportunities for
inter-communication between human beings, for experiment and for what
may be called “the cross-fertilization of knowledge,” the growth of
such a centre is, of course, dependent upon many things: its economic
basis, either as a market or as the capital of a productive area, or,
more commonly, as both; the physical surroundings which may, as in the
case of Genoa or Venice for instance, strictly limit that growth, etc.
But among the causes affecting it, and chief among them, is the Road:
the degree of excellence in communication.
The growth of a town is a direct function of this, the most conspicuous
example, of course, in the whole of history being the immense growth of
London following on the supplementing of the old roads by the railway.
In direct connection with this you have a mass of subsidiary effects,
all of the highest importance to the State. The Road having caused the
growth of the city, after a certain point a high differentiation arises
between urban and rural life. The differentiation may become so great
that you arrive at a clash of fundamental interests in which one of the
two is defeated. You certainly have had that in modern England during
the last two generations. The towns became so much the more important
part of English life that the agricultural life was entirely sacrificed
to them--and the Road was the ultimate cause. Again, you get the
curious development of what may be called “reserve” towns: towns like
Brighton and Blackpool, which are the playgrounds of the greater cities
at a distance; the large urban centre breeds, as it were, a lesser
one after its own pattern. You have got in modern times that further
curious reaction due to growing excellence of communications--that is,
due to the growth of the Road--the _pulse_ of the great modern city.
Crowds of human beings pour out of Victoria or Liverpool Street into
London and pour back from London in the evening. The station of St.
Lazare in Paris is, in Europe, the most striking visual evidence of
this strange modern development, great floods of human beings cascading
into the city at the opening day and ebbing back at its close.
At bottom, like so many other human arrangements, this “pulse” is a
negation of its own principles--a sub-conscious effect which a fully
thought-out plan could have avoided. There is no true economic basis
for it, or, at any rate, not for the most of it.
There will always be advantages, of course, in the central point, and
always some tendency in men to seek that central point in order to
enjoy those advantages. Ten men may desire to seek daily the central
point which has only habitation-room for one, and that will lead to
the “pulse” of which I speak. But the necessity for seeking it daily
is already very largely an artificial necessity and is becoming more
and more artificial every day. The same work can be done perfectly well
at a distance as is now done in centres, and in a roundabout way that
truth is impressing itself through an economic effect. The rents become
so high in the crowded centre that whole groups of activities which do
not really need a central position tend to disperse themselves to the
outer boundaries. The printing trade, in those branches which are not
hurried (the printing of books, for instance), is a good example of
this.
When men debate the probable future of our great cities they often
omit one very likely development, which is the creation of a number
of suburban centres which, if the material side of our civilization
declines, will become independent towns and the probable decay of the
central nucleus out of which they all grow. It is a speculation worth
examining.
iii
The reaction of the Road upon society, its political reaction, has
many other departments. For instance, in the communication of ideas
the trace of a road will give you the advance of some religious
development otherwise inexplicable. I have pointed out through more
than one historical allusion in other work how the spread of the
Christian religion may be directly followed along the trace of the
chief Roman roads, and especially of the great trunk road of the
Empire running from Egypt to the Wall in Northumberland. You have only
to make a list of names standing on that trunk road to show that it
corresponds to a list of dates and names in the story of the conversion
of Europe--Alexandria, Jerusalem, Damascus, Antioch, Tarsus, Ephesus,
Athens, Brindisi, Naples, Rome, Lyons, Autun, Canterbury, London, St.
Albans.
Again, a road which for some reason has become established along an
artificial line, a line not directly dictated by the formula of minimum
effort, will “canalize” traffic, so that, even when an alternative
and better way has been provided, institutions and towns and all that
goes for human activity will have taken root along the old way and all
history will be deflected by the deflection of the Road.
We have a very interesting example of this here in England in the case
of the great road to the north-west. In the earliest times Chester
was the one terminal and London the other. Chester was the port for
Ireland, and, because it was much easier going along the coast than
over the mountains, Chester was also the base point of departure for
the penetration of North Wales. Chester was also the great garrison
whence troops could be detached for the Lancashire plain and for the
western end of the Wall. Nevertheless, Chester, though it maintained
for centuries its inevitable importance, had a rival in the Roman town
of Uriconium, under the Wrekin: one of the very few Roman towns which
have disappeared--though it has its modern counterpart in Shrewsbury.
The campaigns against the Welsh were based for hundreds of years as
much on this middle section of Shrewsbury as on the northern one of
Chester. Finally, when modern engineering made possible a direct
trajectory through the mountains, this middle Shrewsbury section
fixed the Holyhead road, which would otherwise have gone round by
Chester. The main railway system to the north-west, as we know, has
been compelled to follow the coast, and but for the deflection of the
ancient road round by Shrewsbury that road would have done exactly what
the modern railway does.
Now, why was there this strange bend westward and southward towards
Shrewsbury in the road making ultimately for Chester? It was because,
when the Roman Empire was at the height of its material power, when
things were working best and public works were most energetically
created and maintained, _the Romans had not fully conquered the North_.
Therefore their chief trouble with the Welsh mountaineers during that
earlier moment was with those of the Central mountains rather than of
the North. They had, it is true, established their garrison in Chester.
But in making their first great trunk road they had been compelled to
choose a more southern terminal, hence what is still called the Watling
Street curls round by Penkridge (a Roman name descended from the Roman
place-name of the Itinerary) and then makes westward. Later, when the
conquest was more complete, a branch was thrown out from Shrewsbury
northward to Chester. Long after a short cut was driven from Penkridge
to Chester direct. We have grounds for belief that this last road was
of later and inferior work, because, though the traces of it survive,
the main work has almost wholly disappeared.
It stands to reason that the original trackway before the Romans came
would have run pretty directly from London to Chester without going
round by the Shrewsbury district; and, indeed, the course to which all
the first part of the Watling Street points is evidence of that. When
the Roman military engineers began their thorough rebuilding of the
roads (in the most permanent fashion in the world) they were at first
confined to the southern plain, in which alone they felt secure, and
hence was that deflection round westward towards Shrewsbury created
which has affected the whole of English history.
You may next observe the Road producing the economic effect of
maintaining towns, and especially ports. A road being driven from an
existing port to some inland terminus and the port later becoming less
and less useful, either through the building of ships too deep for it
or silting up or what not, the mere existence of the Road tends to
make men cling to the port in spite of its disadvantages. They will,
as a rule, from the effect of custom and of vested interest, from the
attraction of the points already established on the Road, expend in the
maintenance of the port more energy than would have been required to
build an alternative road to some new and better port. The effect of
this is very marked in Northern France. Boulogne was not only the great
Roman port of the channel because it stood in the Narrows; it was also
of such importance because it was in antiquity a very broad, secure,
land-locked estuary, stretching over what is now all dry land up above
the town three miles towards Pont-de-Briques. Centuries ago the harbour
silted up, and if it had been left alone it would be hardly serviceable
at all. But every effort has been made to maintain that point. Boulogne
harbour has been steadily maintained artificially for centuries
because the road led to it and needed it, and the alternative use of
the far superior estuary of the Seine, with the corresponding growth of
Havre, only came quite late in history.
The Road has the same canalizing effect where it overcomes an obstacle
such as a broad river, or a mountain chain, or a belt of dense
woodland. For instance, the fertile lowland fringe of South Wales
and the corresponding fertile land to the east of the Severn were
connected, when primitive methods alone could be used, by the bridge
at Gloucester, high up the river. The lower reaches were too much for
the earlier engineers, especially in the face of such a tide as runs
on them. As a result the whole of that line of communications remained
for 2000 years highly deflected, and only quite recently has there been
some attempt at the more natural line by the piercing of the Severn
tunnel.
This effect of the Road in canalizing human effort is specially marked
in the case of armies. The saying “an army is tied to the road” is a
truth which historians should always keep in mind. There have been
great cavalry raids in history--not often of permanent effect--which
marched on a broad front, almost free of roads, and dependent only upon
a sufficiency of forage. They have come from the grazing grounds of
Asia, as a rule, and swept over the plains of Eastern Europe; but the
organized and disciplined forces which have moulded history have always
of necessity followed the Road. An army is not an island. It is an
organism connected by a stalk with its base and dependent on this stalk
for its feeding and equipment, its passing back of its prisoners and
its wounded, and all its life. All these depend upon the Road. There
are even cases in history--more numerous than one might imagine--where
the first creation of the Road has been due to military action _alone_.
I believe that the United States show examples of this, especially
along the border between the northern and southern states east of the
Mississippi. Certainly Europe shows them in striking fashion: it was a
military necessity which made the great roads linking up the stations
on the Rhine with the towns of Gaul and the rest of the Empire; it
was a military necessity which made the regular roads over the Alpine
passes. You can hardly say that there was a _commercial_ necessity for
the great trunk road which struck the Rhine at Cologne, and which there
later created the first bridge across the river. The country beyond was
barbarous, and though a large number of Roman merchants penetrated it
and a corresponding amount of trade was done, the main necessity for
Cologne was a military necessity. Military necessity which drove the
great road from the heart of Northern France to this isolated point
and so opened up the wild wooded region in between.
iv
The negative effect of the Road, the effect of its breakdown,
especially at the bridges and in the causeways over marshy land, is
equally indisputable in human relations. We have the typical case of
Sussex remaining heathen for one hundred years after the conversion of
its neighbours, because the main road from the north with its causeway
everywhere crossing the clay and piercing the scrub of the weald fell
into decay, and because the bridge at Alfoldean broke down. It is most
significant that the great battle of Ockley was fought north of this
break in communications. The Danes, marching from London against the
English army, could get down as far south as this, and the English army
coming up from Hampshire could intercept them as far south as this,
but all the Danish attack on Sussex, such as it was (and it was very
slight), came from the sea.
Another very conspicuous example of the breakdown of the Road and
of the political effect thereof is the chaos you get in the Balkan
peninsula after the decay of the great Roman trunk roads. If the Greek
Church is to-day separate from the Latin Church to the west it is due
not only to the obstacle of the Pinsk Marshes in the north, but to
the gradual decline in the south of the main artery between Durazzo
and Constantinople. For centuries old and new Rome communicated by the
great trunk road down to Brundusium and then across the narrow sea to
Dyracchium and Byzantium. When that traffic began to be interrupted the
contrast between the east and the west was founded and increased.
A last minor effect of the Road upon human society is the use of the
Road as a _boundary_. That is a use, of course, which hardly ever
develops in a high civilization. On the contrary, a road of its nature
should run _transverse_ to boundaries. It is built to unite towns the
territories of which have boundaries naturally perpendicular to the
Road. The road from Canterbury to London, for instance (the first great
main road in this island), is transverse to the Darent frontier, and
all the great roads from the French-speaking to the German-speaking
country on this side of the Rhine are transverse to the language
boundary. It is in the very function of a road to be thus transverse
to political limits. But with the decay of civilization the remains
of a great, well-built road lend themselves at once to the idea of a
boundary. Men need something to which they can perpetually refer which
will be a permanent mark and which will be indisputable. A river is
thus often so chosen; sometimes, but much more rarely, a range of
hills, especially where the crest is particularly steep and marked. But
the Road, when the use of documents declines and when record is with
difficulty maintained--the Road, especially if it has been built to
endure, comes in to fulfil this artificial function. Here in England we
have more examples of this than in any other part of Europe. Very often
you can recover a Roman road first by noting on the map the parish
boundaries running on straight lines, which are the prolongation one
of the other, and the survival of a Roman road used in the Dark Ages
to define a parochial limit. The Road is thus also used as a boundary
not only for parishes but for states, not only for states but for
realms. The Roman road to the north-west of London was part of the
great boundary established between Wessex and the Danish territories
of the north and east. One could quote hundreds of cases with a
little research, but best of all perhaps is that of the boundary of
Westminster, which dates from the heart of the Dark Ages. The northern
limit of the manor was fixed by the great Roman military road which to
this day survives and is the boundary of Hyde Park on the north.
* * * * *
THE ROAD
§ II THE ENGLISH ROAD
CHAPTER VII THE ROAD IN HISTORY
_Through the Dim Ages: The Characteristics of the English Road: Absence
of Plan: A Local instead of a National System Leading to the Present
Crisis._
i
The general theory of the Road having been discussed, we may next turn
to the particular case of THE ENGLISH ROAD, my second and concluding
section. The English Road has, as we shall see, highly-marked
characteristics of its own which are of immediate concern to us at this
revolutionary moment in the economic history of the State.
The fortunes of the English Road followed, of course, the story of
all the other main English institutions in their outline. Just as
you had the pre-Roman barbaric period, then the Roman period, then
the Dark Ages in the general history of the State, so you had the
British trackway, the Roman Road, and the continued use during the
continued decline of the latter as material civilization fell away
after the fifth century. The spring of the Middle Ages gave you the
renaissance of the Road. The Black Death, which is the watershed of
the Middle Ages, breaks the history of the Road just as it breaks the
history of the language. French dies out: all England is speaking
English in the generation after the Black Death, and there is a great
change throughout society. That change is marked on the roads by a
considerable decline in travel, coupled with the use of better means
of transport--a paradox to which our times are not accustomed. But you
get a good deal of that in the Middle Ages. You have, for instance, a
decline of wealth in the monasteries, and yet more detailed building
in the monasteries; a bad decline in manuscript writing, both with
regard to accuracy and legibility, and yet an increase in the amount
written. So far as we can judge from our very imperfect evidence, after
the Black Death (the middle of the fourteenth century) the volume of
traffic upon the roads of England tends to get less, and perhaps the
surface also deteriorates, though that is more doubtful.
The Reformation, and especially the dissolution of the monasteries,
is the next great date. The violent revolution imposed A.D. 1536-40
on every department of the national life affects the roads as it
affects all else. In general, the Reformation, especially through the
dissolution of the monasteries, had the following economic effects upon
England:
(1) Customary economic action tended to be replaced, after the
change, by competitive economic action;
(2) Corporate action tended to be replaced by individual action;
(3) The principal land-owning class--the squires--became much
wealthier than they had been in proportion to the rest of the
community.
The accommodation of these three main economic facts had the general
result of substituting more and more statutory duties in local affairs
for customary duties, and it affected the roads thus: where the local
community had, in a customary fashion, kept up the local road as part
of the old social habit the new lay owner refused. He was averse to the
outlay, the Crown had less control over him, and as he was running the
whole thing on an idea of profit and loss every outlay was cut by him
as much as possible.
There was at the same time a revolution in agriculture, a falling off
of population, the throwing together of small holdings, the growth of
grazing, and the decline of tillage.
You consequently get, through the common action of all these
influences combined, in the middle of the Reformation period the
first interference of the central Government by direct statute in
the making and conservation of the English road system. This famous
piece of legislation (2 and 3 Philip and Mary, Cap. VIII) is familiar
to all who deal with the law and history of the highway. It governed
the constitution and maintenance of English roads right down to the
great modern change in the same which falls under the general term
“turnpike.” These are the main stages in the story of the Road in this
island up to the present moment, when, apparently, another stage has
opened.
We have for these seven chapters very different information: on the
first nothing but conjecture, on the second a considerable body of
evidence, on the third again conjecture, and on the fourth conjecture,
though conjecture filled in from the indirect evidence of historical
event. For the second mediaeval period we have even less evidence than
for the first. Our knowledge begins to grow after the increase of
wheeled traffic, and with the early eighteenth century becomes for the
first time full and detailed.
ii
We will now follow this development.
The English Road has a character of its own which clearly
differentiates it from the other road systems of Western Europe. So
sharp is the distinction that, since modern travel recovered the use of
the road through petrol traffic, the new type of road he discovers is,
after the language, the most striking novelty affecting the foreigner
on his arrival.
[Illustration: _Part II_, Sketch I, _District of_ TYPICAL ENGLISH ROAD
SYSTEM. _Widths exaggerated._
_Lower part of Sketch I (Part II)_, _District of_ TYPICAL
FRENCH ROAD SYSTEM. _Widths exaggerated. Same scale as above_]
Abroad, the French model--recovered from the Roman tradition,
remodelled in the late seventeenth century, and vastly developed in
the nineteenth--has impressed itself everywhere: the Road is there
built up on a framework of very broad, straight main ways, carefully
graded, proceeding everywhere upon one plan. These are connected by
a subsidiary net of country ways less direct and less broad, but all
carefully planned and graded, and these in turn by local lanes of all
surfaces and gradients and gauges, dependent upon parish rates and
betraying by their irregularity their independence of the national
system.
[Illustration: TYPICAL ENGLISH LANE]
Here the scheme is contradicted at every point. A long stretch dead
straight is very rare: when it is found it is due to some accident of
local choice. The surface differs not as between the main road and
local road, but indiscriminately: a small parish way will often have
a better surface than the main road it joins. The gauge is haphazard:
the main road between the capital and some great port will go through
the most surprising changes in breadth, here appearing as the narrow
high street of a suburb, and there, a few miles on, spreading to 50
feet upon an open heath, then again turning abruptly round the sharp
right-angle corners and between the irregular frontages of a village.
The English roads are far more numerous, the mileage of good road
surface to the hundred square miles far greater, than abroad. Yet
not one of them is planned throughout. They all twist, the lesser
ones winding perpetually and usually without any reason of their
own, compelled to such anomalies by the custom of older paths, by
enclosures, by encroachments. For the most part these roads, from
the most important to the least, are “blind,” that is, bounded by
obstacles which mask the approach of corners and conceal the country
on either side: a very pronounced national characteristic, due mainly
to the use of hedges upon the more fertile land. The grading is
never continuous--the main roads in which this feature has been most
thoroughly looked to yet have astonishing exceptions of 1 in 9, 1 in 8.
The bridges are of varying strength, half of them bearing warnings that
they are dangerous to heavy vehicles.
When we seek the origin of this strange mixture of serviceable and
unserviceable in the English road system we discover it in the
political history of the country. The English hedged roads yield their
more pleasing landscape, they have more length to the square mile than
those abroad, they are haphazard in gauge and gradient (only half
planned), they have such excellent surface (and that independently of
their importance), such a strange assortment of bridges, such abrupt
and blind corners--all because the Road, like every other institution,
is a function of society, and because English society proceeded on
special political lines of its own after the Reformation.
Like the road systems of every other country, that of England arose
from the great Roman military ways. It went through exactly the same
phases of decline as those of the neighbouring Continent, it had the
same new development in the Middle Ages, it ran through open fields
mainly. A man put down on an English road of Henry VIII or Elizabeth’s
day would have marked no great distinction between its character and
those of a Flanders or a Breton or a Provençal road, or the roads of
the Rhine.
But with the seventeenth century the profound change which had worked
for a hundred years throughout all English life appeared in the Road.
The monarchy fell. A national road system became impossible. The local
landlords took command of society. The _local_ road was the only basis
for development. Commons were enclosed, co-operative village farming
gradually disappeared, the hedges everywhere increased in number,
cutting up the old open fields. Any extension of communication could
only come through the linking up of tortuous village ways.
Then came the industrial revolution, the exploitation of better surface
through the turnpike, the epoch of Telford and Macadam. Lastly, the
huge increase of the great towns in the middle and later nineteenth
century, the coming of the internal combustion engine, and the present
crisis. For we have come to a crisis to-day in the history of the
English Road. It must be changed--or supplemented--under peril of
such congestion as will strangle travel and interchange: that is the
interest of the subject to-day.
I propose, therefore, in what follows to consider, first, how this
particular character in the English Road developed: what were the
agencies which gradually made it so different from the road of the
neighbouring Continent: next, to sketch very briefly and only in its
bare outline the history of the English Road, and to conclude with an
examination of the reforms which we should undertake and the crisis in
travel and the use of the Road which has led to that duty.
CHAPTER VIII THE “BLINDNESS” OF ENGLISH ROADS
_The Two Causes Governing the Development of English Roads--Waterways
and Domestic Peace: The Relation of the English Road to Military
Strategy._
i
Of many of the features of the English Road we can determine the
origins at once, for they are of common knowledge. The “blindness” of
the English Road is due to the enclosures and the consequent increase
in hedges since the seventeenth century, coupled, as I have said, with
the dying out of “champion” or “co-operative” open-field farming. It
is in part due, also, to that which has also been alluded to and has
affected the English Road in all its aspects (surface, variation of
gauge and gradient, tortuousness, etc.), the government of the squires
following on the defeat of the monarchy nearly three hundred years ago.
I shall touch on this again when I come to the history of the English
Road.
But, apart from these obvious and well-known causes, two causes much
less familiar--and yet of the first importance--two causes peculiar to
this island in all Europe, have governed its development: waterways and
domestic peace.
The English road system has been so powerfully affected by these
two agencies--the one physical, the other political--as to have
become wholly differentiated by them from the systems of the Western
Continent. The natural feature then is _the omnipresence of waterways_
throughout the island; and the political feature is domestic
peace--that is _the absence since the modern development of roads began
(during the last 250 years) of strategical necessities on a large
scale_.
ii
I will take these two things in their order.
The way in which the whole history of England has been modified by the
presence of water is a topographical point of capital importance to
the understanding of the national life. There is no other large island
in the world which has rivers in anything like the same proportion as
we have, either in number or in disposition. Most of the large islands
have no navigable rivers at all. Sicily has none, Iceland has none,
nor Crete, nor Cyprus, nor Sardinia, nor Corsica. Not only have we a
host of navigable rivers, but they are so disposed that they penetrate
the very heart of the country. The Trent, for instance, is the most
arresting thing upon the map. It looks almost as though it had been
specially designed to make the inmost heart of England penetrable to
commerce and travel in the east. The Thames, in the same way, goes
right into the heart of southern central England; and even the Severn,
the rapidity of which has militated against its modern use, had a
considerable use in the past and was an artery in the Middle Ages, even
for upward traffic, to the neighbourhood of Wenlock Edge.
The great rivers alone, however, do not account for the most of
this character. It is the mass of small but navigable streams, both
tributary to the main systems and isolated along the coast, which have
so profoundly affected our history. If you take one of those outline
maps of England with the waterways only marked, such as are sold for
use in schools, and plot out the highest point upon a stream to which
a fairly loaded boat can penetrate, you will be astonished to find
how small a central area is left out. One might say that the whole of
England, outside the hill country of the Pennines, the Lakes, and the
border, is so penetrated by water carriage that if there were no roads
at all its life could, under primitive conditions, be carried on by
waterways alone.
Now this universal presence of waterways, which meant every
opportunity for internal traffic and also for approach from outside
the island, has had two effects upon the Road. First, it has made for
_diversion_--that is, for the modification of the English Road from a
direct to an indirect and sinuous line. Secondly, it has _interrupted_
what would otherwise be main lines of travel in the necessity under
which men found themselves of turning aside for the lowest bridge upon
each stream.
As to the first of these points, it will at once be observed that
unless you have some strong compelling motive for driving a simple
straight line you will, in a country of many rivers, avoid such a
scheme and seek for the cheapest crossing of each water. You must seek
a ford, or narrow, or a place with specially hard banks, and not merely
take haphazard that part of the stream which lies on your direct line,
and seeing that such numerous waterways involve also long numerous
flats along the streams, valley floors subject to flood or formed of
boggy soil, the tendency to diversion in a road system under such
conditions is intensified by the marshes which abound in a country so
watered.
If you look at the Roman road system you will see how, for the
considerations which I will deal with later, it usually; if not always,
neglects special opportunities and takes the water as it comes,
preferring an expensive straight line to a cheaper winding line; but
everything done since the Roman road system has been affected by the
perpetual consideration of the easiest river crossings inland, while
the same influence has deflected the road round the greater estuaries
and ports.
[Illustration: _Part II_, Sketch II]
The lowest bridge over a river is a point of transformation. It stops
traffic from the sea going any higher. But to carry on your journey
from the sea as far as possible is obviously an economic advantage,
especially in early days of expensive and slow road traffic. Therefore
a nation dealing with the sea and largely living through sea-trade
casts its first bridge _as far up stream as possible_, and that is
exactly what you find upon all the rivers of England for centuries.
Even to this day the tendency to build bridges lower down than the old
first bridge is checked, in spite of the very strong motive we have in
the development of the railway system. Take a map (Sketch II), and look
round the coast and see how true this is.
The lowest old bridge of the Tyne was at Newcastle; of the Trent, I
believe, at Gainsborough; of the Thames, of course, right up inland at
London; of the Stour, at Canterbury; of the Sussex Ouse, at Lewes; of
the Arun, at Arundel; of the Exe, at Exeter. The deep arms of Plymouth
Sound were unbridged until the railway came; so Fowey river and the
Fal, unbridged to this day; the Severn is not bridged at all till
Gloucester, nor was the Dee till Chester.
Now this had the effect everywhere of checking a direct road system and
deflecting the ways everywhere to suit the convenience of the ports.
And there again we find, for reasons which will be given in a moment,
the Roman roads directly crossing estuaries, but every subsequent
road system going round them. Take two examples. The Roman road to the
north, which runs all along the ridge of Lincolnshire, strikes the
Humber where that stream is from 2000 to 3000 yards wide, crosses by a
ferry, and continues on the far side.
The Roman road system of Kent did the same thing over the Wansum when
that stream was--as Rice Holmes has proved--a broad estuary 3000 yards
across, with Richborough as an island in its midst. The Roman road from
Dover and the one from Canterbury met at a point opposite Richborough,
whence a ferry took people across to Richborough.
Again, the Roman road to the lead mines of the Mendips ends at the wide
mouth of the Severn, and is carried on again on the far Welsh side.
But every road system since has gone right round by Gloucester, and
the inconvenient effects of this, as road travel develops and water
carriage declines, are very noticeable to-day. In all that southern
coast of Devon between Lyme Regis and the Exe, if you want to get round
to the maritime south-western bulge of the county you must make an
elbow through Exeter. Similarly the Sussex coast, now so crowded, has
only been linked up quite recently by bridges: the one at Shoreham was
built within living memory, the swing bridge at Littlehampton is an
affair of the last few years, as also the swing bridge at Newhaven of
this generation. For 1500 years no one could proceed along that coast
continuously from, say, Portsmouth by Littlehampton, Shoreham, Seaford
(later Newhaven), Hastings, Rye, without turning inland to cross at
Arundel, at Bramber, at Lewes, at Robertsbridge. One of the subsidiary
effects of this interruption was the comparative ease with which the
coast could be attacked from the sea, for the difficulty of rapid
concentration upon any one point, in the lack of lateral communication,
handicapped the defending force by land. All through mediaeval history
the Sussex coast was raided from the sea. So much for the effect of
waterways, the main physical cause of diversion in the English Road.
iii
The political cause of diversion has been, as I say, the negative
effect of an absence of grand strategy in modern times. There has been
no grand strategy in this country since the Romans, because there has
been no fighting of a highly-organized type within the island during
the whole of its post-Roman history. There was a great deal of barbaric
fighting in the Dark Ages, and a great deal of feudal fighting in the
Middle Ages. Even in the beginning of modern organized warfare you had
(on a very small scale, it is true) the civil wars.
But since then--that is, during the whole of the period in which modern
road systems have developed (1660 onwards)--there has been no necessity
for strategical considerations to affect the English road system at
all, and, therefore, no political force strong enough to compel direct
roads was present in opposition to the strong economic motive for
diversion.
The result is an anomaly that might well become serious if we had
to depend upon our road system under the threat of invasion. Look,
for instance, at the two great handicaps, the Humber and the Thames.
A force standing up to meet a threatened landing which might be
directed against Kent or against East Anglia would be divided into two
sections, deprived of road communication save round through London.
During the War a temporary bridge was thrown across the Thames (in the
neighbourhood of Tilbury, if I remember aright), but, of course, with a
gate for traffic. In normal times you could not have such a thing. The
water traffic is too great and too confused. But what you could have
would be a tunnel, and though the necessity for it may never arise it
is also true that should it arise we shall bitterly regret not having
driven that tunnel. The same remark applies with even greater force to
the Humber. An attempted landing on the north-east coast of England,
threatening alternatively the Lincolnshire and Yorkshire coasts, would
find the defending force cut in two, and were the strategics of this
position to become acute we should regret the lack of a road tunnel
under the Humber, just as we should regret the lack of a road tunnel
under the Thames.
The third principal case, that of the Severn, is partially met by a
railway tunnel--the Severn Tunnel, far below Gloucester. A road tunnel
would hardly suggest itself here. There is not a sufficient “potential”
for it on either side of the stream. But here again it might well
happen that under the particular circumstances of war we should regret
the absence of it.
This negative factor, the absence of a strategic “driving motive,”
has also left the windings of the internal road system at the mercy
of the easiest crossings of the rivers, and we see how different the
thing would have been under a strategic scheme. Consider the Roman
contrast. The Roman roads of Britain were principally military. The
whole scheme of Roman government was military, and the life of all that
civilization was founded on the army. With the marching of men rapidly
and easily from place to place as the main motive of the builders, the
roads follow those great straight lines which, while duly seeking a
formula of minimum effort, never sacrificed to it directness of plan.
As we have seen, even at the great estuaries Roman engineers preferred
a supplementary ferry to continue the road rather than deflecting it
round by the first bridge.
In this connection, however--that of estuaries--there is one case which
is puzzling: the case of the Thames. An explanation can, I think, be
found, though at first it looks anomalous. The Romans dealt with the
estuary of the Severn and of the Humber by ferries; they dealt by
long bridges with lesser obstacles. In the same fashion they carried
the north road over the Trent by a direct line without deflection for
a special crossing. They carried it across the Tyne at deep water
approached steeply. They carried it across the Thames at Staines with
a sole regard to the direction of their road and without considering
special opportunities of crossing. They did the same at Dorchester; and
instances could be multiplied all over the kingdom. But apparently they
did not attempt to attack the Thames estuary.
When one considers the nature of the early fighting during the
first conquest of the island by the Romans this is astonishing.
All the campaigns began in Kent, and the more serious of them were
carried on into East Anglia. The great rising under Nero was an East
Anglian rising, and the Roman armies beaten there had to be rapidly
reinforced from Kent. For 400 years troops poured in, under any special
emergency, from Dover, came up through Kent, and any immediate
necessity of reaching a point east of London necessitated a détour by
London Bridge: though time might be vital, the deflection was suffered.
Why did the Romans not solve the difficulty and establish at least a
ferry across the lower Thames? Of course, they may have done so. You
can never argue from the absence of traces to-day that a Roman road did
not exist, for it is astonishing how thoroughly time eliminates such
things. There are whole great towns like Aquilea and Hippo of which
not even the foundations remain to-day. Even in England, where Roman
survival is most marked, two towns, Silchester and Uriconium, have
gone save for a few ruins; and there are great stretches of Roman road
in every country of Western Europe which have mysteriously and wholly
disappeared without leaving a trace of the tremendous work undertaken
to build them; for instance, the miles after Epsom racecourse. Still,
it does look as though no direct Roman line connected Canterbury, for
instance, with Colchester. And I say again, how are we to account for
it?
I think the explanation lies in the disposition of the marsh lands on
the lower Thames. If you take the map of the Thames below the Isle
of Dogs and mark upon it all that must have been primeval marsh
(including much that is still marsh) you will see that wherever hard
land is found upon one bank it is faced by extensive swamp upon the
other. There was no good position for a permanent crossing even by
ferry, and in the whole military history of England we only know one
doubtful case in which a junction was effected from south to north,
which is in the pursuit of the defeated British army by the Romans in
A.D. 43 under Aulus Plautius. If, as is probable (though not certain),
that battle took place at Rochester, then the pursuit was carried on by
a direct crossing of the lower Thames; but with that exception I can
call to mind no military action in the whole of our history where the
lower Thames did not prove a permanent obstacle.
It is an amusing speculation to think what would have happened to the
road system of England if strategic necessity had appeared again during
the modern period. The thing is purely hypothetical, but I might make a
few suggestions.
In the first place, we should certainly have had a road linking up
the southern coast; next, we should certainly have had some form of
continuous traffic over the lower Severn and the lower Thames and the
Humber; next, without doubt, there would have been pierced a broad,
continuous, and fairly direct road from the plain of Yorkshire to the
plain of Lancashire across the Pennines; next, we should have had, of
course, a broadening of all the ways leading to the main ports. That
would have been essential, and particularly to the ports of the Straits
of Dover. But, as I have said, the whole thing is a dream, because not
that strategic motive, but now a purely economic motive is compelling
us to revise our system.
iv
Apart from these two main causes of waterways, and of the absence
of strategic necessity causing the diversion of the English Road,
and apart from all other causes of local government which have led
to such extraordinary diversity, lack of regular gradient, lack of
regular gauge, etc. (as distinguished from the road system under
the monarchical and centralized governments of the Continent, and
especially of France), we have certain other elements which have
stamped the English Road with its particular character.
They may be briefly recapitulated without developing any one of them.
We shall meet most of them again in the historical sketch of the
English Road.
There is the dampness of the climate; there is the extraordinary
diversity of soil within a comparatively small area, so that
road-making material continually differs within a few miles--for
England is, of all European countries, that in which there is crowded
upon a small space the greatest, sharpest, and most frequent diversity
of soil and landscape; there is the increasing density of population
in modern times, which has had a profound effect upon our road system.
There is the political factor of Parliament; for since the defeat
of the monarchy in the seventeenth century no direct order could be
immediately obeyed until there quite recently grew up the new powers
of administration. Between, say, 1660 and the Premiership of the late
Lord Salisbury we may say that any important public right, including
the making of a new way and expropriation of land for it, fell under
no immediate authority but had to be referred to the lengthy and
expensive process of a Committee, called Parliamentary, through which
the oligarchy of Great Britain worked.
All these things have affected the development of the English Road, but
most of all, let it always be remembered, these two main causes, which
have been, in my opinion, far too little recognized--the waterways,
peculiar to this island, and the absence of modern strategic necessity,
also peculiar to this island.
CHAPTER IX FIVE STAGES
_The “Potential” in Political Geography Examples: The Primitive
Trackways: The Roman Road System: The Earlier Mediaeval Period: The
Later Mediaeval Period: The Turnpike Era._
i
Let us next turn to a very rough sketch of the development of the
history of the English Road: the stages through which its development
has passed, measured, not from cause to effect, but in time.
Before turning to this I would first define the use of a certain
word already used which will recur and may be unfamiliar to some of
my readers. It is a word taken as a metaphor from physical science,
and one of the utmost value in political geography. It is the word
“potential.”
We talk of the “potential” between two commercial centres, or between
a capital and a port, or between a mineral producing region and an
agricultural region, or between a region whence barbarians desire to
invade fertile civilized land and the centre of the fertile civilized
land which desires to defend itself, etc., etc., and our use of this
word “potential” is drawn from the doctrine of physical science that
energy in open shape, energy at work, is given its opportunity by the
tendency of two points to establish a communication: the tendency of
two separate situations to establish unity, the tendency of a hitherto
“potential”--that is, only “possible,” not yet “actual”--force to
realize itself. For instance, you will have a highly charged electrical
area tending to discharge itself by the line of best conduction. You
will have a head of water creating a “potential”: a reservoir a hundred
feet above the valley has to be connected with the floor of the valley
by a tube to turn the potential energy into actual energy and to drive
a turbine.
Now, in the development of the road system we metaphorically use this
word “potential” in just the same fashion. For instance: there was
originally no bridge across a river because the people in the town on
one side of it had no particular reason to cross to barren land upon
the other. The town gradually developed into a holiday resort. The
only place for a good golf links was on the far side of the river,
and visitors who lived in the town during their holidays wanted
to go during part of the day to the golf links. A “potential” was
established. Thus there has always been a most powerful “potential”
between London and Dover, between the great commercial centre of the
island and the port nearest to the Continent. That is a “potential”
which has worked throughout the whole of English history. We can
watch other potentials at work in different periods arising and dying
out again. For instance, during the Norman and early Angevin period
there was a very strong “potential” between the middle north coast of
France and the coast of Sussex, with a corresponding development of
traffic. The principal people in England were also great land owners
and officials on the coast immediately opposite. That “potential” died
down until the revival of modern steam traffic. Again, there is a
“potential” to-day between any coal field and any centre of consumption
of wealth distant from that coal field. So there is between any coal
field and any great port. Again, you will have a strategic “potential.”
A particular point of no economic value may be of the utmost strategic
value. The holding of it may make all the difference to the defenders
of the frontiers, and in that case a “potential” exists which is the
driving motive for a road between the capital and the point in question.
With this note in mind we can proceed to some sketch of the history of
the English Road.
ii
The development of the English Road up to the present turning-point in
its history, following, as we have seen, the political story of the
island, falls into five divisions.
=A.=--First came the primitive trackways, the chief of which must have
been artificially strengthened, and some of which may have been, in
sections at least, true roads up to the Roman invasions.
=B.=--Next came the Roman road system, which was presumably developed
in the second century of our era. This is the framework of all that
followed. All our roads from that date (eighteen hundred years ago)
to modern times have sprung from and have grown in connection with
this original set plan or framework. That is true, no doubt, of all
western countries, but it is especially true of England. The English
road system is the product in every age of the great Roman scheme, the
relics of which are more marked in England than they are anywhere else
in the world.
This point is the master point of the whole story. It is a point upon
which popular history has completely lost its way. Popular history
represents the Roman occupation of this island as an accident, a sort
of interlude between the native British period and a later and separate
“English” period which arose upon the invasion of the country by German
tribes from beyond the North Sea. That is not the history of England at
all. The history of England is the history of a Roman province.
[Illustration: THE EARLIEST ROAD]
England began by being, like everything else in the North and West,
barbaric. It was civilized from the Mediterranean and made a part of
the Roman Empire--that is, of one common civilization--one great state
stretching from the Grampians to the Euphrates, and from the Sahara to
the North Sea. This civilizing imprint of the Roman Empire Britain has
never lost.
Our civilization fell into decay, as did that of the whole of the rest
of Europe. The decay was not due to the pirate raids from North Germany
and Holland any more than it was due to the raids of the Scottish
Highlanders, which were just as frequent and violent, or the raids of
Irish pirates from the west, which were at one moment so severe as to
put up a separate realm on the west coast of this island. The history
of England is continuous, and its foundation, from which we get all our
institutions, more than half our language, all our ideas and religion
and the rest of it, is in the 400 years of high civilization between
the landing of the Roman armies and the breakdown of the imperial
system in the West.
The Roman Road is the true and only root of the road system of Britain.
All our local roads can be found developing slowly from the Roman
roads of the district which had preceded them, and it is nearly always
possible to trace the causes which led to each particular local
system. In each you find the Roman Road is the backbone of the affair,
and the later local roads existing only as developments of and changes
from this basic Roman plan.
=C.=--The third division is one for which we have little direct, but
plenty of indirect, evidence, and the remains of which are with us upon
every side. It is the growth in the Early Middle Ages, presumably from
about the Angevin period, of the mediaeval road system which was the
deflection and extension of the old Roman road system. At the end of
the Empire, during the Dark Ages (_i.e._ from the fifth to the eleventh
century), though the Roman road system had remained the only available
one, it had decayed, and numerous modifications of it had already
appeared; but with the Early Middle Ages those modifications seem to
have grown prodigiously, and the indirect network of local roads would
then seem to have arisen.
=D.=--The fourth chapter is even more obscure. It is a partial decline,
only affecting certain districts, and affecting some much more than
others: a decline which corresponds more or less to the end of the
sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century. It went with
the flooding of the fen lands, with the breakdown of central authority,
the increase of local interests, and so on.
=E.=--The fifth chapter is the great revolution in road planning and
construction which may be called the turnpike era: beginning early in
the eighteenth century and flourishing at its close.
The turnpike system continued to develop with continual changes
through three or four generations. It survived the competition of the
railroads. It was vastly improved by the new local legislation of
from forty to twenty years ago. It left us with the road system we
now enjoy, which must, under the pressure of quite recent changes, be
modified if our communications are to be saved, or, at any rate, to
keep pace with the present conditions of travel.
CHAPTER X THE TRACKWAYS
_The Three Divisions of the British Pre-Roman Road System--The System
of which Salisbury Plain was the “Hub”: The System Connected with
London: Cross-Country Communications--The Three Factors which Have
Determined Travel in Britain._
i
The origin of the trackways is, of course, unknown, and can only be
guessed at by inference; but their character, and especially the
geographical causes which determined their trace, we can establish on
the largest lines with some accuracy.
We must not lose ourselves in that kind of speculation which has been
so dear to the academies, and which is usually very futile. As to the
order in which the development took place we have no evidence whatever:
for instance, as to the date of the founding of London, or of its size
before the Roman occupation; nor have we similar evidence with regard
to any of the centres of England for the uniting of which roads would
arise. But we have relics of the trackways before us. We have the
geographical conditions almost unchanged, and we have the indication
of Roman roads clearly based upon particular existing trackways, and
therefore suggesting what the scheme was before the Roman engineers set
to work.
Roughly speaking, the British pre-Roman road system fell into three
divisions.
There was, first of all, a division (possibly the earliest to develop
of all) which had for its “hub” Salisbury Plain, and from that centre a
whorl, rather than a wheel, of diverging approaches to the coast.
There was, secondly, the system turning upon the crossing of the Thames
at London as a “hub.” It is this second system which was so largely
developed in the historical period and which still governs our main
roads and railways to-day.
Thirdly, there was the series of cross-communications, of which the
most important by far was the track leaving the Exe and making for the
Humber.
The British trackways formed along these three systems discovered and
used the best passages of the rivers, some of which the Romans changed,
to which they added a certain number, but which, in the main, they
retained. They also indicate, though less certainly, the town centres
which have remained through the centuries the same, and they were also
determined by the main centres of agricultural population and, to a
much less extent, by the presence of mines.
[Illustration: _Part II_, Sketch III, _Probable scheme of_ MAIN ORIGINAL
TRACKWAYS _in_ BARBARIC ENGLAND]
The system of which Salisbury Plain appears to have been the “hub” we
presume to be the earliest because it was dependent almost entirely
upon surface: good going over dry land. It is to be presumed that the
earliest system would be that prevalent when men were less able to
give artificial aid to the Road, to harden it, to construct causeways
or approaches; when they were less able to drain marshes; when they
had not yet cleared forests. Now, of all the soils which make up the
surface of Britain chalk is the best surface for this purpose. It has
two characters which give it this character. In the first place, it is
self-drained and always passable even in our wettest seasons; and, in
the second place, it does not carry tangled undergrowth, and even its
woods (which are not as a rule continuous) are commonly of beech--the
easiest of all woods to pass through in travel, from the absence of
scrub beneath the branches.
It so happens that the chalk is, in this country, distributed in great
continuous lines and compact areas which lend themselves admirably
to the development of an earlier track system. You can follow chalk
with little interruption from the open central space, Salisbury Plain,
south-eastward to the Channel, to the Dorset coast (“Dorset” from the
country of the “Durotriges,” a British tribe whose name survives in
that of the modern county[1]), and the first in order of the tracks
led there. The chalk could equally be followed to the neighbourhood of
Southampton Water. A third line led along the confused Hampshire chalk
to the definite ridge of the Sussex Downs, and so to the harbours of
the Sussex coast and of Kent.
The fourth, with some interruption, led along the north downs to
Canterbury, whence tracks would radiate to the ports of Kent.
A fifth followed the Berkshire Downs and the Chilterns, and so led on
to the Wash and earlier parts of the Norfolk coast, which have now
apparently disappeared in erosion.
The sixth line led with more difficulty (and has been more obliterated
by later Roman work) directly westward to the mines of the Mendips, and
to the borders of the Severn estuary. It could not take advantage of
the chalk beyond Wiltshire, but it had fairly dry going along the ridge
of the Mendips.
The seventh, it must be presumed, though the traces are largely lost,
used the height of the Cotswolds; but here the soil, being oolitic and
not chalk, was much less favourable and the extension northward ceased
earlier.
This system, then, we regard as the earliest of all.
ii
The second system, as I have said, seems to have been connected with
London, but here the later track of the Roman engineers and the
continuous development of nearly twenty centuries has left us little to
go on save conjecture. There are points in that conjecture, however,
which are fairly certain. But there seems to have been, from the
earliest time, communication between north and south on the lowest
crossing of the Thames. Now, the lowest permanent crossing of the
Thames, even before a bridge, was in the neighbourhood of London.
The crossing of a river is determined by the hardness of the land
upon either bank, as we have seen, more than by any other factor. The
lower Thames everywhere had extensive marshes either upon one side or
the other, and usually upon both. At Grays, Tilbury, Erith, etc., the
hard ground approached right up to one bank, but was always countered
by extensive marshes on the other, or by marsh behind gravel, forming
a sort of island of hard land which could not be used for continuous
travel.
The first good crossing-place was at Lambeth, and it is generally
assumed that the earliest of all the tracks took the stream here,
for the alignment of the main approach from Kent through Canterbury,
Rochester, and Shooters’ Hill does not point at the centre of London,
but at Lambeth. This, it is presumed, was the track followed by what
is now Park Lane, and so ultimately north-westward by the Edgware Road
and its continuations to Chester, with a branch thrown off through
the pass between the marshes of the Mersey and the Pennine range
in the district of Manchester, and so on through Lancashire. But at
some very early stage there was established a crossing below Lambeth
in the neighbourhood of London Bridge, even before that bridge came
into existence. It is true that there is here a belt of marsh on the
right bank, but the considerable gravelly hill on the left, or north,
bank there would give an opportunity not to be lost. It had three
great advantages: it was a large area of dry land for settlement; it
had defences all round it--marshy land to the north, the Fleet to the
west, the Lea to the east; it had a considerable area for the drawing
up of boats, and a steep shore for wharfage. Under these conditions,
whenever men could first construct a causeway it would have been worth
while to have been at that labour across the Southwark marshes in order
to establish a permanent crossing by ferry, and later by a bridge,
upon the site of London Bridge. At any rate, from that centre--London
Bridge--at some very early period you get trackways radiating.
There is the main one, in the first place, through Canterbury to Dover
and the Kentish ports. Next, there is the eastern one to Colchester,
along which the chief Roman invasion marched to the capture of that
town, which was the capital of the enemy.
[Illustration: WELSH SECTION, HOLYHEAD ROAD]
iii
Next, we may presume (for evidence is lost, especially under the later
Roman work) there was a track towards the centre of Norfolk. Next there
was some great road going northward east of the Pennines, following
the dry land which skirts the Fens and reaching the great fertile
plain of York, and so on northward through Durham up to the crossings
of the Tyne. Where this original main track went we cannot say. We
know the trace of the Roman road which followed it. We may presume
that the divagations and modifications of this road of the Dark Ages
and the Middle Ages, which ultimately built up our main road to the
north, reverted in some degree to the original track. But the whole
thing is guess-work. One thing seems fairly certain: this eastern road
to the north (the twin to the great north-western road by Chester to
Lancashire) must have split about half way to York, one branch making
directly to the plain of York itself, the other obviously running along
the inevitable ridge which points right north through Lincolnshire to
the Humber. There is here no bridge possible. It is not too broad for
a ferry. But though the Roman road, superseding the earlier trackway,
went on northward, it is a fair guess that the original trackway
stopped at the river.
Of cross roads we have fragments, of course, in the Pennines, but
we know nothing of their history. It is clear that the main cross
communications between the peopled area of the Yorkshire Plain and that
of the Lancashire Plain must have gone over by Shipley--the obvious gap
in the chain. But more we cannot tell. That is the natural way, and
there was, so to speak, no avoiding it. What was mainly used further
south we cannot tell. It was a tangled land. There is no clear and
certain trace of cross communications which must have existed across
the Midlands south of Trent. We do not know what great patches of
wood may here have determined the windings of an original road. There
are no serious obstacles (it is high land and dry, with no marshes or
large watercourses), but there was less reason for continual traffic
here from east to west than there was for traffic from north to south;
therefore there was less “potential” than was created by the traffic on
cross communications further south.
The original system of tracks radiating from Salisbury Plain was
simple. They led, in radiating lines straight and curved, directly
to the lower Thames, to the ports of the Channel, to the southern
estuaries, to the north-east--that is, to the Wash--and to the north
direct by the Cotswolds. But true cross communication was lacking
to this set, and was provided by the great road from the Exe to the
Humber, which still survives in the form of the Fosse Way. It runs
throughout the whole of our history, from very long before the first
records nearly to the present day, and is to-day traceable throughout,
and used in many places as a hard road. This main track was one of the
dominant factors in the character of English travel. It has decayed
under modern conditions because its “potential” has gone. There is
no driving power to-day urging travel from south-west to north-east,
and it is only in partial experiments and the linking up of separate
lines that even our railway system serves that end. But before modern
times the Fosse Way played a very great part. For some reason there
was a perpetual necessity for passing from the south-west--Devon and
Dorset--to the north-east coast. Two permanent potentials, that between
north and south and that between east and west, help to explain the
Fosse Way.
England has always tended to fall into two cross divisions--a northern
and a southern one, separated at first by climate (the northern more
rude, the southern more gentle), then by agricultural conditions, the
northern far less peopled, the southern more peopled and more wealthy;
and to an eastern and western division separated by type of landscape,
to some extent by climate, always to some extent by soil, difference in
race, emphasized whenever an invasion came from the Welsh lands on the
one side or from the North Sea on the other. The Fosse Way broke both
those cross divisions and was a sort of “reinforcement” (as they say in
modern concrete), taking the strain of cross tension across the island.
iv
In this short sketch of what were in some cases certainly, in others
only presumably, the original British main tracks we have to note three
factors which have always determined travel in Britain: the centres of
internal economic production, the ports, and the Channel crossings.
Before the modern industrial system the economic centres of
production were the wheat lands, and these were the open land of
which Winchester was the centre, the Dorchester centre, Somerset,
certain separate centres in the Midlands (separated by great woods
which have disappeared and their exact site not certain), the Cheshire
Plain, the Lancashire Plain, the great Yorkshire Plain, and last,
and most important of all, East Anglia--the central Eastern plain
(Essex in particular) was the granary of the early time in England.
Tracks connected all these places: they also connected the centres of
population with the ports. Every one of the tracks makes ultimately
from port to port. You have a connection through London (earlier
perhaps, as we have seen, through Lambeth) between the port of Kent and
the north-western ports (of which Chester is the great original example
and Liverpool the modern); between the north-eastern ports of the
Humber and the Tyne, and the south-western ports at Southampton Water
and Poole (which was of great early importance, and whence we shall
find a Roman road starting). Further west the mouth of the Exe was a
more important approach to Britain in the past than it is now. You have
also the estuary of the Severn, ill provided with natural harbours but
forming in its upper reaches a harbour of its own, with the peculiar
advantage of the lower Avon, with a secure pool at Bristol approached
by the curious and exceptional gorge at Clifton.
Lastly, you have the great port formed by the crossing place at London,
made, as we have seen, by the tendency of early travel, right up to the
appearance of railways, to penetrate a country as far as possible by
its waterways and to carry cargoes well inland, because water carriage
was so much cheaper than land transport.
The third factor--that of river crossing--also has its effect, though a
lesser one, upon the trace of the old British ways. If, for instance,
you carry along any one of the tracks which follow the chalk you
will see how carefully the water crossings were picked. It is the
characteristic of chalk that the rivers lie transverse to it, cutting
gorges through the hills, and each of these crossing places was chosen
where hard land approached from either side. The chalk (and the sand
associated with it) provides at certain points in the valleys twin
spurs approaching the water on either side; hence you have the track
along the north downs crossing the Wey at St. Catherine’s Chapel (and
alternatively by Guildford); and, again, the Mole at Pixham, near
Dorking, and the Medway at Snodland (with an alternative at Rochester).
The southern track along the Hampshire and Sussex Downs takes the Arun
at a similar advantage and opportunity at Houghton, and alternatively
at Arundel. It takes the Adur at Bramber, the Ouse at Lewes.
This vague sketch of the old trackways is all that we can lay down so
far as their main lines are concerned, and it is very imperfect, but we
must bear it in mind in order to understand the Roman system, which was
largely based upon those trackways and which superseded them.
There was one kind of soil, and one only, which could compete with
the chalk as good going for primitive travel, and that was sand. Had
we sand in continuous lines in Britain it would have given a dry
passage for the trackways, and here and there advantage is taken of it
by such trackways. But sand, in point of fact, is not to be found in
these continuous lines. It comes in patches, and hence we cannot talk
of any one of the great trackways as dependent upon a sandy soil. The
chief exception that I can call to mind in this respect is the run
of the old Pilgrims’ Way--a prehistoric track from the neighbourhood
of Farnham to the crossing of the Mole, near Dorking. Though chalk
lay on the main direction, it seems to have preferred the southern
dry sand to the chalk immediately north of it, and it keeps to the
sand until the cessation of that formation a short distance west of
the Mole. There is here a curious piece of political geology which
has been, I think, of great effect upon the history of England. Had
the ridges of sand through the weald of Sussex been _continuous_, the
weald would have been developed early. Its iron industry would have
furnished a basis for export, and it would have become one of the
centres of population. There are ridges of sand which you can trace
all the way through the weald from close by the Hampshire chalk in the
neighbourhood of Midhurst right away to the valley of the Rother. But
they are not continuous, and the interruptions are formed of deep clay,
impossible to pass in winter. The result of that lack of continuity
has been that no such track ever developed through the weald of Sussex.
Sussex, therefore, owing to the stiff clay of its weald, remained cut
off from the rest of England, and that throughout all the Dark Ages.
It falls out of the national history. Indeed, the linking up of Sussex
with the north was only effected by the Romans at the cost of great
labour through the artificial causeway of the Stane Street between
Chichester and London; and after the breakdown of western civilization
in the fifth century there was no regular approach to the southern
coast from the Thames valley in a direct line. The traffic either
went westward down towards Southampton, Hampshire, Dorset, and Devon
or eastward to the Straits of Dover. The Norman Conquest and the rule
of the Angevins restored Sussex to something of its rightful place in
English communications because the coast of that county lay immediately
opposite the centre of the foreign region which then governed England,
but the interlude was not lengthy. In the later Middle Ages and on
to quite modern times (to the middle of the eighteenth century) the
interruption due to the clay made itself felt again, and only the
railway and great increase of population have been able between them to
restore direct and frequent communication between the Thames valley and
this part of the southern coast.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] Our shires were _probably_ originally British, and later Roman,
divisions.
CHAPTER XI THE MAKING OF THE ROMAN ROAD
_The Great Initiative: The Mark of the Roman Military Engineer: The
Theory and Practice of the Straight Line: Modifications of the Straight
Line: How it was Carried Out: The Method of Odds and Evens._
i
The making of the great Roman roads was the one great initiative in
the story of English communications: it originated all that followed,
and there was no new real development, no essentially new departure
between the planning of that military scheme and the coming of the
railway. It can only be compared to what the future may have to show if
we find ourselves able to reform our roads as they should be reformed
for the new conditions of modern travel, and even this change would not
be anything like as great as the change made by the throwing of those
great highways to stand for ever across a country which had hitherto
been half barbarous.
The Roman Road had a structure and character of its own which it
has retained to the present day, so that even where it was only
the straightening and the strengthening of an old trackway upon
which it was founded it would follow the mark of the Roman engineers
throughout all that remained of its course. It was essentially a piece
of _building_, and in this the Roman Road differed from every other
form of communication before the modern railways. It had to be of
this kind on account of two things which the Roman military engineers
particularly desired to serve, both of them connected with the military
character of the west. First, they wanted a platform, raised, as a
rule, above the surrounding country, so that troops passing along it
should be the less liable to attack: so that a view could be had from
it over the immediate surroundings, which were cleared: and so that any
sudden stroke against a marching column could be checked. The raising
of the way had other objects, of course--it kept the surface dry, for
instance--but the main object was that of security upon the march, and
the same object was one of the reasons for making the roads as a rule
in straight lengths or limbs, sometimes two, three, or even four days’
march in extent. A road was planned without windings, so as to be safer
from ambush and surprise, and where it had coupled to its straightness
its elevation above the surrounding country the chance of ambush or
surprise was almost eliminated.
[Illustration: _Part II_, Sketch IV, _The_ ROMAN ROAD SCHEME]
But the habit the Roman military engineers had of driving their roads
in these great straight limbs, which are still so clearly marked,
served many other purposes besides this military one of which I speak.
It has been condemned as a waste of effort, for it is clear that a
winding road, avoiding steep gradients and turning difficulties of
marsh or wood, requires less effort to construct, mile for mile, than
an artificially straight one; and that even when you have allowed for
the extra length of a winding road, the formula of least effort will
never give you a long straight. But your straight road has _the great
advantage of rapid planning_.
The Roman engineers, especially in the north--that is, in Belgium,
Gaul, and in Britain--were working under campaign conditions, or
in countries but recently occupied. They were under an imperative
necessity of providing good communications as quickly as possible, and
_for that object_ the straight road was obviously the best. Once you
had determined the two points which you had to join, you established
a track between them and carried it over all but the worst obstacles,
taking all but the worst gradients. If you met marsh, you built a
causeway; whenever you came to a river crossing, you threw your bridge;
when you came to a sharp, narrow ridge you made a cutting. All that
meant labour, but as in any case you were intending to make a great
built, constructed, raised structure along the whole trajectory the
extra labour involved in a straight trace was not proportionally as
heavy as it would be for one of our ephemeral modern roads. In other
words, the Roman engineers set out upon a plan necessarily expensive.
They set out to make a great public monument, as it were; and the extra
expense of its straightness did not weigh in the bill.
ii
A modification of this tendency to straight lines is found proceeding
from three causes. First, where and when an established track already
existed and the Roman work was only required to harden and strengthen
it. Even there the Roman engineers would straighten portions which were
too winding to fit in their scheme. But, apparently, where the track
was fully established they tolerated a good many curves, especially if
their work came some time after the conquest, when the land was settled.
The second modification of the plan is to be found in hilly countries.
In the mountains or very hilly regions the Roman engineers of necessity
gave up the straight line, and as these regions were also the districts
where on the heights large garrisons were least necessary they were the
better able to abandon their general military plan.
If you look at a detailed map of the Roman road system in Gaul or
Britain you will see how the moment it comes to a broken district the
straight lines are replaced by a waving trace such as you would have in
a modern English road. For instance, beyond the Fosse in Dorsetshire
and Devon the Roman coast road is as winding as any modern road can be.
The same is true of the crossings of the Apennines, and, of course, of
the crossings of the Alps and the Pyrenees. It seems to be equally true
of the Ardennes gorges, but the trace here is often so much obliterated
that it is difficult to say exactly how the Romans dealt with that
mixed problem of wood and ravine.
The third modification was that of gradient. The Roman Road would take
a very steep gradient indeed; but there was a limit, and when the slope
was too steep the road diverged or zig-zagged, or took a combe in a
great curve, or swept round the base of a hill. We have examples of
all these points upon the map of England, the best of which, I think,
are the great sweep of the Stane Street on Bignor Hill in Sussex and
the great loop round Down Barn, north of Andover, on the road from
Winchester to Glo’ster.
The greatest ingenuity was shown by the planners of the Roman roads
in the choice of trace. Granted that you were to make a trajectory of
many days’ march in large straight limbs, each limb had to be thought
out very carefully, straight though it was, to yield something like a
minimum of effort. You had to make your turning-points, or hinges, in
the system at places where the straight lines joining them would cross
water or hilly country to the best advantage, and it is astonishing
with what skill these terminal points of the straight limbs were
chosen. For instance, that one road of them all which has been most
certainly of purely military use and designed to join Chichester with
London (all of which I have worked out some years ago and on which I
have written a monograph),[2] has its first bend from Chichester, just
after the end of the first day’s march at the crossing of the Arun on
Burgh Hill. The angle of the bend is one of seventeen degrees, the
direction is north by twenty-two degrees east. Now, this direction
of the two limbs which join at Burgh Hill exactly secures two things
essential to the minimum of effort. One plain straight from Chichester
to Leith Hill would have involved heavy effort in gradients and water.
This plan of two limbs meeting at the Arun crossing gives every
advantage:
(1) It makes the road cross the intervening range of the downs just
where, by a slight curve, a reasonable gradient can be used;
(2) It makes it cross water and marsh at the narrowest point between
Hardham and Pulborough, and at the same time just avoids the double
water crossing of the Arun and the Rother. It is true that there is
here something of a coincidence, but it was plan and survey which
discovered that coincidence.
iii
How were these great straight limbs plotted out? That is a question
which has been fully debated but not yet settled. Where two ends of
a trajectory were in sight one from the other the matter was simple
enough; but what was the method used when the straight line exceeded
the horizon: when it was carried on, for instance, for more than thirty
miles, as is the case over and over again in the great north-eastern
road from Paris to Cologne, and in the road from Amiens to Boulogne?
What was the method when, even for lesser distances, one end of the
trajectory could not be seen from the other on account of intervening
hills, or where in flat land forests were sufficient to impede the view?
One theory has been that of smoke signals, a method which has been
found of use, I believe, in barbarous countries in our own day. We
must, I think, certainly reject it in such a climate as ours. Such
signals could only here be used upon a few days in the year, specially
picked, and the Roman engineers would not have depended upon the
caprice of the weather. There has also been suggested (I adopted that
suggestion myself in the monograph of which I have just spoken) the
use of high movable platforms, but I now think that this also should
be rejected on account of its clumsiness, and of the fact that in
an uncleared country it would often be quite impractical. The most
probable method was suggested to me by a correspondent some years
ago, based upon his own experience in the planning of roads in new
countries. It is the method of _odds and evens_, and requires some
description with the aid of a simple plan.
Suppose that you have to construct a straight line from A to B, A and
B not being visible one from the other, and the distance between them
being considerable. If you have plenty of men with which to work (and
the Roman military commanders did not lack these), you will proceed as
follows: You send out your men from either end, in two chains as it
were, each individual easily in sight of his next neighbour, but not
nearer to him than is necessary for the observation of signals. These
chains of men are either directed from the two ends of the line, or,
if you can work only from one end, you send them out from that end,
instructing the head of the chain when he comes in sight of the other
end to work towards it and establish himself there. At the end of the
process, whether you have been working with two lines approaching each
other from either end and joining hands in the middle, or from one
end only, you will end up with a line which will certainly not be
straight--on the contrary, very irregular--but which will at least join
your two goals. Probably, if you had been working from both ends, A and
B, you would have something like sketch VI; while if you be working
from one end only--A--the head of your column would probably be widely
out at the conclusion of your experiment. Your column would have to
double back sharply on to its goal when at last it was caught sight of,
and you will have some such trace as on sketch V.
[Illustration: _Part II_, Sketch V
_Part II_, Sketch VI]
At any rate, having established this rough winding line, you next
make the men number themselves as a line does when it is dressing, by
odds and evens, or by ones and twos, so that the first, third, fifth,
seventh man, etc., counting from one end make one lot, or all the
ones make one lot, if you are going by ones and twos--and the second,
fourth, sixth, eighth man, and so on, make another lot. You bid one
of these sets--say the odds--to face towards one goal--say B--and the
other set to face towards the other goal--A. Lastly, you bid them
space themselves out so that any individual of one set can at least
clearly see his fellow in the same set along the direction to which
he faces, and the man of the other set in between. For instance, No.
39, looking south towards B, must be able to see No. 37, who is facing
the same way as he is, and must at the same time be able to see No.
38, who is facing towards him; similarly, No. 38 must be able to see
No. 40 clearly, and No. 39 in between. It is clear that in thick,
“blind” country (as, for instance, in woods or in tumbled land) your
men will have to stand fairly close together. But in open country they
can be at considerable distances--up to half a mile or more; so long
as every unit can see the next unit of the same set clearly, and have
his signals received by the unit of the other set in between, the
conditions are satisfied. Your line being thus instructed (and, as
anyone may discover in practice, it is not a very long business once
the first rough chain has been established), _the numbers of each set
signal to the intervening numbers of the other set alternatively to
move to right or left_ until a straight line is locally established.
[Illustration: _Part II_, Sketch VII
_Part II_, Sketch VIII]
For instance, in sketch VII you begin with the “evens,” looking
northward. No. 38, looking north towards No. 40, sees that No. 39 (who
faces him, looking south) is somewhat too much to the east and does not
stand properly between him and No. 40. He signals to No. 39 to move
westward as along the dots until No. 39 is at a new position, shown
by the dotted circle exactly between No. 38 and No. 40. Next, No. 36
signals to No. 37, who is too much to the west, until No. 37 is exactly
between himself and No. 38. When this has been done all along the line
by the evens the order is given to the odds to repeat the process from
their new positions. No. 39, looking southward from his new position
at the dotted circle, sees that No. 38 is too far to the east to be in
perfect alignment with No. 39’s next odd neighbour No. 37, at whom
he is looking, southward. No. 39 signals, therefore, to No. 38, who
is looking northward, to move westward, and No. 38 does so until the
signal stops him, when he is just in line between the new positions of
No. 39 and No. 37.
It will be evident that after this first stage of the process
the original irregular line between A and B will have been much
straightened. You have but to repeat the manœuvre half a dozen or a
dozen times to get the whole body of men into a strictly straight line
between the two extremities many miles apart, and that although those
in the middle cannot see either extreme and neither extremity can see
the other. In theory this method can be used for an indefinite extent
of country. In practice it seems to have been used (if it were indeed
that upon which the Roman engineers relied) for spaces sometimes as
great as a three days’ march, and quite often as great as one day’s
march or more.
iv
The scheme of Roman roads, following in the main these great straight
limbs, covered the whole country, and was for the most part completed,
we may presume, by the end of the second century.
It must not, of course, be imagined that these great military ways
were the only means of communication in Roman times. Many historians
have fallen into that grotesque error, with the result that history
becomes meaningless to their readers. These great ways were only the
main arteries, which were linked up in all the intervening spaces by
a mass of local ways not specially constructed or engineered--most of
them presumably aboriginal, and also maintained presumably by a local
authority.
FOOTNOTE:
[2] _The Stane Street._ Constable and Co.
CHAPTER XII THE DARK AGES
_The Decline of the Roman Road: The Period at its Occurrence: Gaps:
Roman Roads which Fell into Disuse: The Relationship of the Modern to
the Roman System: Watling Street: Stane Street: The Short Cut Between
Penkridge and Chester: Peddars Way: The coming of the New Civilization
in the Twelfth Century._
i
The next phase in the development of the English Road is the very
gradual breakdown of the great Roman ways. The Dark Ages--that is,
the 500 or 600 years between the fifth and the tenth or eleventh
centuries--formed the period during which this process took place.
The Roman Road in England suffered the fate of all our ancient
civilization. It very slowly declined and coarsened, but it remained
the one necessary means of communication. We have no dates and no
contemporary record after the fourth century for Britain, but we have
the analogy of Northern France, in which we know that the upkeep and
repair of the great Roman roads continued until well into the seventh
century, and we have the evidence of the Roman roads as they now stand
before us, with the result of their very gradual and only partial
breakdown in a use of centuries. We have also the fact that much
the most of the great battles took place on or near the Roman roads
until the twelfth century, that most of the new great monastic and
other houses were built near them, or on them, and that the ports most
commonly used in the Dark Ages were nearly always ports with a Roman
road serving them. We can thereby roughly judge (although we have no
direct evidence) what happened to the system.
In the first place, the Roman Road was so solidly built that centuries
of neglect did not entirely destroy its usefulness. Sections of each
road disappeared: some from causes which are easily explicable,
some under the most obscure conditions the causes of which it seems
impossible to discover. Every great Roman road in Europe, and even
those in Britain (which are better preserved than those in the most
part of the Continent) shows these gaps. Sometimes a whole great
section of road will almost entirely disappear--more often it is
a stretch of a few miles. Thus the whole of the short cut through
Penkridge to Chester, which certainly existed and some elements of
which can be reconstituted, has disappeared; so that most maps of
Roman Britain erroneously mark the connection between London and
Chester as going round by Shrewsbury. As an example of a short part
utterly disappearing, one can take any one out of hundreds; the best
example near London (typical of many others) is the gap in the Roman
road between the Epsom racecourse and Merton. The road is evident as
a clearly marked high embankment above the steep rise at Juniper Hill
near the Dorking road to within a mile of Epsom racecourse. Then it
suddenly ceases. There is no change in the soil. It is on chalk before
and after its disappearance; and yet, just here, at about a mile from
Epsom racecourse, it completely and totally disappears. There is no
trace even of its foundation left from thence onwards northwards
until you get to the site at Merton (which was state land and almost
certainly the last camp and halting-place on the road before London).
How the road crossed the marshes of the Wandle we can only conjecture,
as we can only conjecture where it lay exactly between Epsom and those
marshes. Why it should disappear in the marshes is evident enough.
The causeway sank in. Why it should disappear under the plough to the
south of the marshes, as Roman roads nearly always do on arable land,
can also be explained. But why it should wholly disappear on the last
mile or two of chalk is inexplicable. One theory put forward is that in
the great wars of the Dark Ages portions of the road were deliberately
destroyed to impede the progress of an enemy, just as a railway may
be destroyed in modern warfare. But this theory will hardly hold
water. The gaps that have disappeared thus, often come just where you
have the best soil for marching independently of artifice, and where,
therefore, an interruption of them would least incommode an advance.
For instance, they are perpetually found on high chalk; and, further,
the disappearance is hardly ever connected with a defensive position.
From the point of view of the development of the English road system
much the most interesting point in the fate which befell the Roman
roads is to be found at the crossings of rivers, especially of rivers
which have marshy banks or flow through wood or sodden valleys. The
neglected Roman embankment across the marsh fell out of use in the Dark
Ages. Probably the bridge first broke down, and the barbarous time had
not the energy or skill to repair it; then the mere process of time
caused the swallowing up of the Roman viaduct, unrelieved by repair, in
all marshy land. It is difficult to affirm a negative, but I can recall
not one example of a long Roman viaduct still wholly in use across such
an approach to water.
[Illustration: A DERELICT ROAD SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS]
What happened, then, in these sections was this. The bridge and the
viaduct disappeared in the Dark Ages--that is, some time between the
fourth and the eleventh centuries. Sometimes this gap led to the
complete isolation of the district immediately concerned. The best
example I know of this is the breakdown of the crossing of the Arun at
Romans Wood, in the county of Sussex. There the Roman road was a hard
causeway over very thick clay land, quite impassable for armies in
winter, and rapidly overgrown by oak scrub and thorn when neglected.
The result of the breaking down of the Roman bridge at the “Romans
Wood” crossing was to isolate West Sussex. There was no other way from
the north, for the clay and thorn scrub rapidly arose and obliterated
the road. It was in use as far south from London as Ockley; but the
breakdown of the bridge at Alfoldean broke the continuity further on,
and that, I believe, is one of the reasons why Sussex was so isolated
as only to be converted to the Christian religion a hundred years later
than the rest of the country.
But to return to the behaviour of the Roman Road in the marshy
approaches of a river. I say that the embankment having been swallowed
up and the bridge broken, the men of the Dark Ages had to find for
themselves some new way of crossing, and it is interesting to note that
they here fell back upon the primitive methods common before Roman
civilization came. They abandoned the straight line and picked their
way by the driest bits they could find, so that the new crossing of
the marshy district grew up sinuous and haphazard. Later, when the new
road system developed with the Middle Ages, this new road was often
straightened and a new bridge thrown across the river upon its line;
but, save for a very few exceptions, the Roman approach had disappeared.
There are scores of examples of this up and down the country. The most
prominent usually bear such names as Stamford, Stanford, Stafford,
Stratford, Stretford, etc., all of which come either from the word
“street” or the word “stone,” coupled with the word “ford.” They thus
signify that in the valleys of the river the “going” or passage had
been hardened artificially with stone derived from Roman work. A very
good example of the way in which the newer track replaced the older
one is to be found at Stamford, in Northamptonshire. The accompanying
sketch shows the trace of the Roman road from its leaving Burghley Park
to the old crossing of the river and beyond. There are still broken
traces of the old embankment on the north side of the stream, but it is
clear that this straight line across the marsh broke down, that a new
way was picked out and slowly hardened, and a new bridge built to suit
it. What the men of the Dark Ages did here was to keep to the drier
patches to the east where a ford crossed the river, and then curve
round again westward, again to join the road on the heights north of
the river. This new passage took over the name of the “Stone” ford,
where the old road had crossed. A bridge was thrown in due time across
the new ford, and the town shifted towards the new bridge and acquired
its new name from the crossing.
[Illustration: _Part II_, Sketch IX]
One form of the Roman Road, and one only--a very rare form--never
disappears: it is the cutting through hard sand. Here and there in
England--I know not how often, but I have myself found few traces of
them; I should doubt if there were much more than a dozen--you get a
clear cutting upon a Roman road serving no modern or useful purpose,
and almost certainly dating from the construction of the way. There is
the trace of the one at Ashurst, near my home--that with which I am
most familiar and which I have measured most carefully. If the cutting
be made in dry sandy soil of fair consistency and hardness, it can
remain almost indefinitely with an unmistakable outline. There may
naturally have been many other cuttings originally in softer or more
yielding soils which have got filled up, but the only ones I know are
through sand, which soil also tends to form those sharp ridges through
which a cutting might suggest itself as more economical than a too
steep gradient.
ii
The Roman Road not only disappears through causes which I have
called inexplicable and under the obvious influence of marsh or of
cultivation, it also fell into disuse, even where it did not disappear,
for reasons both explicable and inexplicable. There are cases where
the falling into disuse is frankly not to be explained, though these I
have found mainly upon the Continent. For instance, in the road from
Rheims to Chalons you have the Roman road running almost parallel to
the later road, the later trace having been made for no reason that we
can discover--not serving any new towns or villages--a mere duplicate
of the old way. But there are more cases where the disuse of a section
of the Roman Road can clearly be explained by the need for visiting
centres of population, production, and commerce. The Roman system for
the serving of places off the main straight road was by side roads
perpendicular to the main road. The relics of these you still see on
many of the Continental roads--a direct perpendicular lane or avenue
joining up the château and its dependencies or the neighbouring town
with the main highway. When the Dark Ages came and the main roads
degraded, the by-lanes and paths which had grown up as offshoots to
them and which led to the estates and villages and towns and ports and
quarries, etc., to one side or the other of the Road came to be used
more frequently. The main travel between distant towns was less, the
local travel grew more important in proportion. And as this development
proceeded sections of the Roman Road tended to fall into disuse. The
local roads would be maintained and the section of main road would be
left unrepaired.
We have seen that the main cause of the breaking down of the Roman Road
was marsh and the crossing of river valleys. Not only was this process
true of natural marshes, especially at the sides of a river, it was
true of a special case which is reproduced over and over again on the
map of England, and for which I will take as a particular example a
very fine case near Norton Park, in Northamptonshire.
[Illustration: _Part II_, Sketch X]
Here the Watling Street, the great Roman road from London to the
north-west, crossed the valley of an insignificant stream; there was
no marsh originally, and there is none to-day. There was only a small
running of water, over which a culvert was thrown. The stream ran
under the main Roman embankment through this culvert. Now, when the
Dark Ages came and the roads fell into disrepair the first things
to go, naturally, were the culverts. They got blocked up. Once they
got blocked up the water dammed up on the higher side and began to
undermine the embankment. By the time this had made the road, though
still standing, impassable, travel had found a new way, usually _down
the stream_ away from the mere thus formed. Further centuries and the
recovery of civilization cleared the ground: the embankment either was
washed away or swallowed up in the mere and its subsequent marsh, the
stream resumed its original course, the dry ground reappeared, but the
trace of the Roman road upon either side across the depression was
lost for ever and there was substituted for it the modern road, making
a curve out of the direct line and only recovering it again after the
obstacle had been passed.
iii
The gradual decay of the Roman Road in the Dark Ages was not everywhere
the same, and the consequence is that the remaining fragments of Roman
roads are connected in different ways with the modern road system which
gradually grew out of them.
There are four types--overlapping, of course--of the fate attaching to
the Roman roads of this country. They are, as I have said, the root
of all our road system. All English roads subsequent to the period of
the Roman occupation have grown out of the great network laid down for
ever by the Roman engineers. But the fortune which the original road
suffered, the way in which a modern system developed from it, were not
uniform. There were four divergent developments, which ran thus:
(1) The Roman Road is preserved as a basis of the modern road, and
remains a main artery: of this the great example is the Watling Street,
in the first few days’ marches north-west of London.
(2) The Roman Road remains clearly the basis of the system of local
roads which developed from it, and, though disappearing in sections,
is, upon the whole, preserved; of these the great example is the Stane
Street road from Chichester to London.
(3) The Roman Road, having produced a system of local roads based upon
it, has almost entirely disappeared and has left the local system alone
to witness to its original importance, just as filigree work remains
after you have melted away the core of wax upon which it was built.
Examples of this are very difficult to discover, precisely because the
original country has gone. But the process can be followed here and
there by a careful examination, and I think that, upon the whole, the
best example is that of the series of roads which grew up out of the
short cut between Penkridge and Chester.
(4) The Roman Road remains, in some parts at least, but, its original
purpose having been such that it was of no continual use in the Dark
Ages, the local system of roads can only indirectly be referred to it.
Of this the great example is the famous Peddars Way, running through
East Anglia.
iv
(1) The preservation of the Watling Street as an example of a
continuously used Roman road for several days’ march north-west of
London is due to various causes.
In the first place, it was very little interrupted by marsh. It ran
everywhere on dry land, and the main cause of breakdown--the swallowing
up of a causeway after the destruction of its bridge--did not affect
it. But this is the least of the causes which have preserved this piece
of road.
Second, and more important, was the establishment along it of set
stations which remained inhabited, and the chain of which was not
interrupted by active warfare. Watling Street here presents very
interesting evidence of what really happened during those early pirate
raids which are generally, but erroneously, called the Anglo-Saxon
Conquest. They did not so seriously disturb the life of the country as
to break down this main artery of communication. It lies transverse to
the raids, and yet it was maintained. And in this connection we must
also note the continued importance of London.
Great Roman towns suffered, of course, from the pirate raids between
(somewhat before) the year 500 and the year 600, as did all the rest of
the island. They suffered not only from those raids of pirates across
the North Sea, but also from the raids of pirates from Ireland, and
also from the raids of Highlanders coming over the wall from the north.
But though they suffered they kept their place in the national scheme.
No province in the Roman Empire lost less of its town sites in the Dark
Ages than did England. No part of Europe has so large a number of old
towns based upon Roman foundations: and London was the chief of them
all. London may have been disturbed by the raids--it probably was.
There was probably a certain amount of looting from time to time, and a
good deal of fighting outside its walls, but it always maintained its
permanence, its character of being the economic centre of the island.
It is particularly noticeable that every great Roman road out of London
has remained intact, and Watling Street beyond others.
The third cause of survival was probably the excellence of the original
construction, though here we must hesitate a little because we cannot
but note that the Great North Road to York, which was quite as
important and which was twin to the north-western road, has suffered
very grievous modification indeed. But there can be no doubt that the
construction of the Watling Street was very thorough, and that this
expenditure of economic effort preserved it through the Dark Ages as
much as anything did.
Oddly enough, what is in most cases the strongest motive of all for the
preservation of a road was here entirely absent, and that is what I
have called the “potential” between the two terminals. When there is a
long and continued motive for joining up two terminal points the Road
has a cause of survival superior to any other. There was, and remains
to this day, an extremely strong “potential” of this kind between the
ports serving the Channel straits, with their nucleus at Canterbury,
and the economic capital inland at London. It therefore, as the
Roman road between the one terminal and the other, remained permanent
throughout the centuries, with the exception of the deflection towards
the Thames which grew up in the Dark Ages to serve the landing places
at Gravesend. But such a “potential” is entirely lacking for the
north-western road communication--so far as we know--to go between
London and Chester. The trade with Ireland ceased almost during
the early Dark Ages. The north-western road led nowhere. If it was
preserved, therefore, as it _has_ been preserved, it must have been due
to other causes which escape us. There it runs, however, still almost
uninterruptedly used, from the Marble Arch in London to Oakengates in
Shropshire, and in places still acts as part of the main artery leading
from south-east to north-west.
v
(2) STANE STREET. The Stane Street (which I must be excused for quoting
so continuously as I know it in great detail) is, I think, the leading
example of a road still remaining for the most part and clearly showing
how the later systems were built up upon a Roman backbone.
I will take the liberty of recapitulating here my argument, developed
at greater length in my monograph on this Way. The original motive of
the Stane Street was the connecting of the Chichester Harbours, and
indirectly of Portsmouth Harbour, with London by a road which should
overcome the difficulties of the Weald. The Weald is a mass of stiff
clay, impassable to general traffic for six months of the year unless
one uses artificial means. Left to itself it turns rapidly into a waste
of oak and thorn scrub: save in the dry months, there is no going over
it in its natural state for armies or bodies of wheeled vehicles. Its
watercourses are numerous, muddy, difficult of approach, and soft at
bottom. It produces nothing save in moments of high civilization, when
it can be heavily capitalized by draining and penetrated by expensive
artificial communications. The supply of good water is rare and
capricious. The Weald was, therefore, the great obstacle between the
south coast and the Thames. Because it was such an obstacle the Romans
drove their first great road from the main harbour of Portsmouth to
the capital round westward by Winchester, Silchester, and Staines; but
they needed a supplementary road, for two reasons. First, they wanted a
short cut to serve Portsmouth and the lesser inlets collectively called
Chichester Harbours (Bosham appears to have been an official port
throughout the Dark Ages); and, secondly, they wanted to be able to
reach quickly for purposes of travel and commerce the very fertile sea
plain of which Chichester is the capital. Therefore did they construct
the most purely military and most direct of all the Roman roads in the
island, the Stane Street. It ran from the east gate of Chichester in
a direct line to the crossing of the Arun at Pulborough, with a camp
at the end of this first day’s march to defend it; thence it made in
another great straight limb for the shoulder of Leith Hill, with a camp
at the second crossing of the upper Arun at Romans Wood; thence by a
series of much shorter limbs to the third camp at Dorking; thence over
the Mole at Burford Bridge and over the Epsom Downs past the racecourse
to the fourth camp at Merton, and thence to London Bridge--a five-march
stage.
In the Dark Ages the Weald became impassable again, the causeway on the
Arun marshes broke down and was swallowed up. The bridge at Alfoldean
broke down, and Sussex was isolated from the north.
Further, with the absence of any exit for direct and rapid
communication between Chichester and London the meaning went out of the
road between Dorking and Merton. Merton was close enough to London to
give the road vitality again, and between this and London it was never
lost. It runs to this day, and is the main line of tramways upon which
people still travel from Streatham and Balham to the Borough. It is
only deflected at the end by the intricacies of the Southwark streets.
Now, if you look at the present scheme of roads surrounding this
original Roman core they look at first as though they had no connection
with it, but when you examine them in detail the way in which they grew
up out of the Roman road is clear. Every deflection can be accounted
for, and the development of the local systems from the original
continuous backbone becomes evident.
[Illustration: _Part II_, Sketch XI]
First you have all Sussex south of Pulborough Marsh, and again south of
Alfoldean Bridge, isolated.
What happens?
There remained no reason for using the Stane Street as a continuous
line. It now led nowhere. When it meets with its first great obstacle
going north, the woods near Eartham, it makes for the next centre of
population--Petworth, where there was a fortified post going back to
some very early time. The wood deflects the road towards Duncton Hill
(I have quoted this example in my section on vegetation in the earlier
part of this essay). Beyond Petworth it had little function, so this
first ten miles of the Stane Street becomes the parent of the local
Chichester-Petworth road which grew up out of it, leaving a gap where
the woods intervened. Next you must note the local roads beyond this
gap. Pulborough Bridge probably survived, but the causeway could not
be kept up, or was ill kept up. In its original line, when it served
the camp at Hardham, it ran over a wide part of the marsh. In the Dark
Ages men picked their way over the narrowest part of the marsh and then
followed the hard bank above the Arun-flooded levels, linking up the
villages as far as Bignor. But there the use of the road ended. The
“potential” was from Pulborough to the nearest seaport, which was then
Arundel. And all that the Roman road did in this section was to throw
out this bow or curve of lateral road eastward between Pulborough and
Bignor, the line of main local travel being diverted from Bury over
Arundel Hill and so seaward.
In the section north of Pulborough the Roman road still served a few
scattered homesteads in the Dark Ages up to Billingshurst at least, but
again it led nowhere because the bridge at Romans Wood was broken down
and the high weald beyond was a mass of scrub growing on stiff clay.
The road petered out and began again with harder going near Ockley.
But it was not used over the shoulder of Leith Hill, because that
trace subserved no local use and yet compelled the traveller to steep
gradients. Travel was deflected round the base of the hills to Dorking,
linking up the more populated part where the water springs were. This
new trace, growing up obviously out of the Roman road, opens up to the
eastward for a mile or two of the way until it joins up in the heart
of Dorking itself, where the third camp was, out of which the town of
Dorking has grown, and where in the churchyard the Roman road can still
be traced passing through. From Dorking onwards one might have imagined
that it would have survived all the way to London. Why did it not do so?
It was a matter of gradients and of centres of population. In the
Dark Ages, when there was little necessity for making a direct line
between Dorking and London--no continual marching of great Roman
forces, no conveying of orders from a centralized government--men took
the easier way. They abandoned the up-and-down of the spur of land
lying immediately north of Dorking and went round by its base to save
the trouble of the little climb. They used the Roman bridge (which
apparently survived at Burford), but the very steep leap up on to the
Epsom Downs they abandoned, especially as the further progress of the
road over the chalk connected no centres of population. The way curled
round by Michelham and Leatherhead and came round to Epsom--all places
suitable for centres of population with low water levels and no heavy
gradients in between. The Roman road on the high waterless chalk above
was left abandoned.
What happened between Epsom and Merton has been already described.
There is only one divergence in this section, which is where the
road of the Dark Ages deflected somewhat to the left and was used
to avoid the low wet ground below Clapham Common. For the rest it
maintained its use.
[Illustration: ERMINE STREET NEAR ROYSTON]
(3) The best example I know, as I have said, of a Roman road the
evidences of which have nearly disappeared, but round which local roads
have grown and which can still be identified as the core of these, is
the short cut between Penkridge and Chester. It is very puzzling why
the Roman road should here have disappeared. It is perhaps best to be
explained by the continual fighting between the Eastern and the Western
troops, which must have ravaged all that country between the first of
the raids and the full conversion of England to civilization and the
Christian religion which was the work of the seventh century.
But, whatever the cause or circumstances, the phenomenon is quite
plain. The local roads developed for purely local purposes on either
side of the original Roman line, and that line, since there is no
longer required any continuous traffic along it, disappears.
vi
(4) Lastly, we have the Peddars Way. It has presented a very difficult
problem to all historians, but I think a solution is to be guessed
at, though not to be too strongly affirmed. The Peddars Way runs as a
main artery right through Suffolk and Norfolk. Its origin was clearly
Stratford St. Mary’s, on the southern edge of Suffolk, and it was built
to link up that water crossing with some harbour now disappeared on the
Wash. Its use has dropped out; local roads are only concerned with it
in a short section, and men argue thus: why was it ever made, and, if
made, why did it fail as a means of communication? I think the answer
is military. The Peddars Way never linked up any centres of population.
It goes through land where men have never built cities or even large
villages. But what it would do as a military road, what I think it was
designed to do, was the holding of all that solid block of East Anglia
which apparently exactly corresponds with the territory of the Iceni.
For we must remember, as I have said above, that our county system
is probably Roman in origin, and most of it corresponds to tribal
divisions earlier even than the Roman administration. It is a point
that has often been denied, but those who deny it fail to remark the
analogy of the Continent, the evidence of Kent, Sussex, Dorsetshire,
and Essex, apart from the striking list of that mass of counties
which all centre round a Roman town or a town grown up as the suburb
of a Roman town--Leicestershire, Worcestershire, Huntingdonshire,
Gloucestershire, etc.
The Peddars Way cuts right across East Anglia through its very centre,
so that a chain of stations along it commands the whole territory. It
further divides that territory into two--a territory which was the
scene of a great revolt in the beginning of the Roman occupation. It
continued to subserve a certain function to the very end, because from
it as a base one can radiate to threatened points upon the coast when
the pirate raids began in the middle of the Roman occupation.
When, in the Dark Ages, the whole island fell into districts, fighting
one against the other, each with its local king, the whole a chaos and
a welter, the Peddars Way entirely lost its meaning and value. There
was no longer one government or one army. There was no need for the
controlling of a subject populace, for the populace had ceased to be
subject save to its local chiefs. Such few men as still came over the
North Sea were not, until the Danish invasion, enemies, and as the
Peddars Way served no line of villages or of towns it fell completely
out of use.
There is one very curious puzzle about this famous road, and which has
never been settled, and to which I offer no more than an attempt at
solution. We are fairly certain that one of the great Roman stations
for the repelling of raids lay at Brancaster, upon the Wash. Yet
the Peddars Way does not make for Brancaster, but for a point about
four miles to the east along the coast. Why is this? There has been
suggested a ferry across the Wash, but that hypothesis cannot be
entertained. The distance is one of eleven miles over very difficult
water, and leading to no important district. We have, I think, the key
to the position in the presence of a harbour which has been destroyed
by erosion. All that coast has been modified perpetually during the
last two thousand years through the vagaries of the sea. Of the great
harbours of the Middle Ages, Dunwich to the south has disappeared,
Orford is blocked and is decayed. Yarmouth, on the other hand, has
grown up from a shingle bank into a town, and Breydon Water has changed
from an estuary into a land-locked broad. I cannot doubt that there
was some harbour at the end of the Peddars Way which the sea has
destroyed. Brancaster, the military post, was established near it, but
not actually within its confines, for some local reason, the character
of which we have now lost. We must remember that Brancaster is a late
fortification and the Peddars Way was settled before Brancaster came
into being.
vii
We must imagine this process of gradual local development continuing
uninterruptedly throughout the Dark Ages, the Roman roads serving local
purposes gradually ceasing to have continuous use save for the Fosse
Way, the Watling Street, and one or two of the other greater roads: the
local ways, very ill maintained, growing up out of the Roman system.
When the Dark Ages came to an end, and when the mediaeval civilization
succeeded it--that is, in the five great centuries between the Conquest
and the Reformation--this new system of local ways was hardened and
became the national system which we still inherit.
When I say the mediaeval system I mean the system which must have
had its origin, or, at any rate, its mainspring, in the twelfth
century, and which substituted for the use of the decayed Roman roads
a competing system of roads no longer identical with them, though
originally based upon them as a framework.
Here again we have no direct records, but we have indirect evidence
sufficient for our purpose. The twelfth century was the moment when
civilization was arising again everywhere throughout the west, and
nowhere more strongly than Britain. That was true of the architecture
and town life and education, and of letters, and, we may justly
presume, of the road system as well.
Again, from that date onwards you begin to get sites unconnected with
the old Roman road system, and their number increases rapidly as the
Middle Ages advance. Again, we learn from any amount of evidence the
comparative rapidity of travel after the Dark Ages, and that even over
roads which certainly were not Roman. We can trace it in the marching
of armies, the transport of grain and other provisions, and the travel
of individuals.
We may take almost any district in England and discover for ourselves
by a little study how the mediaeval road system, which continued to
develop until the change in its use by the turnpike, grew up out of the
Roman Road, and we can thus show how the Roman road system is at the
foundation of all our English ways.
There was no regular plan or order in all this. Local usage, local
necessity developed the tortuous network, and has left its stamp upon
the face of England.
CHAPTER XIII WHEELED TRAFFIC AND THE MODERN ROAD
_The Transition from the Horse to the Vehicle: The Distinctive Mark
of the Later Seventeenth Century: The Turnpike System and the Making
of the Modern English Road: The Underlying Idea of the Turnpike and
its Effects for Good and Ill: Its Decline and the First Emergence of
the General National System in 1810: Thomas Telford and His Work:
The Movement Connected with the Name of Macadam: The Coming of the
Locomotive and its Results on Canals and Roads._
i
The next great change came with the change in local government to
which I have alluded. It gave us the first Acts of Parliament, taking
the place of the old customary upkeep of the roads, but acting, oddly
enough, at a period during which the road was declining everywhere.
Even the civil wars did little to amend what had become a badly decayed
scheme of communication.
One of the reasons for this was that the great arm of the civil wars
was the cavalry, and cavalry is not tied to roads as infantry is.
Another and better reason was the comparatively small numbers engaged.
The civil wars loom large in our political history because they marked
the destruction of the monarchy and the beginning of aristocratic
government, but in military history they are no very great affair: a
sort of local epilogue to the Thirty Years’ War and the great religious
struggle upon the Continent.
What _did_ make a difference was the sudden increase of wheeled traffic
with the end of the seventeenth century.
There has been a great deal of exaggeration in this matter. Sundry
historians have written as though wheeled traffic were unknown until
very modern times. That, of course, is nonsense. But the distinctive
mark of the later seventeenth century and early eighteenth was the
gradual substitution of ordinary passenger traffic by wheel instead of
on horseback. The public vehicle comes in much at the same time as the
private vehicle, developed by the new great landlord class for their
convenience in their country rounds. As has been the case with the
internal combustion engine in our own time, the instrument preceded
the change in the road. As wheeled traffic for passengers becomes more
common you get increasing complaints on the condition of the roads
and increasing motive for improving them, and out of that grows the
_turnpike system_, which, with its later development, has carried us on
to the present day.
[Illustration: TOLL HOUSE ON THE BATH ROAD]
ii
THE TURNPIKE SYSTEM, by a process which originated in small beginnings
and ended with a revolution in general communications, made the modern
English Road.
It sprang from that character in the economic society of Britain
(closely connected with the new aristocratic government of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) whereby, in the destruction of
the monarchy, individual action became supreme.
The same force which had forbidden great national roads to rise, to
wit, the absence of a central all-powerful authority (such as was the
French monarchy just over the Channel, with its great roads planned
and constructed throughout the whole realm on one model)--which had
maintained local diversity and local usage and kept back the proper
development of the road--made for a change which should be due to
private enterprise.
We all know of what value this individualist and aristocratic economic
system was to the expansion of English trade overseas, and how it is
at the foundation of what is to-day called “the Empire.” In domestic
affairs it meant, of course, the sacrifice of the interests of the
community to a comparatively small wealthy class, but that did not
prevent this wealthy class from acting very efficiently under the
opportunity for gain within its own sphere. The mass of Englishmen
became, and have remained, impoverished, but the total wealth of the
country and its population have vastly increased.
The idea of the turnpike was to give a small body of capitalists the
right to exploit certain sections of road. They would improve the
surface and broaden the gauge where necessary, etc., but they would
put up gates where they could charge for the passage of all and sundry
and thus earn the interest upon their money. They had also powers to
borrow. They had certain powers for using the public rates, etc., and
in general, through this system, the roads of the country were more and
more given over to what we call to-day capitalist exploitation: for
although very often the sections of road thus exploited were short they
formed an interruption to general travel.
Popular resentment against such an innovation was, of course, bitter,
especially when it extended to large areas. There were periods of riot
in which the toll-gates were destroyed, and there was something like
a little civil war in the matter in South Wales, but the interests of
the wealthier class were supreme, the populace was suppressed, and the
system continued. It also vastly extended.
While it had the social disadvantages just mentioned, it had the
economic advantage of creating bit by bit longer and longer sections
of really good road up and down the country. To the turnpike system we
owe that development of the English roads which made English coaching
and gave us, in the generation before and during the Napoleonic wars,
on the whole, the best system of local communications in Europe, though
we still grievously lacked _continuous_ national communications between
distant centres.
iii
The date to which must be referred the great change in this
respect--the date from which we must count the growth of general
national communications continuous throughout the island--is the year
1810. The turnpike system did indeed die slowly and only much later.
It lingered on to well within living memory, and those who are curious
to watch the rise and decay of institutions may even argue that some
relics of it remain among us still. But in practice 1810 is the date of
the first experimental change which was ultimately to produce the road
system of to-day.
If we consider the use and character of the Road, its texture and
appearance, its effect upon the landscape, its connection with society
as distinct from the legislation connected with it, 1810 is much
more of a pivotal date than such dates as 1555 or 1822, which mark
the political changes in the statutory powers of dealing with roads.
Already stage coaches driven from the box, and every year increasing
the rate of travel, had been upon the road for a generation--for
twenty-six years; and already great lengths of turnpike trust roads
had come to a sufficient excellence of surface to permit travel at an
average rate over those branches of ten miles an hour. But, as I have
said, there was not as yet _one continuous piece of road designed to
connect two important termini, of equal value throughout, and ordered
in all its length towards that one end of making equable and rapid
transit possible between the two extremities_. That is the point. The
thing had not existed in this island (save in the “four Regal Ways”)
since the breakdown of the Roman central government in the fifth
century.
What happened in 1810, and what makes it such a memorable date, is
the appointment, under the pressure of the Postmaster-General, of a
stonemason who had risen to the practice of road engineering--Thomas
Telford--to the overlooking of the Holyhead Road.
The initiative came from the Post Office Department: the administrative
and engineering genius came from Telford. Incidentally, we should
remark, as one of the innumerable examples of unforeseen and
exceedingly important side developments in history, the fact that this
great revolution in British roads ultimately derived from Pitt’s Act
of Union with Ireland, which was already nine years old. It was the
necessity of communication between London and Holyhead, and especially
of postal communication, which did the business.
Telford had been in the employment for some years past of the Highland
Roads Commission. He had therefore proved his capacity, and from it he
was appointed to a Government position in the re-establishment of the
Holyhead Road after the affair had been examined by a Parliamentary
Committee in this year (1810). It was not only Telford’s skill, it
was still more his energy and intense application to detail which
wrought the change. His nominal masters were ten Commissioners and
three Ministers at their head; his real chief was Parnell, later
Lord Congleton. But it was Telford, by his ceaseless travelling and
investigation and overlooking of everything, who pushed the thing
through.
The whole distance to be reorganized was one of 194 miles. Of this
the larger part, 109 miles, fell under seventeen English Trusts; the
remaining 85 miles were under six Welsh Trusts, the latter with far
less local traffic to provide them with income, and, it would seem,
also of less general efficiency.
Telford’s task may be appreciated when we remember that the new policy
gave him no direct statutory power to override trusts. Each one had to
be argued with, bargained with, and persuaded. This at least was true
of the English Trusts and the six Welsh Trusts. The Commissioners, or
rather Telford and Parnell, despaired. The trusts controlled so very
much the larger part of the trajectory that it was necessary in some
way to dispose of them.
More than seven years passed before this could be done. But Parnell
succeeded in persuading them, by industrious attendance before various
meetings, to accept an Act of Parliament which cast them all into
one body of fifteen, and they were, by statute, compelled to employ
a professional civil engineer, who was, of course, Telford. The 85
remaining miles were taken over, scientifically divided into sections
under assistant surveyors and foremen below them, and by 1830, after
the labour of twenty years, the whole thing was done. A suspension
bridge had been thrown over the Menai Straits, Holyhead Harbour had
been improved. These, with the reconstruction of the road, had drawn
from Parliament grants of three-quarters of a million. From that moment
there existed at least one complete road in Britain, uniting two
definite termini and everywhere making possible the rapid travel at the
time. The tolls were, of course, maintained. Their cost was increased
by one-half. The anomalies, complexities, and corruptions involved in
the system were no more done away with on the Holyhead Road than on any
other, except in so far as a closer supervision helped to alleviate
things and in so far as amalgamation of trusts also helped. But, at any
rate, there was at least one continuous and excellent road from the
capital to a distant port, and we have the date 1830 for the completion
of the great task which was begun in 1810.
iv
Contemporary with this first great complete model of a road in England
went the movement connected with the name of Macadam. It was far less
of a revolution than has since been represented. The Continent had
made experiments similar to those of Macadam long before him, and what
he effected over here was no more than an improvement, for it was not
wholly novel.
The real point of Macadam in our road history is his intense devotion
to his task. He was one of those men who, having seen clearly a
principle which others have also seen, and which, indeed, should
be obvious, so emphasizes it and represents it that he brings it
into practice where other men would have abandoned it. The obvious
principle which Macadam grasped and reiterated to weariness was the
principle that perpetual legislation and experiment in the type of
vehicle best suited to a road was of less importance than the surface
and weight-carrying capacity of the Road. Get the best road you
can first, and after that discuss the traffic along it. In certain
technical details posterity has criticized it--in its insufficient
allowance of foundation, for instance; in its postulate that a
well-drained natural surface was sufficient to bear anything in the
way of road traction. Such criticism can only be conducted by experts,
but it is certainly true that Macadam transformed the surface of the
English Road, not perhaps by any special or novel conception of his own
either in the material or in the sizes of that material, but rather in
the unique insistence with which he carried on his whole task.
Just as the Post Office had been the Government department for using
Telford, so the Board of Works was the Government department backing
Macadam.
These two men between them, and these two departments between them, had
remade the English Road, and the system was fairly launched towards
such a change as would perhaps have given us a completely transformed
road system, the value of which we should have appreciated when the
new traffic of the internal combustion engine presented us with the
problems of the present day.
For instance, Telford himself had suggested--and there was nearly
achieved--a reformed stretch of the Great North Road between
Peterborough and York on a straight line, avoiding the windings of
the old trace, and twenty miles shorter: worthy to rank in every way
with the great roads of the Continent. This, had it been realized,
might well have proved only the first of a great number of similar
constructions, until we should have had all the great centres of
England united in the same fashion and a habit of broad, straight,
and excellent roads established. Unfortunately, a great historical
accident intervened to sidetrack the whole business. It was an example
of the way in which the advantages of spontaneity and inventiveness,
making normally for the benefit of the community as a whole, will, if
there is no central direction, do incidental hurt which has later to
be repaired, if at all, at great expense of energy. The reason we have
to-day the innumerable narrow winding roads of England, the lack of any
general system, the absence of any system of good roads from London to
the ports (to this day half the exits from London are blocked by absurd
“bottle necks,” the most notorious of which, of course, is that on the
West road, which is now at last being remedied), is that the English
genius produced the locomotive.
v
Stephenson’s great revolution was begun in 1829. The great Holyhead
Road was completed in 1830. The coincidence of dates is significant.
England developed immediately an immense system of railways. Not only
was she twenty years ahead of the rest of the world in the business,
but she alone, for a long time, could produce railways. The railways
on the Continent had to be built often by English engineers and always
upon an English model. The transformation which this effected in the
national life was so rapid that it warped judgment. Men began to talk
as though the road would fall out of use. It was the same sort of
exaggeration as led people about ten years ago to tell us that shortly
horses would no longer be seen in the streets of London or even on the
country roads.
The introduction of the railway had two deplorable effects upon the
economic life of England, each of which was grave, and one of which we
must, if we can, immediately remedy on peril of decline. Neither of
them can be remedied save at a new expense of energy: (1) It killed the
canals, (2) It killed all the schemes for widening, straightening, and
rebuilding the national road system; while upon the Continent, and
especially in France, the great broad, straight roads of the eighteenth
century formed the model continuously applied, so that the most recent
examples to-day are in the same tradition as those of two hundred years
ago and yet amply fulfil their function. Here the whole story of our
roads from the middle and the end of the nineteenth century and on to
the beginning of this century is the story of improving the surface
while keeping to the old winding and narrowness. Here and there we
have had extensions of space which create really new roads in the
neighbourhood of towns, especially as exits from towns, but nowhere
as yet have we a complete scheme for the remodelling of a road in the
fashion whereby, a century ago, the great Holyhead Road was remodelled.
CHAPTER XIV THE FUTURE
_A New Vehicle Compelling us to Make New Roads: Arterial Roads for the
New Traffic: The Five Necessities of these Roads: Ways and Means: A
National Fund: Taxation according to Fuel Used: The Question of the
Land Contiguous to the New Roads._
i
We have come to the point where some great initiative is imperatively
needed for the re-establishment of communications corresponding to
modern needs.
But while all feel this, no one as yet has, I believe, thought out the
main elements of the scheme. We cannot remake all the ways of England,
nor even change the main part of them to suit the new kind of traffic.
We have been “taken aback,” as they say in sailing, and “caught all
standing.” Our charming, narrow, hedged, tortuous lanes, our haphazard
county communications, even our main ways, have suddenly proved
grossly inapt to the new traffic; and our towns, unaffected by the
great Continental movement (which I have heard called the “boulevard”
movement) of the middle nineteenth century, are in the same case. If we
cannot--and obviously we cannot--remodel the whole thing, what _can_ we
do?
So far as I can see, we can proceed upon certain main principles, with
which I propose to conclude.
I distinguish between the problem of the street traffic in the towns,
with which I am not concerned, and that of the main road. As it seems
to me, what we need is, and that immediately, a certain number--quite
a large number--of great arterial roads very broad and straight with a
special surface, confined to motor traffic alone.
These, including circular ways round the towns to avoid the present
unnecessary and congested passage through the towns, would act as
ditches act in a fen. They would gather towards them the main streams
of traffic, as such ditches gather towards them and drain the moisture
of a fen. That having been done, the remaining difficulties upon the
by-roads would be cut down to a quarter or less of their present evil.
I will develop this.
ii
It is clear that our new vehicle, the internal combustion engine, will
compel us to new roads, just as the vehicular traffic for passengers
at the beginning of the seventeenth century compelled the creation of
the turnpike. Far-seeing men grasped this the moment that the internal
combustion engine appeared in our lives. I have myself heard the
details of an idea which very nearly materialized and which was on the
point of becoming law--an experimental road to be driven from one great
centre to another, to be reserved entirely to the new traffic and to
be made specially for these new necessities. Private interest defeated
the scheme, and in my opinion that defeat was a very bad thing for
the general development of the country. But though the first attempt
failed, the very fruitful and sensible idea underlying it is worth
describing.
A very few great arterial roads joining up the main centres of
population would have far more effect upon our present difficulties
than their mere mileage would seem to warrant. There could be no
question of stopping the new form of traffic upon the ordinary roads
remaining, which in length might be twenty or fifty times those of the
new roads. But it would be of such advantage for long-distance travel
to use the great arteries that at the expenditure of greater mileage
_you would find the new traffic seeking them at the nearest point upon
one side and clinging to them for as long as possible_.
Suppose, for the sake of hypothesis, a simple case. Suppose a great
arterial road to be built joining the heart of London and the heart
of Birmingham in a straight line: it would pass just by Tring and
Buckingham and then on through the gap between Leamington and Warwick.
A man living at Windsor and desiring to reach Coventry, and using the
new method of fast travel, would seek this main road at its nearest
point and leave it again at the nearest point to his terminus. It would
be a less picturesque, but a much safer and quicker way of doing his
business. It would add a dozen miles to his total trajectory, but it
would save a much more than corresponding amount of strain and expense
of energy in following the series of narrow and winding roads most
nearly connecting the two points. The same would be true of any other
trajectory not directly served by the new roads. The advantage of safe
and rapid travel on a first-class surface of very broad gauge, free of
horses and pedestrians, would make people take a “Z” to include as much
as possible of such a road rather than cling to the shorter line.
The final effect would be the relief of congestion upon the typically
narrow winding roads which cover the surface of England. They would
be relieved, in the case we have quoted, not only of the great mass
of urban traffic between London and Birmingham; they would be also
relieved of the very considerable local traffic--not entirely relieved,
of course, but relieved in a proportion large enough to make a very
sensible difference to modern communications.
Though the thing still remains pure theory and though the political and
social obstacles to it are very serious indeed (any trajectory you name
in this crowded island would destroy much which all our people--let
alone the owners--love to preserve), yet it is worth while to analyse
the conditions of such roads, because only thus can we establish the
main rules which, under whatever modification, must ultimately govern
the change that should come.
iii
We need five things:
(1) A very strong foundation, upon which depends--
(2) A permanently good surface;
(3) The avoidance of sudden curves (in which is included the avoidance
of obstacles hiding the approaches to any curve);
(4) Great width;
(5) A fifth point, almost as important as these first four, the
necessity for the providing of crossings. The great arterial road
reserved to the internal combustion engine would be, for people who
had to cross it, an obstacle a great deal worse than a railway. Our
forefathers protected in all sorts of fashions the road crossing the
railway at a level crossing--by insisting on gates and an attendant,
by compelling the road, if possible, to pass above the railway upon a
bridge, and so on. More attention was paid to this point in England
than in any Continental country, and we benefit by the results of
that care to-day. But the arterial road would be far more dangerous.
It would have a continual stream of very rapid vehicles in both
directions, and the scheme had better not be envisaged at all if the
cost of providing for cross traffic is not faced. The problem is by
no means an easy one. It means, necessarily, embankments for bridges,
or tunnelling, at _every_ crossing, and these will have to be more
numerous than the road crossings: they will have to serve rights of
way and private approaches as well. I think it will be found, when
the scheme is first attempted, that this obstacle will prove the most
serious of all.
It is for experts in the science (of which I know nothing, and allusion
to which I have therefore kept carefully out of this essay) to decide
what these details of surface, width, foundation, etc., mean in
practice: their expense and character.
They know from experiments made what materials and foundation may be
best, what minimum width suggests itself (I have occasionally heard
the minimum width of 100 feet suggested); but whatever the detailed
practice, when the experts set to work on the new motor roads it must
be with these five main provisions before them. There are minor
considerations. You have, with the new traffic, to consider a gradient
somewhere between the old road gradient and the railway gradient.
There, again, it is for experts to determine what the maximum useful
gradient should be. The trouble in our present road system is that in
any trajectory you will have one or two places where the new traffic
is perilous. There are even exceptional points in England where it is
almost prohibited by excessive gradients.
Another point in connection with such great arterial roads is the
capital one of exit from the great urban centres. It is of little
use to relieve traffic, to diminish the strain and expense of energy
connected with it, and the peril, and all the rest of it, between two
urban centres if the exit and entry from and into each are blocked.
Now, the trouble here is a purely economic trouble. Urban sites have
a special value, even in the outskirts. They are not, as a rule,
sites to which anyone is attached, but the cost of buying them up
has made reformers hesitate to drive the arterial ways which are so
urgently needed. Once your great road has reached the inner ring of a
large town its traffic disperses and there is no need for continuing
its dimensions. But the new system can be of no real service if, on
the approach to a great town, we retain the narrows and guts which
disfigure, for example, the western road out of London. It might even
be said that from the political standpoint it would be better to begin
with the assurance of good exits and entrances than with the planning
of the Road as a whole.
At present we have, in the particular case of London, one, and only
one, good entry. That is the entry from the north-west. All the others
are hopelessly congested.
iv
There will occur in connection with all this discussion of the
necessity for a modern change in the Road the point of ways and means.
Somebody must pay. How shall the payment be made? It has already become
a matter of politics. Pretty well all that can be said upon it has
been said, but as yet there is no agreement. I would maintain (very
tentatively, hardly as more than a suggestion) that we shall never get
a satisfactory settlement until we found ourselves upon three main
principles:
(1) The making of a few great arteries, coupled with the making of
proper exits from the great towns and of by-ways round the urban
centres, is a national concern. You cannot, in the present state of
society, regard it as local, nor even as chiefly concerning the direct
users of the Road, for even these, who are apparently the people upon
whom the burden should most justly fall, develop by their travel the
district through which they pass.
I suggest, therefore, that you must start in this case with the
fundamental principle of a national fund, and a national fund not
proceeding from ear-marked receipts alone, but also drawn from general
taxes.
(2) The second principle which I should suggest is that in so far as
you tax travel for the purposes of this fund you should tax it not
by any complicated combination of weight, power, fuel, and so forth,
but through some one factor alone, otherwise you will be perpetually
remodelling your scheme and as perpetually causing a grievance.
Now, the most obvious factor is fuel. One way and another, the fuel a
man uses for his machine is the nearest test to the use he makes of
the Road. A heavy weight needs more fuel, great speed and consequently
greater wear and tear needs more fuel, and greater horse-power needs
more fuel. The curves are, of course, not parallel. You can get equal
speeds between heavy and light for nearly the same consumption of fuel.
One type of machine will do more harm to the road surface for every
gallon of fuel than another, and so on. But if you want to have easy
revenue simplicity in taxation is vital: surely the taxation of fuel
is the simplest and most direct method. It is easily collected. It
does away with all chance of confusion. It can be imposed at source
and in bulk, and it has that invaluable quality which has been often
lost sight of in the last two generations: that it is paid gradually
and at will and yet paid inevitably. So long, of course, as a false
distinction is maintained between the commercial and the private use of
vehicles you will have gross anomalies and injustice. To draw the line
between economic waste in the use of the modern internal combustion
engine and what is part of the general and normal life of the community
is impossible. It would be better were the distinction to be wholly
removed. We do not ask a man who takes a ticket from Birmingham to
London whether he is going for fun or folly, for business or necessity.
Men pay the same price for the ticket whatever the motive of their
journey. It is an absurd anomaly as things now stand that the man who
travels in a little Ford car from one town to another with, say, two
members of his family--and travels therefore much more cheaply than
he could upon the railway--should pay the rent of a house for the
privilege of having his car, while the heavy vehicle of a tradesman
who is distributing advertising matter--sheer economic loss to the
community--should tear up the road for nothing.
(3) The grant for the new roads should include the purchase, if not
of a continuous belt along each side, at least of blocks of land,
especially in the neighbourhood of existing communications, near
railway stations, near villages or other centres now established, etc.
The price to be determined by arbitration upon the old price basis
before the scheme of the Road was developed. If this were done the
great difficulty for _certain_ purposes (not residential, but other) of
using these sites would accrue to the public purse and would gradually
relieve the cost of construction.
This project touches, of course, upon one of those political theories
which have been debated, as have all political theories in our time,
with too much violence and with too much generality. If it be contended
that we here introduce the principle of the “single tax” and of the
nationalization of land, I can only say that nothing is further either
from my thoughts in this essay or from my general politics--as any
number of my public pronouncements suffice to prove. But we have here
a very special case. These new roads, if we drive them (as we ought to
drive them soon) between the main points of the island, will, unless
some such scheme is adopted, make a direct and immediate present of
millions to the chance owners of land upon their trajectory. It would
be a gross case of actual endowment at the expense of the community.
Conversely, the reservation of land on either side of the way for
the purpose of helping to pay for the new scheme would be of direct
advantage to the community and of disadvantage to no one.
At any rate, just as we must soon have a reform of the road system or
suffer decline in our communications and therefore in our national
life, so we must soon settle a reform in the matter of road maintenance
and road taxation. For the new main arteries that should be built we
must depend upon the general resources of the community, while for
special taxes upon traffic we must establish as soon as possible a
simple and universal system.
I need not add, for it is obvious, that such a scheme of new roads
would involve a certain amount of individual hardship. It is impossible
to avoid that, but it is in the temper of this nation to compromise
closely and in detail upon all such things. Nor need it be added that
the scheme would have to proceed by trial and error, and could only be,
at first, tentative and applied experimentally to one or two chosen
trajectories. But I think that it is upon these lines that the problem
can be solved.
INDEX
ABBEVILLE, bridge at and road convergence, 25
ACT OF UNION (Pitt’s) and effect on the Holyhead Road, 187
ADUR, RIVER, crossing of at Bramber, 130
ALEXANDRIA, 70
ALFOLDEAN BRIDGE, 76, 153;
effect of breakdown of, 166;
and Stane Street, 167
ALPS, the, passes of, 44;
Roman roads in, 138
ANGEVINS, the, and Sussex, 132
ANTWERP, 31
ANTIOCH, 70
APENNINES, the, Roman roads in, 138
AQUILEA, 103
ARDENNES, the, Roman roads in, 138
ARMIES, necessity of road for, 74-6
ARTERIAL ROADS confined to motor traffic, need for, 195
ARTERIAL ROAD, example of a typical, from London to Birmingham, and
how used, 196-7
ARTERIAL ROADS, five essentials of, 198-200;
problem of exit from dense urban centres, 200-01;
suggested finance of, and legislation regarding, 201-5
ARUN, RIVER, effect of marshes of, 17-18;
lowest bridge over, at Arundel, 97;
crossed by the southern track, 130;
crossing of at Houghton, 130;
at Burgh Hill, 139;
at Romans Wood, 153, 166;
at Pulborough, 166
ARUNDEL, road from Pulborough to, 17, 18;
crossing of Arun at, 97, 99, 130
ARUNDEL HILL, 169
ASHURST, Roman road on sand at, 156
ATHENS, 70
AULUS PLAUTIUS, 104
AUTUN, 70
AVON, Bristol, the, and British trackways, 129
BALHAM and Stane Street, 167
BALKAN PENINSULA, the, political chaos due to decay of Roman trunk
roads, 76-7
BARI, road planning in, 58
BATH and the Fosse Way, 39
BEECH, woods, and chalk, 119
BELFORT, 44, 45, 46
BELGIUM, Roman road building in, 136
BERKSHIRE DOWNS, the trackway on, 120
BIGNOR and Stane Street, 138, 169
BILLINGSHURST and Stane Street, 169
BLACK DEATH, the, a date in English road history, 81-2
BLACKPOOL, a “reserve” town, 68
BOARD OF WORKS and macadam, 190
BORDEAUX, 31
BOROUGH, the, and Stane Street, 167
BOSHAM during the Dark Ages, 165
“BOULEVARD” movement, 194
BOULOGNE, harbour of, 73
BOUNDARY, road as a, 77;
instanced, 77-8
BRAMBER, causeway at, 18;
crossing of Adur at, 99, 130
BRANCASTER, Roman station at, and Peddars Way, 176
BREYDON WATER, change from estuary to a broad, 176
BRIDGE, the, and road development, 12;
building of at different periods, 22-3;
significance of term in some languages, 22-3;
cost of and effect, 22-3;
architecture of, 23;
function in making inland ports, 30-31;
marshes created by disrepair of, 65, 158-9;
at Cologne, 75;
lowest on river, effect of, on sea traffic, 96-7;
normal origin of, 20;
instanced at London, Cologne, Rouen, Isle of Paris, 21;
of piles, 21;
of boats, 21;
object of, 21-2;
high gradients of some, 23-4;
effect of change from pile to stone, 24;
convergence of roads towards, 25;
military importance of, 25;
payments of toll at, 26;
creation of a _nodal_ point at, 26-31;
on English roads, 89
BRIDGE HEAD, the term, 25
BRIGHTON, a “reserve” town, 68
BRINDISI, 70, 77
BRITAIN, its place in the Roman Empire, 113
BURFORD BRIDGE and Stane Street, 170
BURGH HILL, 139
BURGHLEY PARK, near Stamford, 154
BURY, 169
CAEN, bridge at, and road convergence, 25
CANTERBURY and Christianity, 70;
lowest bridge over Stour at, 97;
and Richborough, 98;
and Colchester, 103;
and the early trackways, 120, 121, 122;
as nucleus of Channel ports, 163
CHALK, road courses over, 34-5;
characteristics of, 119;
distribution in England, 119-20;
and the early trackways, 119-20, 130, 131
CHALONS, disuse of Roman road from Rheims to, 157
CHANNEL, English (_see_ English Channel)
CHESHIRE PLAIN, the, 128
CHESTER, terminal of north-west road, 70, 121;
Roman garrison town, 71;
road from to Penkridge, 72, 148, 161, 173;
bridge at, 97;
and early trackways, 129
CHICHESTER and Stane Street, 132, 139-40, 160, 166;
harbours and Stane Street, 132
CHILTERNS, the, early trackway on, 120
CHRISTIAN RELIGION, spread of, along Roman roads, 70;
in West Sussex, 153
CLAPHAM COMMON and Stane Street, 173
CLAY, effect of weather on, 11-12;
road courses over, 33;
Roman road-building on, 54;
in the Weald, effect of on communications, 131-2, 165;
and on West Sussex during Dark Ages, 153
CLIFTON GORGE, 129
CLIMATE, dampness of English, 105
COAST ROADS, features of on south coast of England, 98-9
COLCHESTER, 103;
trackway from London to, 122
COLOGNE, bridge at, 21, 29, 75;
Roman road from Paris to, 140
CONSTANTINOPLE, 77
COST, factor of in influencing number, size, and course of
roads, 56-60;
and the “strangling of communication,” 57
COTSWOLDS, the early trackway on, 120, 126
CRETE, 93
CYPRUS, 93
DAMASCUS, 70
DANES, the, in Sussex, 76
DARENTH, RIVER, 19
DARK AGES, the, use of Roman roads in, 147-8;
disappearance of sections of road during, 148-50;
breakdown of Roman river crossings during, 150-55;
Roman roads on Continent during, 156-7;
formation of disrepair of roads during, 158-9;
pirates’ raids during, 162-3;
disuse of Peddars Way in, 175;
and the growth of a local road system, 177
DEE, RIVER, bridge over, at Chester, 97
DEVON, roads along south coast of, 98, 138;
and the Fosse Way, 127;
and traffic during Dark Ages, 132
DORCHESTER (Oxon), bridge over Thames at, 102;
a wheat-growing centre, 128
DORKING and Stane Street, 166, 169-70
DORSET, trackway from Salisbury Plain to, 119;
derivation of name, 119;
and the Fosse Way, 127, 138;
and traffic during Dark Ages, 132
DOVER, Roman road to Richborough from, 98;
port for Roman troops, 103;
and London, 108;
early trackway through Canterbury to, 122;
Straits of (_see_ Straits of Dover)
DOWN BARN, near Andover, loop in road at, 138
DOWNS, Sussex, Wiltshire, &c., (_see_ under these names)
DUNCTON HILL and Stane Street, 167
DUNWICH and coastal erosion, 176
DURAZZO, road from Constantinople to, 77
DURHAM, 125
EARTHAM and Stane Street, 51, 167
EAST ANGLIA, Roman campaigns in, 102;
wheat growing in, 128;
and Peddars Way, 174-5
EDGWARE ROAD, site of trackway, 121
EGYPT, Roman trunk road from to Northumberland, 70
“ENCLOSURE,” effect of on roads, 90
ENGLAND, north and south, tendency of division into, 127-8
ENGLISH CHANNEL, the, and the Chalk ridges, 35, 126
ENGLISH ROADS on south coast, 62;
phases in the history of, 81-4;
characteristics of, 84-91;
and the French road compared, 84-6;
the, effect of political history on, 89-90;
and the Industrial Revolution, 90, 91;
the, “blindness” of, 92;
diversion and interruption of by waterways, 93-9;
effect of absence of strategy on, 99-105;
the, and dampness of climate, 105;
and diversity of soil, 105-6;
and increasing density of population, 106;
and legislation, 106;
the, effect of “potential” in its development, 107-9;
its five stages of development, 109-15;
British pre-Roman trackways, 110, 116-32;
the, and the Roman road system, 133-46;
during the Dark Ages, 147-77;
during the Mediaeval period, 177-8;
the, turnpike system of, 183-5;
1810 a pivotal date of, 185-6;
and Telford, 186-9;
improvement of surface of, by Macadam, 189-91;
effect of railroads upon, 192-3;
the, present need for new arterial roads (_q.v._), 194-5
EPHESUS, 70
EPSOM and Stane Street, 170
EPSOM DOWNS, 170
EPSOM RACE-COURSE, gap in Roman road between Merton and, 103, 149
ERITH, 121
EXE RIVER, importance of bridge at Exeter, 97-8;
trackway from to Humber, 117, 126, 129
EXETER and the Exe, 97-8
FAL, RIVER, 97
FARNHAM, road to in Wey Valley, 34;
to Guildford, 35;
and the Pilgrims’ Way, 131
FENS, the, former absence of main roads in, 53-4;
and trackway to the north, 125
FERRIES, use of by Romans, 102
FERRY, the, rather than ford precedes bridges, 20-21
FLEET, RIVER, 122
FLINT, use of in road construction, 55;
disadvantages to motor traffic, 55
FORD, and the bridge, 12, 20;
etymology of term, 19;
significance of as particle with “stone” and “street” in
place-names, 154
FOREST, influence of on course of road, 47-51;
of Mormal, 49;
in the tropics, 49;
and the railroad, 50;
and the Roman road, 50-51
FOSSE WAY, the, gradients of in Somerset, 38-9;
survival of early trackway from Exe to Humber, 126-7;
alluded to, 138;
use of in Dark Ages, 177
FOWEY, RIVER, 97
FRANCE, Northern, Roman roads in, 147-8
FRENCH ROAD, the, characteristics of, 84-6
FUEL, taxation of;
simplest method of collecting a road tax, 202-3
GABAS, valley of, 44
GAINSBOROUGH, bridge at, 97
GALLEGO, 44;
bridge over near Huesca, 24
GARGANO, isolation of by marsh, 15
GAUL, military roads of, 75-6;
Roman road building in, 136-7
GENOA, 67
GLASGOW, 31
GLOUCESTER, bridge of, 74;
function of in making an inland port, 30;
and the Severn crossing, 98;
road from Winchester to, 138
GRADIENTS of bridges, 23;
factors determining, 37-8;
of the Fosse Way in Somerset, 38-9;
of the roads in the Jura, 40;
and of the Vosges, 41;
of railroads, 41-2;
and the internal-combustion engine, 42;
at Lynton and Lynmouth, 42;
of the mountain pass, 43-6;
of English roads, 89;
straightness of Roman roads modified by, 138
GRANITE, use of in road construction, 54-5
GRAVEL, road courses over, 33-4;
example in Wey Valley, 34
GRAVESEND, 164
GRAYS, 121
GREAT NORTH ROAD, 50, 163, 191
GUILDFORD, 35, 130
HAMPSHIRE, chalk ridge of, 119;
ease of communication through, 130-31
HAMPSHIRE DOWNS, 130
HARDHAM and Stane Street, 139, 168
HASTINGS, 99
HAVRE, 74
HIGHLANDS ROADS COMMISSION and Telford, 187
HILLS, effect of on course of roads, 7-11
HIPPO, 103
HOG’S BACK, the, track over, 35
HOLLAND, roads of, 53-4
HOLMES, RICE, 98
HOLYHEAD ROAD, the, 71-2;
and Telford, 186-9;
completion of, 192-3
HOUGHTON, 130
HUESCA, bridge near, 24
HUMBER crossed by Roman road, 98, 102;
strategical consideration of, 100-01, 104;
trackway from Exe to, 117, 125-6, 129
HYDE PARK, 78
ICELAND, 93
ICENI, the, 174
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION, the, and the turnpike road, 90
INTERNAL-COMBUSTION ENGINE and gradients, 42;
makes a crisis in road building, 91;
and the need for new roads, 180, 195-6;
danger of crossing roads confined to, and solution of
difficulty, 198-9
IRELAND, Chester once the port for, 70
IRON INDUSTRY, the Wealden, 131
ISLAM, Western, influence of drift sand on roads of, 36
ITALY, marshes created by the Road in, 65
JERUSALEM, 70
JUNIPER HILL, near Dorking road, 149
JURA, the, gradients of roads in, 40
KENT, Roman road system in, 98;
Roman campaigns in, 102-3;
early trackways through, 120-29;
approach to London from, 121
LAMBETH, crossing of Thames at, 121;
and early trackway, 129
LANCASHIRE, effect of marsh on, 15;
plain of, 105, 126;
communication of with main trackway, 122
LANDES, the, scarcity of roads in, 53
LEA, RIVER, 122
LEATHERHEAD and Stane Street, 170
LEGISLATION, road, 60-61, 83, 106, 115, 186-8;
suggested for arterial roads, 201-5
LEITH HILL and Stane Street, 139, 166, 169
LEWES, lowest old bridge at, 97;
and the south coast road, 99
LINCOLN, 35
LINCOLNSHIRE, 125
LITTLEHAMPTON, swing bridge at, 98-9
LIVERPOOL, 129
LIVERPOOL STREET STATION, 68
LOCOMOTIVE (_see_ Railroad)
LONDON, crossing of Thames at, 15;
plans for rebuilding after Great Fire, 58-9;
growth of due to railroads, 67-8;
and spread of Christianity, 70;
potential between Dover and, 108;
centre of a series of trackways, 116-7, 120-2, 129;
and Stane Street, 132, 165-6;
and Watling Street, 140, 162-4;
road entries into, 201;
and Chester, 70, 72, 148;
lack of potential between, 164
LONDON BRIDGE, old, 21;
avoidance of high gradient and result, 24;
convergence of roads to, 25;
effect of on development of the city, 29;
function of in making an inland port, 30;
lowest old bridge on the Thames, 97;
and necessity of detours by Roman troops, 103;
advantage of site of, 122
LYME REGIS, 98
LYNTON AND LYNMOUTH, gradients at, 42
LYONS, double crossing of streams at, 32;
spread of Christian religion to, 70
MACADAM, 90;
and the improvement of road surface, 189-90
MAESTRICHT, 29
MANCHESTER, 122
MARBLE ARCH and Watling Street, 164
MARSH, effect of on course of roads, 7-10;
impassability of, 14-15;
divided Lancashire from Southern England, 15;
Thames estuarine, 15;
protected Venice, 15;
and Russian Church, 15;
and Russian Revolution, 15;
isolation of Gargano due to, 15;
effect of on course of road from Pulborough to Arundel, 17;
and Eastern and Western European civilisation, 15;
at Bramber, 18;
created by roads, 64-5;
Pinsk, 76-7;
of Thames estuary, 121-2;
effect of on Roman roads, 103-4;
formation of during Dark Ages by disrepair of Roman road at river
crossings, 158-9
MARSHES, disappearance of section of Roman roads in during Dark
Ages, 149-55
MATERIAL for road construction, influence of proximity on course and
number of roads, 14, 52-5;
diversity of in England, 105-6
MEDWAY, the, 19;
crossing of at Snodland, 130;
at Rochester, 130
MELUN, double crossing of streams at, 32
MENAI STRAITS, suspension bridge over, 188
MENDIPS, lead mines of, 98;
trackway to, 120
MERSEY, RIVER, marshes of, 122
MERTON, gap in Roman road between Epsom race-course and, 149;
and Stane Street, 166-70
MICHELHAM and Stane Street, 170
MIDDLE AGES, the, and bridge building, 22;
and the bridge as a place of toll, 26;
road system of, 114, 154, 177-8
MIDHURST, 131
MILITARY ROADS, Roman roads designed as, 133-7;
in U.S.A., 75;
on the Rhine, 75;
Alpine, 75
MOLE, RIVER, 19;
crossing of by Pilgrims’ Way, 131
MONTREUIL, 31
MOROCCO, effect of “nullahs” in, 36-7
MOSELLE, valley of, 44-6
MOTOR VEHICLE, the (_see_ Internal-combustion Engine)
NAPLES, 70
NERO, 102
NEWCASTLE, bridge of, 97;
function in making an inland port, 30
NEWHAVEN, swing bridge at, 99
_Nodal Points_, definition of, 26;
creation of by bridges, 26-9;
and military strategy, 29;
and markets, 29-30
_Nore Wood_ and Stane Street, 51
NORFOLK, trackway to, 125;
and Peddars Way, 174
NORMAN CONQUEST, the, and Sussex, 132
NORTHUMBERLAND, Roman wall in, end of road from Egypt, 70
NORTON PARK (Northants), example of marsh formation through
breakdown of culvert, 158-9;
map, 159
“NULLAHS,” effect of on road building, and example in Morocco, 36-7
OAKENGATES (Shropshire) and Watling Street, 164
OCKLEY and Stane Street, 153-69;
Battle of, 76
_Odds and Evens_, method of in planning long stretches of straight
road, 141-5;
sketch plans, 141-3
ORFORD, decay of, 176
OUSE, Sussex, crossing of at Lewes, 97, 130
PARIS, effect of bridge on development of, 29;
road planning of under Napoleon III., 58-9;
St. Lazare Station, 68;
Roman road from to Cologne, 140;
Island of, bridges of, 21
PARK LANE, site of trackway, 121
PARLIAMENT, 61, 106
PARNELL (Lord Congleton) and the Holyhead road, 187-8
PASSES, Alpine, roads due to military necessity, 75;
mountain, gradients of, 43-6;
of the Alps, 43;
Pass of Sallent, 44-5;
from Valley of Moselle to Belfort, 44-6
PEDDARS WAY, 161;
problem of its building, 173-4;
disuse during Dark Ages, 175;
its terminal point on the Wash, 175-6
PENKRIDGE, Roman road to Chester from, 72, 148;
local system developed from, 161;
disappearance of, 173
PENNINES, the, 105, 122;
trackways of, 125-6
PETERBOROUGH to York, Telford’s suggested reform of road from, 191
PETWORTH and Stane Street, 167
PHILADELPHIA, 31
PILGRIM’S WAY, the, 19, 131
PINSK MARSHES, the, 15, 76-7
PIRATES, raids of on England during Dark Ages, 162-3
PIXHAM, near Dorking, 130
PLYMOUTH SOUND, 97
POLISH and Russian civilisations, differences due to marsh, 15
POOLE, 129
POPULATION, effect of increasing density on road system, 106
PORTS, preservation of unsuitable by roads, 73;
instanced in Boulogne, 73-4
PORTSMOUTH, 99
PORTSMOUTH HARBOUR and Stane Street, 165
POST OFFICE and appointment of Telford, 186
“POTENTIAL,” definition of term, 107-8;
as applied to development of road system, 108-9;
change of instanced in Fosse Way, 126-7;
example of in Channel ports, 163-4
PRIMITIVE SOCIETIES and bridge building, 22-3
PUBLIC AUTHORITIES, powers of with regard to road construction, 60-61
PULBOROUGH, 17, 139;
and Stane Street, 166-9
_Pulse_, the, of a modern city, 68-9
PYRENEES, the Pass of Sallent in, 44;
Roman roads in, 138
RAILROAD, effect of gradients on construction of, 40-2;
and forest regions, 50;
and growth of London, 67-8;
effect of on development of road system, 192-3
READING, double crossing of streams at, 32
REFORMATION, THE, in England, economic effects of, 82-3
RHEIMS, disuse of Roman road to Chalons from, 157
RHINE, RIVER, 75
RICHBOROUGH and the crossing of the Wansum, 98
RIVER CROSSINGS, effect of on course of roads, example, 7-10;
general effect in England, 93-9;
on the Thames, 121;
and British trackways, 129-30;
fate of Roman roads at during the Dark Ages, 150-53;
instanced by Arun at Romans Wood, 153;
new crossings made, 153-4;
during Middle Ages, 154;
significance of particle “street” or “stone” in place-names at, 154;
instanced by Stamford (Northants), 154-5
ROAD, THE, purpose of, 4;
_trajectory_ or _course_ of, 4;
statement of formula for, 5, 6, 11-13;
effect of surface and gradient, 5;
weather and surface, surface and type of load, gradients and
character of traffic, 6;
difference between civilian and military needs, 6;
experimental growth on planning, 7;
instanced, 7-12;
design or growth, 11;
physical factors influencing course of, 12;
and the bridge, 21;
avoids a double crossing, 32;
influence of soils on course of, 33-7;
and the factor of gradient, 37-46;
influence of forest on course of, 47-51;
influence of intermittent vegetation on course of, 51-2;
proximity of material for, 52-5;
effect of cost on course of, 56-60;
the powers of public authorities regarding, 60-61;
influence of privileges upon, 61;
physical effects of in creating marsh, 63-5;
compels communication to follow it, 65-6;
and density of population, 66;
and the growth of towns, 67-8;
cause of differentiation between rural and urban life, 67-8;
and “canalization” of traffic, 70-76;
and the communication of ideas, 69-70;
instanced by spread of Christian religion, 70;
effects of decay or breakdown, 76-7;
use as a boundary, 77-8;
and idea of “potential,” 163-4
ROAD MAINTENANCE, 83-4
ROAD-MAKING, modern, conflict of principle regarding, 11
ROADS, arterial (_see_ Arterial roads);
convergence of at bridges, 25;
English (_see_ English roads);
military (_see_ Military roads);
Roman (_see_ Roman roads)
ROBERTSBRIDGE, 99
ROCHESTER, 31, 104, 121, 130;
and Watling Street, 140
ROMAN EMPIRE, extent of, 113
ROMAN ROAD, the, and forest, 50-51;
London to north-west, used as a boundary between Wessex and the
Danelagh, 78;
as a boundary in Westminster, 78;
recovered from parish boundaries, 78;
and the Humber, 98;
to lead mines of Mendips and the Severn, 98;
the, in Britain, military nature of, 134-5;
straightness of, 136-7;
straightness of, modified by existing tracks, 137;
by hilly country, 137-8;
by steep gradients, 138;
the planning of, in straight limbs, 138-140;
on hard sand, permanence of, 155-6;
the, divergent developments of our modern road system from, 160-61;
system, 95;
and streams, 97-8;
system of Kent, and the R. Wansum, 98;
system in England, 110-14;
map, 135
ROMAN ROADS, and spread of the Christian religion, 70;
in Balkan Peninsula, 76-7;
military basis of and resulting directness, 101-2;
and ferries, 102-4;
during Dark Ages, breakdown of river crossings on, 150-54;
instanced in Stamford, 154-5;
map, 155;
use of in Dark Ages, 147-8;
sectional disappearance of, 148;
instanced in Penkridge to Chester, Epsom race-course to
Merton, 148-9;
theories to account for disappearance, 149-50;
during the Dark Ages, sectional disappearance of on the
Continent, 156-7;
Watling Street, 72, 158, 161-4;
Stane Street, 132, 164-73;
Penkridge to Chester, 173;
Peddars Way, 173-6
ROMANS, THE, and bridge building, 22;
and the bridge as a place of toll, 26;
as road builders, 53-4;
and Wales, 71-2
ROMANS WOOD, crossing of Arun at, 153, 166, 169
ROME, 70, 77;
bridge of, and function in creating an inland port, 30
ROMNEY MARSH, 62
ROTHER, the, valley of, 131, 139
ROUEN, bridge at, 21, 29
RUSSIAN and Polish civilisations due to marsh, 15;
Orthodox Church, the, and the Pinsk Marshes, 15;
Revolution and the Pinsk Marshes, 15
RYE, 99
ST. ALBANS, 70
ST. CATHERINE’S CHAPEL, 35, 130
SALISBURY PLAIN and the chalk ridges, 35;
centre of a system of trackways, 117-20, 126
SALLENT, Pass of, 44
SAND, road courses over, 33;
drifts in Western Islam, 36;
in Sussex Weald, discontinuous nature of, and influence on iron
industry, 131-2;
hard, permanence of Roman roads cut in, 156
SARAGOSSA, bridge at, and road convergence, 25
SARDINIA, 93
SEAFORD, 99
SELSEY, 62
SEVERN, bridged at Gloucester, 74;
tunnel, 74;
use of in Middle Ages, 94, 129;
crossing by Roman road, 98;
strategical consideration of, 101;
estuary of, and the Romans, 102;
traffic over lower, in event of invasion, 104
SHIPLEY, 126
SHIRES, origin of, 119 (note), 174
SHOOTERS’ HILL, 121
SHOREHAM, 18;
bridge at, 98-9
SHREWSBURY and the Holyhead road, 71-3;
and Roman road London to Chester, 148
SICILY, 93
SILCHESTER, 103, 165
SNODLAND, 130
SOILS, effect of on course of road, 33-7;
diversity of in England, 105-6
(_see_ also under Chalk, Gravel, Clay, and Sand)
SOUTHAMPTON WATER and the trackway from Salisbury Plain, 119, 129;
traffic to during Dark Ages, 132
SPAIN, high-gradient bridges in, 24
STAGE COACHES, 186
STAINES, 102, 165
STAMFORD and the Great North Road, 50;
instance of new track replacing older one on river
crossing at, 154-5;
map, 155
STANE STREET, example of hindrance of vegetation at
_Nore Wood_ on, 51;
and the Wealden clay, 132;
curve on at Bignor Hill, 138;
example of Roman road as basis of modern local system, 160;
motive of, 164-5;
and the Weald, 165;
stages of, 166;
development of local systems from, 167-73;
the, Mr. H. Belloc’s references to, 139, 164
STEPHENSON and the railroad, 192
“STONE,” significance of, coupled with “ford” as a particle in
place-names, 154
STONEHENGE, 19
STOUR, bridge over at Canterbury, 97
STRAIGHTNESS OF ROMAN ROADS, characteristics, 134-7;
modifications of, 137-8;
planning, 138-40;
method of planning, 139-45
STRAITS OF DOVER, 19, 35, 105, 132
“STRANGLING OF COMMUNICATION,” 57
STRATEGY, MILITARY, and the English road system, 99-101;
(_see_ also Military roads)
STRATFORD ST. MARY’S, origin of Peddars Way, 174
STREATHAM and Stane Street, 167
STREATLEY, Thames valley at, 35
“STREET,” significance of, coupled with “ford” as a particle in
place-names, 154
SUFFOLK and Peddars Way, 174
SURFACE (_see_ under Soil, Chalk, Clay, Gravel, Sand)
SUSSEX, effects of decay of main road in, 76;
coast of, 98;
trackways through, 120;
Downs, 17, 130;
Weald, the, sand ridges in, 131;
iron industry in, 131;
clay in, 131;
isolation of from the North, 166;
West, isolation of during the Dark Ages due to breakdown of Roman
bridge over the Arun, 153;
coast, an example of road diversion due to waterways, 99;
and raids, 99
TELFORD, THOMAS, 90;
and the road from London to Holyhead, 186-9;
and the Great North Road, 191
TEMPLE BAR, 59
TEMPLE, SIR WILLIAM, 59
THAMES, RIVER, and its crossing at London, 29, 97, 121-2;
provides easy means of penetration into England, 94;
strategical considerations of, 100-01;
and the trackways, 117, 126;
and communication with south coast, 132, 165;
and Gravesend during the Dark Ages, 164;
estuary of, effect of marshes in, 15, 102-4
TIBER, RIVER, current of, 31
TILBURY, temporary bridge at during the Great War, 100;
hard approach to Thames at, 121
TOLL, payment of at bridges, 26
TOWNS, problem of road congestion in, 57-60;
“reserve,” 68
TRACKWAYS, BRITISH, PRE-ROMAN, the Pilgrim’s Way, 19;
the first stage of road development, 110;
Exe to Humber, 117, 126-7;
from Salisbury Plain, 117, 118-20, 126;
from London, 120-22;
to centre of Norfolk, 125;
to the Tyne, 125;
by Shipley, 126;
and position of wheat lands, 128;
and the ports, 129;
and river crossings, 129-30;
and chalk, 130-31;
and sand, 131-2
TRENT, RIVER, 93-4, 102;
old lowest bridge over, 97
TURIN, rebuilding of, 59
TURNPIKE SYSTEM, 115, 180;
made the modern English road, 183;
basis of, 184;
early resentment against, 184;
not a national system, 185
TYNE, RIVER, crossing of by Romans, 102;
and the trackways, 125, 129
U.S.A. and military roads, 75
URICONIUM, 71, 103
VEGETATION (_see_ Forest);
intermittent, influence of on course of road, 51-2
VENICE, protection by marsh, 15;
limitation of growth by marsh, 67
VICTORIA STATION, London, 68
VOSGES, the, gradients of roads in, 41;
Valley of Belfort in, 44-5
WALES, Roman campaigns in, 71-2;
South, riots against turnpikes in, 184
WALL, the Roman (Hadrian’s), 70-71
WANDLE, RIVER, marshes of, disappearance of Roman causeway in during
Dark Ages, 149
WANSUM, RIVER, crossed by Roman road, 98
WASH, THE, trackway to, 120, 126;
and Peddars Way, 174-5
WATER COURSES, first crossings of, fords, 18-20;
_taking-off places_, 18-19;
effect of rate of current, 19-20;
ferries, 20;
bridges, 20-32;
double crossings at, 31-2
(_see_ also River Crossings)
WATLING STREET, at Penkridge, 72;
between Rochester and London, 140;
at Norton Park, 158;
as the basis of a modern road, 160;
causes of preservation of, 161-4;
use of during Dark Ages, 177
WEALD, the, as an obstacle to communication, 165-6
WELLAND, RIVER, 50
WENLOCK EDGE, 94
WESTMINSTER, northern boundary of, a Roman road, 78
WEY, RIVER, and Pilgrim’s Way, 19;
road in Valley of Upper, 33;
crossing at St. Catherine’s Chapel, 130;
at Guildford, 130
WHEAT LANDS and early trackways, 128
WHEELED TRAFFIC, sudden increase of at end XVII century, 180
WILTSHIRE, 120
WINCHESTER, and the Pilgrim’s Way, 19;
as centre of wheat growing, 128;
to Gloucester, road from, 138;
to London, Roman road from, 165
WREN, SIR CHRISTOPHER, 59
YARMOUTH, growth of, 176
YORK, Telford’s suggested reform of road to Peterborough from, 191
* * * * *
Transcriber’s Notes:
Footnotes have been moved to the end of each chapter and relabeled
consecutively through the document.
Illustrations have been moved to paragraph breaks near where they are
mentioned.
Punctuation has been made consistent.
Variations in spelling and hyphenation were retained as they appear in
the original publication, except that obvious typographical errors have
been corrected.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Road" ***
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