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CHAPTER XIII.

HIGHWAYS.

THE local progress of farming, at the close of the eighteenth century, had been great; but its general advance was still hampered by numerous hindrances. In many parts of England the inveterate preference for old-fashioned practices was slowly yielding to experience of the results of more modern methods. Defects in the relations between owners and occupiers were mitigated by the grant of leases, which secured to improving tenants a return for their outlay of money and labour. Obstacles presented by soil and climate, so far as they were capable of remedy, were in process of removal. Experience had shown that sands might be fertilised, and the acidity of sour land corrected, by the use of the proper dressings, selected with judgment and applied with perseverance ; that considerable tracts of moor, heath, and moss might be brought into profitable cultivation; that fens and swamps might be drained; that even the disadvantages of climate might be ameliorated by plantations. But there remained a number of hindrances, which originated in the laws and customs of the country. To this class belonged difficulties of communication. The incidence of tithe on the produce of the land will be treated in a subsequent chapter.

A generation familiar with railways and good roads can hardly appreciate the obstacle to progress which was created by difficulties of transport and communication. Up to the middle of the eighteenth century, rivers had exercised the greatest influence on the development of inland trade centres. In few districts, and only in favourable seasons, could heavy goods be conveyed over the unmade roads. The command of water carriage was allimportant. On straightening, deepening, or widening rivers so as to make them navigable, early legislators from the fifteenth century

onwards, had mainly concentrated their efforts to improve internal communications. Not only inland towns, but seaports themselves, often owed their early prosperity to their situation at the mouths of rivers. Bristol, or Hull, or Boston, or Lynn, for instance, collected and distributed produce along the course of the Severn and the Wye, or the Trent and the Idle, or the Ouse, the Welland, and the Witham. Even London derived some of its pre-eminence from the produce which was carried over the Thames and its tributaries. To Liverpool the closing of the port of Chester by the sands which choked the Dee, and the opening up of the interior by making navigable the upper waters of the Mersey (1694), the Irwell and the Weaver (1720), proved the real starting-point of its trade. By means of these water-highways inland towns became seaports. They were the centres for collecting and distributing produce over the interior of the country. Fleets of trows, “billanders," floats, lighters, and barges were engaged in the trade. On the Severn, for instance, which was navigable as far as Welshpool, 376 vessels were employed in 1756. The famous Stourbridge Fair was supplied with heavy goods by the Ouse, which enabled boats, each carrying 40 tons of freight, to load and unload at Cambridge. York was accessible to vessels of from 60 to 80 tons, and claimed rights of wreckage as a seaport. Exeter and Taunton carried on a home and foreign trade by means of the Exe and the Parret. Coal reached Hereford by the Wye. Coventry communicated with the sea by means of the Warwickshire Avon. From Bawtry, on the Yorkshire Idle, were distributed the lead of Derbyshire, the edged tools of Sheffield, the iron goods of Hallamshire, as well as the foreign goods which entered the country at Hull. Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire shipped their barley and malt from Ware on the Lea. Gloucestershire cheesemakers sent their cheese to London down the Thames from Lechlade. Burslem wares were carried in pot-waggons or on pack-horses to Bridgnorth on the Severn.

From utilising the natural waterways of the country it seemed but a short step to supplementing them as arteries of trade by the construction of canals. Pioneers in the early stages of this movement were Sir Richard Weston, who in the reign of Charles I. canalised the Wey, and Sir William Sandys, of Ombersley in Worcestershire, who in 1661 obtained extensive powers to cut new channels, and build locks on the Wye and the Lugg. More

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1

extensive plans were floating in the minds of Francis Mathew 1 and Andrew Yarranton.2 Mathew in 1655 had laid before Cromwell a scheme for connecting London with Bristol, by the construction of a canal to join the Thames and the Avon. No notice seems to have been taken of the plan. Nor was his project more successful fifteen years later. "Many Lords and Gentlemen," says Yarranton, were ingaged in it. . . . But some foolish Discourse at Coffeehouses laid asleep that design as being a thing impossible and impracticable." Yarranton himself proposed to make Banbury a great distributing centre by connecting it with the Severn and the Thames. At an estimated cost of £10,000, he planned to make the Cherwell navigable from Oxford to Banbury, and to cut a new channel from the latter place to Shipton-on-the-Stour, whence goods might be carried by the Avon into the Severn below Tewkesbury. Both writers insist on the extreme isolation of inland districts, the need of supplying food to manufacturing centres, the prohibitive cost of conveying heavy goods by land, and the impassable nature of the roads for wheeled traffic.

In canal construction England lagged far behind foreign countries, though useful work continued to be done in making existing rivers navigable. Thus the clothiers of Leeds and Wakefield found new and cheaper markets when communication with Hull by the Aire and the Calder was opened up in 1699; Preston gained its opportunity for manufacturing development when the Douglas (1720) carried Wigan coal to the Ribble; the connection of Sheffield with the Humber by means of the Don (1732) gave a fresh impulse to the cutlery trade. But rivers were unsatisfactory as carriers of goods. Subject to flood or drought, constantly liable to become choked, tortuous in their course, they were also limited in their range and left large districts untouched. If waterways were to be made efficient means of carriage, they must be permanently supplied with water, subject neither to deficiency nor excess, capable of being carried over or through natural obstacles in any direction required.

In 1755 the Sankey Brook Canal brought the St. Helens coalfields into direct communication with Liverpool by means of a

1 The Opening of Rivers for Navigation, etc., by Francis Mathew, 1655. A Mediterranean Passage by Water from London to Bristol, etc., by Francis Mathew, 1670.

? England's Improvement by Sea and Land, by Andrew Yarranton Gent. 1677.

new channel, fed with a continuous supply of water, and provided with a system of locks which overcame the difficulties of the descent into the valley of the Mersey. This channel was the first true canal, as distinguished from straightening the courses of rivers. Before the work was completed, the Duke of Bridgwater obtained the sanction of the legislature (1759) for the famous canal which bears his name. Brindley's triumph was the real starting-point of the movement. He was the engineer of numerous similar works. The Mersey and Trent Canal, for example, joined Liverpool and Hull, and thus united the ports of the East and the West. Branches were thrown out, which gradually linked together Liverpool, London, Bristol, Birmingham, and Hull by water. The development of inland navigation which Brindley had begun was continued by Telford and others. The new means of transport powerfully influenced the progress of the industrial revolution. Between 1790 and 1794 alone, 81 Canal Acts were obtained, and a canal mania was started, which was only paralleled by the railway mania of the last century. By 1834 England had been covered with a network of more than 4000 miles of canals and navigable rivers.

To some extent the surface of the roads was saved by the substitution of water-carriage for the conveyance of heavy goods. But the development of canal traffic did not always improve internal communications. The increased carriage of heavy goods, such as coal, iron, timber, lime, stone, salt, and corn, to and from the wharves, destroyed the roads in the neighbourhood. To some extent this extraordinary traffic was carried on railways, laid down by the canal companies, as feeders to their trade. But the range was limited. It was plain that, if full advantage was to be taken of the new means of inland navigation, roads must be scientifically constructed to bear the increased traffic. In McAdam and Telford were found the exponents of this necessary science. The progress of enclosures also favoured road-improvement. So long as land lay unenclosed, travellers were allowed to deviate from the track to avoid the ruts worn by their predecessors. Thomas Mace (1675) 2 describes how land was "spoiled and trampled down in all wide roads where coaches and carts take liberty to pick and

1 See chapter xvii. pp. 350-3.

Profit, Conveniency, and Pleasure, to the Whole Nation, Being a Short Rational Discourse. . concerning the Highways of England, by Thomas Mace (1675).

chuse for their best advantages." A century later, a Reporter contrasts the state of a district near Norwich in the last decade of the eighteenth century with its condition before 1760: "Thirty years ago," he says, "it was an extensive heath without either tree or shrub, only a sheep-walk to another farm. Such a number of carriages crossed it, that they would sometimes be a mile abreast of each other in search of the best track. Now there is an excellent turnpike road, enclosed on each side with a good quickset hedge, and the whole laid out in enclosures and cultivated in the Norfolk system in superior style." Instead of these common tracks, with their wide margins of deviation, enclosure Acts substituted defined and constructed roads. Not only was science needed for making new highways, but the existing machinery for maintaining those already in existence had broken down under the stress of modern needs.

Throughout the Middle Ages the great Roman roads were the main thoroughfares. Watling Street ran from Kent to Chester and York, branching northwards to Carlisle and Newcastle; the Fosse Way crossed England from Bath to Lincoln; Ermine Street led from London to Lincoln and thence to Doncaster and York; Icknield Street, more difficult to trace, swept inland from Norwich, passed through Dunstable, and ultimately reached Southampton. For centuries they required and received little repair owing to the solidity of their construction. A firm foundation of beaten earth was secured. On this were laid, first, large stones, often embedded in mortar; then a layer of small stones mixed with mortar; above these two layers, lime mixed with chalk and pounded brick, or with gravel, sand, and clay; and finally the paved surface.

Planned and built by the State, these Roman highways offered a striking contrast to the subsequent roads, which were laid out in haphazard fashion as need arose. The art of road-making was lost, or the cost beyond the reach of local effort. Unmetalled tracks crept along the edges of streams, which often afforded a better bottom than the ways themselves, or sought sound foothold for men and beasts across unenclosed land, or boldly kept on high ground to escape the bogs and quagmires. Gradually footways, horseways, and cartways 1 were levelled by traffic across the plains or hollowed

1 The Romans recognised the same distinctions. The iter, actus, and via were the English footpath, bridle-way, and carriage road. Both in Roman and in English law the greater included the less, so that the via was open, not only to vehicles, but to foot-passengers and animals,