One question which naturally arises in connection with the turnpike roads
is, "Why was it, when there was so widespread an organisation of turnpike
trusts, and when so much money was being spent on the repair of the roads,
that the roads themselves were still so defective, and only relatively
better than they had been before?"--this being the real position,
notwithstanding the praises bestowed on the turnpike system by those who
were gratified with the stimulus given to trade, travel and commerce by the
improvements actually made.
The answer is that although a vast amount of road-making or road-repairing
was going on, at the very considerable expense of the road users, and to
the advantage of a small army of attorneys, officials and labourers, it was
not road-making of a scientific kind, but merely amateur work, done at
excessive cost, either with unintelligent zeal or in slovenly style, and
yielding results which mostly failed to give the country the type of road
it required for the ever-increasing traffic to which expanding trade,
greater travel, and heavier and more numerous waggons and coaches were
leading.
Before the adoption of scientific road-making, the usual way of forming a
new road was, first to lay along it a collection of large stones, and then
to heap up thereon small stones and road dirt in such a way that the road
assumed the shape of the upper half of an orange, the convexity often being
so pronounced that vehicles kept along the summit of the eminence because
it was dangerous for them, especially in rainy weather, to go along the
slope on either side.
This form of road was adopted in order to ensure good drainage for
rain-water; and in this connection the writer on "Roads" in Postlethwayt's
"Dictionary" (1745) says:--
"The chief and almost the only cause of the deepness and {99}foulness of
the roads is occasioned by the standing water which, for want of due care
to draw it off by scouring and opening ditches and drains and other water
courses, and clearing of passages, soaks into the earth, and softens it to
such a degree that it cannot bear the weight of horses and carriages."
But the result of making roads in the shape of a semicircle was that the
central ridge was speedily crushed down, and ruts were formed along the
line of traffic passing over the loose materials used. These ruts, again,
defeated the purpose of the original high convexity by becoming troughs for
the retention of rain and mud, the latter being rendered worse with each
fresh churning up it received from the wheels of waggon or stage-coach.
The road-maker thus required to be speedily followed by the road-repairer;
and _his_ method of procedure has been already indicated in Arthur Young's
description of the road to Wigan, where he says, "The only mending it
receives is the tumbling in some loose stones, which serve no other purpose
but jolting a carriage in the most intolerable manner."
The mending of hundreds of miles even of turnpike roads had never gone any
further than this. There was no cohesion in collections of loose stones,
mainly in their natural and more or less rounded form, and the expectation
that they would be crushed and consolidated into a solid mass by
extra-broad waggon wheels, in accordance with Acts of Parliament in that
case made and provided, remained unfulfilled. The stones were simply
displaced and thrown aside by the traffic, the inevitable ruts reappearing
in due course; while, as the rainwater passed readily through them, the
roads became elongated reservoirs of water in rainy weather, and were most
effectively broken up by frost in winter.
It was from conditions such as these that Thomas Telford and John Loudon
McAdam came to rescue the country.
There had been one road-reformer before them, in John Metcalf, a native of
Knaresboro', where he was born in 1717. Though totally blind from the age
of six, he developed abundant resources, and became successively fiddler,
soldier, chapman, fish-dealer, horse-dealer and waggoner. Taking at last to
road-making, he constructed about 180 miles of road in Yorkshire,
Lancashire, Cheshire and Derby, rendering an {100}important service to the
two first-mentioned counties, more especially by improving their means of
communication at a time when they were greatly in need of better roads on
account of their then rapidly increasing trade and industry. But though
Metcalf did good work in these directions, and achieved some noteworthy
successes in carrying solid roads across difficult bogs, he introduced no
really new system, and the chief progress made did not come until after his
death, in 1810.
Son of a shepherd at Eskdale, Dumfriesshire, where he was born in 1757,
Telford started life as a stonemason's apprentice, but became an engineer,
and undertook many important works, including canals, bridges, harbours and
docks. Here, however, we are concerned with him only as a builder of
roads--a department in which he showed great skill and activity.
On the appointment, in 1803, of a body of Commissioners who were to improve
the system of communications in Scotland (one half of the expense being
defrayed by Parliamentary grants, and one half by local contributions),
Telford was selected to carry out the work, and he constructed 920 miles of
road and 1,117 bridges in the Highlands, and 150 miles of road between
Glasgow, Cumbernauld (Dumbarton) and Carlisle. Then, in 1815, money having
been voted by Parliament for the improvement of the Holyhead road, with a
view to the betterment of communications with Ireland, Telford was
entrusted with the task, which involved the making or improvement of,
altogether, 123 miles of road.
Telford's own opinion of the roads of England and Scotland was thus
expressed in the evidence he gave before the Select Committee of the House
of Commons in 1819:--
"They are in general very defective both as to their direction and
inclination; they are frequently carried over hills, which might be avoided
by passing along the adjacent valleys ... there has been no attention paid
to constructing good and solid foundations; the materials, whether
consisting of gravel or stones, have seldom been sufficiently selected and
arranged; and they lie so promiscuously upon the roads as to render it
inconvenient to travel upon them.... The shape of the roads, or cross
section of the surface, is frequently hollow in the middle; the sides
incumbered with great banks of road dirt, which have accumulated in some
places to the height {101}of six, seven, or eight feet; these prevent the
water from falling into the side drains; they also throw a considerable
shade upon the road, and are gross and unpardonable nuisances. The
materials, instead of being cleaned of the mud and soil with which they are
mixed in their native state, are laid promiscuously upon the road."
In planning new roads Telford cut right through the hills, wherever
possible, in order to avoid unduly steep gradients. In making the roads he
first arranged a solid foundation of pieces of durable stone, from 4 in. to
7 in. in size, these being carefully put into position by hand, with the
broadest side downward, and packed with small stones in between. On the
rough pavement thus formed he laid an upper course of small broken stones,
with a binding of one inch of gravel. Between the two courses a drain was
set across the road every hundred yards, Telford attaching great importance
to the carrying off of all water that might percolate through the upper
course on to the lower. He gave a uniform and only moderately convex shape
to the surface of the road, abandoning, in this respect, the ideas of his
more amateur predecessors. But his system was one that called for much
labour and care, as well as for an abundant supply of the needful
materials, and the cost of carrying it out was proportionately high, if
not, in some situations, prohibitive.
McAdam preferred to be considered a road-repairer rather than a
road-builder, and his methods differed materially from those of Telford. He
became, also, much more of a propagandist in the work of road-improvement,
enforcing his theories with such success that he brought a new word into
the English language, roads made or mended according to the main principles
he laid down having been known ever since his day as "macadamised."
Born in Ayrshire in 1756--one year before Telford--McAdam went to America
at the age of 14 to start life in the counting-house of his uncle in New
York. Subsequently he became a successful merchant, and returned in 1783 to
Scotland, where he bought the estate of Sauchrie, and then, in 1785, began
to devote his attention to road-making, which was to occupy his thoughts
and absorb his energies for the rest of his days. Roads he came to regard
as, in his own words, "perhaps the most important branch of our domestic
{102}economy." Many new roads were then being constructed in Scotland, and
he himself became a commissioner of roads in that country. He also began a
systematic course of travel over the roads of England and Scotland,
covering, by 1814, no fewer than 30,000 miles.
In 1810 McAdam commenced a series of experiments in the construction of
roads, and he published the following year some "Observations on the
Highways of the Kingdom," recording the opinions he had formed as the
result of his twenty-seven years' inquiries.
By this time the question had, indeed, become acute. The prosperity of the
country had undergone much expansion, but the improvement of the roads,
notwithstanding the extension of the turnpike system, had in no way kept
pace with the general progress and the growing needs of the nation.
Parliamentary Committees were still devoting close attention to that good
old stock subject, the width of cart-wheels. In 1806 there was a Select
Committee appointed "to take into consideration the Acts now in force
regarding the use of Broad Wheels, and to examine what shape is best
calculated for ease of draught and the Preservation of the roads." This
Committee presented two reports, and like Committees were appointed in the
Sessions of 1808 and 1809, each of these Committees making three reports.
What Parliament itself was doing at this period in the way of cart-wheel
legislation has already been told.
So there was abundant scope for the activities of someone who could offer
new ideas, and when, in 1811, a Select Committee was appointed "to take
into consideration the Acts in force regarding the Highways and Turnpike
Roads in England and Wales, and the expediency of additional regulations as
to the better repair and preservation thereof,"[16] McAdam came forward
with his proposals, as contained in the aforesaid "Observations" presented
by him to the Committee in question.
{103}McAdam began by saying that "In all three reports of Committees of the
House of Commons on the subject of roads, they seem to have principally in
view the construction of wheeled carriages, the weights they were to draw,
and the breadth and form of their wheels; the nature of the roads on which
these carriages were to travel had not been so well attended to."
Proceeding to give the results of his own investigations, he expressed the
view that the bad condition of the roads of the kingdom was owing to the
injudicious application of the materials with which they were repaired, and
to the defective form of the roads; and he assured the Committee that the
introduction of a better system of making the _surface_ of the roads, and
the application of scientific principles which had hitherto never been
thought of, would remedy the evil.
The basis of his system, as defined on this and subsequent occasions, was
the covering of the surface of roads with an impermeable crust, cover or
coating, so that the water would not penetrate to the soil beneath, which
soil, whatever its nature, and provided it was kept dry, would, he argued,
then bear any weight likely to be put upon it.
His method of securing the said impermeable crust was by the use of an 8
in. or 10 in. covering of _broken_ stones, these being not more than about
1½ inches each in size, or more than about six ounces each in weight. Such
broken stones, if properly prepared and properly laid on a road, would, he
showed, consolidate by reason of their angles, and, under the pressure of
the traffic, be transformed into a "firm, compact, impenetrable body,"
which "could not be affected by vicissitudes of weather or displaced by the
action of wheels." The broken stones, with their angular edges, would, in
effect, dovetail together into a solid crust under a pressure which,
applied to pebbles or flints, would merely cause them to roll aside, in the
same way as shingle on the seashore when passed over by a cart or a bathing
van.
The difference between his broken stones and the more or less rounded
stones with which the roads were then being repaired was, McAdam declared,
the difference between the stones that were thrown down in a stream to form
a ford and the shaped stones used to construct the bridge that went over
the stream; while inasmuch as the road-arch, or crust, he {104}formed would
rest on the ground, and be impermeable to rain-water, there would be no
need to have underneath it either a stone foundation or a system of
drainage; though he held it as essential that the subsoil should be
perfectly dry when the "metal," or covering of broken stone, was laid in
position. Keeping the water out of the road by this means, he would prevent
the road itself from being broken up by the action of frost, and he would
have a more elastic surface than if there were a solid stone foundation
under the metal. The thickness of his consolidated cover of broken stones
would, he further argued, be immaterial to its weight-carrying capacity.
In 1816 McAdam became surveyor of roads in the Bristol district, and the
object lessons in road-mending which he provided there were so convincing
that his system began to be generally approved in 1818. In 1827 he was
appointed Surveyor-General of Roads, and in the same year he issued a ninth
edition of his "Remarks on the Present System of Road-Making."
In this publication he states, among other things, that very considerable
sums were being raised annually in the kingdom, principally from tolls, on
account of turnpike roads, and these funds were expended, nominally under
the protection of Commissioners, but practically under the surveyors. Every
Session there were numerous applications to Parliament by turnpike trusts
for powers to increase their tolls in order to pay off their debts and to
keep the roads in repair. In the Session of 1815 there were 34 such
petitions; in 1816 there were 32, and "all passed as a matter of course."
The condition of the turnpike roads was, nevertheless, most defective, and
that of the parish roads was "more deplorable than that of the turnpike
roads." Legislative enactments for the maintenance and repair of the parish
roads were so inadequate that these roads "might be considered as being
placed almost out of the protection of the law." In the result "The
defective state of the roads, independent of the unnecessary expense, is
oppressive on agriculture, commerce and manufactures by the increase of the
price of transport, by waste of the labour of cattle, and wear of
carriages, as well as by causing much delay of time."
As for Scotland, he declared that "The roads in Scotland are worse than
those in England, although materials are more {105}abundant, of better
quality, and labour at least as cheap, and the toll duties are nearly
double; this is because road-making, that is the surface, is even worse
understood in Scotland than in England." He mentions that the
Postmaster-General had been obliged to give up the mail-coach from Glasgow
to Ayr on account partly of the bad roads and partly of the expense, there
being ten turnpike gates in 34 miles of road.
The roads were, in fact, McAdam continued, "universally in want of repair."
Ample funds were already provided; but the surveyors employed by the
turnpike trusts were "mostly persons ignorant of the nature of the duties
they are called on to discharge,"[17] and the money brought in by a
continual and apparently unlimited increase of the tolls was "misapplied in
almost every part of the Kingdom." In some new roads made in Scotland the
thickness of the materials used exceeded three feet;[18] but, said McAdam,
"the road is as open as a sieve to receive water"; and what this meant he
was able to show by pointing to the results of weather conditions on bad
roads in the month of January, 1820. A severe frost was succeeded by a
sudden thaw, accompanied by the melting of much snow, and the roads of the
kingdom broke up in an alarming manner, causing great loss, much delay of
the mails, and endless inconvenience. The cause of the trouble was
explained by McAdam thus:--
"Previous to the severe frost the roads were filled with water which had
penetrated through the ill-prepared and unskilfully-laid material; this
caused immediate expansion of the whole mass during the frost, and, upon a
sudden thaw, the roads became quite loose, and the wheels of the carriages
penetrated to the original soil, which was also saturated with water, from
the open state of the road. By this means many roads became altogether
impassable."
On the 1000 miles of road to which his own system had {106}been applied
there had, he further said, been no breaking up at all by reason of frost.
The figure here given suggests the extensive adoption of McAdam's system
which was then proceeding. It was not only that old roads were being
repaired according to his plan, but there was much construction of
"macadamised" roads, the deficiencies of the existing roads having
discouraged and checked the provision of new ones. Between 1818 and 1829,
as told by Porter, in his "Progress of the Nation," the length of turnpike
roads in England and Wales was increased by more than 1000 miles. In
proportion, also, as the turnpike roads increased alike in number and in
quality, through the wider adoption of McAdam's system, there was a
corresponding impetus given to coaching in respect both to number of
vehicles and to increase of speed, leading up to those "palmy days" of
coaching which were only to close with the spread of the railway.
It is true that McAdam's plans were not adhered to exactly as he first laid
them down. Greater experience led later authorities to attach more
importance to a foundation than McAdam had been disposed to do; though they
did not necessarily have foundations laid by hand, after the manner of
Telford's buried pavements. Later, the introduction, also, of the
steam-roller was to revolutionise the art of making macadamised roads.
Nor can it be disputed that McAdam and Telford had both, to a certain
extent, been anticipated. In an article on roads published in the
"Quarterly Review," in 1820, the observation is made in respect to them
that "Many of the practices of each of these gentlemen had been previously
adopted in a variety of instances; but it required zeal and perseverance
like theirs to recommend the entire system to the attention of the public."
Other persons might have recommended the use of broken stones, and these
are said to have been already employed in Switzerland before McAdam came on
the scene; but it was his lucid explanation of the scientific bearing of
angular as opposed to round stones; his untiring zeal in travelling
thousands of miles over English and Scottish roads in order to see and
study everything for himself; and his advocacy of scientific road-making
with such indefatigable energy, though {107}to his own impoverishment
(until Parliament voted him recompense), that led to the conspicuous and
world-wide success his system eventually attained.
Writing in 1826, "Nimrod" said: "Roads may be called the veins and arteries
of a country, through which channels every improvement circulates. I really
consider Mr McAdam as being, next to Dr Jenner, the greatest contributor to
the welfare of mankind that this country has ever produced."
This may seem, to-day, to be exaggerated praise; but if the reader looks at
the matter from the point of view from which "Nimrod" himself must have
regarded it, and tries to realise how greatly the deplorable state of the
roads--before McAdam began to repair them--was hampering social life,
travel, trade, commerce and national industries, he will probably conclude
that such praise, at such a period, and in such circumstances, was far from
being undeserved.
The turnpike system lasted well into the railway period, and the story of
its gradual decline and the causes that led thereto has still to be told.
Before, however, dealing further with these aspects of the general question
I propose to revert to the subject of rivers and river navigation; to show,
next, how canals and canal transport were developed; and then to give an
account of the rise of that railway system which was so materially to
affect alike rivers, canals and turnpike roads as well.
{108}CHAPTER XIII