ROADS.
1798-1835.
Early roads and road-making--Edgeworth and M’Adam’s systems of
roads--Stevenson’s system of roads--Cast-iron and stone tracks.
Writing at an early date, Mr. Stevenson has given the following sketch
of Roads and Road-making:--
“In early periods, when every family formed a kind of community
within itself for providing the necessaries of life, it is obvious
that there could be little communication with distant parts of the
country, and there was, therefore, no use for roads, which, long
after the establishment of towns, must have continued in the state
of _footpaths_ and _horse-tracks_. The bulky articles of fuel and
building materials are likely to have given rise to the first idea
of a sledge, the precursor of the wheel-carriage, which ultimately
led to the construction of anything like a regular path. The first
roads of Britain appear to have been the Military Ways of the
Romans. Some remains of these are still to be seen in various parts
of the kingdom, and even in the immediate vicinity of the city of
Edinburgh. It is, however, quite astonishing how slow the progress
of improvement in road-making seems to have been, and especially
its adaptation to economical purposes; although all classes must
have felt an equal interest in the formation of roads, as both the
landed proprietor and the citizen were to be mutually benefited
by thus laying open the country. But it requires the accumulated
wealth of ages to produce improvements so expensive. It is long
before the mind can be brought to approve of any radical change of
habit, however advantageous; and the scale adopted in the first
instance is often so circumscribed, that the whole measure requires
to be extended and even to be changed a second, and perhaps a third
time, in keeping pace with the public demands for improvement.
“It is well known, that even so late as about the middle of the
last century, almost the whole land carriage of Scotland, and a
great part of England, was conducted upon horseback, the animals
employed being termed _pack-horses_. To the horse-tracks thus
produced, and which in the first instance were _formed_ without
regard to steep acclivities, are to be ascribed the evils which
we now labour under, as attendant on the laying out of our roads
for the modern improvement of wheel-carriages. Nor was it till
after much practice and the application of scientific principles,
long after the introduction of carriages, that we were induced
to improve the line of draught and adopt level tracks of road,
although perhaps more circuitous.
“In Great Britain the road department, after much experience,
is now brought into a system by which the highways are made
and upheld by dues directly levied on those who travel or use
them,--excepting, indeed, such roads as are situated in very
remote parts of the country, where the Government, with the most
enlightened policy, has either executed the works directly by the
troops upon the _peace establishment_, as in the case of General
Wade’s army, or given aid towards the original formation of
extensive lines of road, for opening the more remote districts of
the country. There is, perhaps, no better criterion for judging of
the prosperity of a country than by its public improvements; and
were this subject considered in all its bearings, we should hardly
be able to quote any stronger evidence of internal riches and true
greatness, than we find connected with the subject of its public
roads. It appears from a very general or cursory calculation,
which the reporter has made, that the highways of Great Britain
and Ireland, independently of the almost innumerable parish and
private roads, extend to about 25,000 miles. The expense of these,
including bridges, etc., on a very moderate calculation, may be
stated throughout the kingdom at the rate of £800 per mile, which
is equal to no less than the aggregate sum of twenty millions
sterling. Now, to what branch of political economy can we look with
more certainty and propriety than to such splendid examples of the
substantial wealth and resources of a country? for until a kingdom
is traversed and laid open by roads, its government must be weak,
and its people remain in a state of comparative poverty.
“But in so extensive a concern as the system of roads, involving
so great an expense, we may naturally look for small beginnings
and very gradual advancement. Accordingly, we find in the first
formation of highways, before their utility could be fully
understood or experience had shown the benefits of science in the
practice of the engineer, the early road-maker only increased the
breadth of the horse-track, and strewed it over with gravel from
the neighbouring brook. Indeed, we know that so late as the year
1542, even the streets of London were formed in this way; and it
is said to be established by the records of Parliament, that when
the new system of road-making was first proposed to be extended
beyond the region of a few miles from that metropolis, such was
the mistaken policy and narrow-minded views of the immediate
proprietors, that the measure was strenuously opposed by those who
wished to make a monopoly of the supplies for the metropolis, as
detrimental to the established order of things.”
The names of Richard Edgeworth, F.R.S., and John M’Adam, are well known
in connection with roads--Mr. Edgeworth writing in 1813, Mr. M’Adam in
1816. Both men had, it appears, given attention to the subject before
the end of the last century. Mr. Edgeworth says:--“I have visited
England, and have found, on a journey of many hundred miles, scarcely
twenty miles of well-made road. In many parts of the country, and
especially near London, the roads are in a shameful condition, and the
pavement of London is utterly unworthy of a great metropolis.”
Mr. M’Adam had been much struck by the entire want of system that
existed in the management of roads at that early period, and strongly
urged the necessity of a reform in road _management_ as a pre-requisite
to road _improvement_. He urged the laying out of the roads of the
country into separate districts, with the appointment of road trustees
to manage them--the appointment of chief and assistant road-surveyors
to superintend them--and a new system of accounting and finance,--all
under statutory regulations; and it cannot be doubted that in all
this Mr. M’Adam did good service, which was recognised in 1823 by
Parliament voting a sum of money to him for having introduced a system
of “repairing, making, and managing turnpike roads and highways, from
which the public have derived most important and valuable advantages.”
It appears to me, however, that all that is said in Mr. M’Adam’s first
edition of his book on road-making, in 1816, is of so general and vague
a nature that he cannot have known of Mr. Stevenson’s work at an early
part of the century.
From Mr. Stevenson’s reports it appears that he was much employed in
road-engineering in the counties of Edinburgh, Stirling, Linlithgow,
Perth, and, indeed, generally throughout Scotland, extending as far
north as Orkney and Shetland; and without raising any claim to priority
of design, I give the following extracts from reports made by him in
1812 and 1813, after he must have had at least several years’ previous
study and practice of road-making, which I think clearly show that
Mr. Stevenson, if not the _original_, was at least an _independent_
inventor of the system of road-making which is termed “macadamising.”
In a report to “The Honourable the Committee of the Trustees for the
Highways and Roads within the county of Edinburgh,” dated 1812, he
says:--
“It may not, however, be considered altogether out of place to
notice that the pieces of stone composing the road-metal in common
use are perhaps one-half, and in some instances two-thirds, larger
than is suitable for the best condition of a road. Road-metal of a
small size consolidates by the pressure of weighty carriages, when
stones of the size _commonly used_ are either pounded under the
wheel or forced into the road. It would therefore be desirable, as
an experiment upon the large scale, to lay one of the most public
roads in the county to the extent of one fourth of a mile with
stones broken much smaller than is _customary_.
“In some instances, especially within a few miles of Edinburgh,
it might be worthy of consideration by the Honourable Trustees
of this county how far _cast-iron cart-tracks_ might not be
advantageously laid upon the roads. Some years since the reporter
got two or three yards’ length of these iron tracks brought from
the Shotts ironworks, where they have been used for years with much
advantage, and, it is believed, with economy. These cart-tracks
would cost about £2000 per statute mile, including upholding by the
iron-founder for one year. It would be interesting to have also a
trial made of these in some very public road, although it were only
to the extent of two or three hundred yards.”
Again, in a report to “The Honourable the Trustees for the Bridge of
Marykirk,” also in 1812, he says:--
“In the annexed specification of road-makers’ work, the reporter
makes some alterations upon the _common_ and _ordinary_ method of
breaking and laying road materials, by reducing the road-metal
to a more uniform size, and using a course of gravel, if it can
be procured, or even of clean sharp sand, as a bottoming for the
broken stones. A road composed of stones of various sizes can never
be brought into that smooth and uniform surface, which is so much
to be desired, for the moment the pressure is brought upon one of
these _out-sized_ stones, it must either be crushed under the wheel
or be forced by repeated attacks into the road, and thereby it
displaces the surrounding stones, and in either case admission is
given to the surface-water; a pit is immediately formed, and every
succeeding wheel widens the breach, until the road is rendered
impassable. To counteract this very common effect, arising chiefly
from the very vague manner of defining the dimensions of road-metal
by bulk or even by weight, the reporter provides that the Trustees
shall furnish a riddle or screen, the meshes or openings of which
are to be of such dimensions that a stone measuring more than one
inch and a half upon any of its sides cannot pass through it.”
[Illustration: FIG. 12.--Section of one half of Roadway.]
Mr. Stevenson’s specification of the Regent Road in Edinburgh is
fuller, and is in the following terms:--
“The cross section (shown in Fig. 12) of the metalled road to
be the same in all respects as that already described for the
causewayed roadway. But the cross section is to rise from the
interior _brows_ or slopes of the paved channels to the centre of
the roadway, at the rate of 1 in 25. The bottoming of the road is
to be of broken stones from the excavated matters of the Calton
Hill works; the pieces of stone not to exceed five or six lbs.
in weight; to be laid _by hand_ in a compact manner to the depth
necessary for preparing the road for the upper strata, viz., a
layer or stratum of clean sharp sand four inches in thickness, laid
all over the surface, and forming a bed for the upper or road-metal
stratum, which is to be seven inches in thickness, and to consist
of broken stones taken from the quarries of Salisbury Crags, or
the lands of Heriot’s Hospital, as may be finally agreed upon. The
road-metal is to be broken into pieces of such dimensions as to
pass freely through a screen, to be provided by the Commissioners,
the meshes of which shall not exceed one inch and a half square.
The whole to be finished with a ‘top-dressing’ of sea-gravel, in
such a manner that none of the road-metal shall appear on the
surface of the roadway when it is completed.”
These extracts, so far as I have been able to discover, contain the
earliest proposals and precise specification of the construction of
road now known by the familiar name of “macadamising,” and I dismiss
the subject with the following candid quotation from Mr. Stevenson’s
Memoranda, in which he says:--
“It may be well to notice that in 1811 I specified road materials
of the size as nearly as may be of road-metal, which _afterwards_
became what is called ‘macadamised roads.’ I am not sure if I was
before Mr. M’Adam in this respect; at all events he had the great
merit of introducing the system of smooth roads. When I first
proposed this method, I think, to the Trustees of Marykirk, they
objected to it upon the score of expense.”
As regards the iron cart-tracks suggested for trial by Mr. Stevenson
in his report to the Edinburgh Road Trustees, already quoted, he
subsequently matured his views and described them in the article
“Roads” in the _Edinburgh Encyclopædia_, where he proposed to use stone
tracks as a “smooth and durable city road,” which he describes as
follows:--
“The individual component stones of the wheel-tracks, hitherto,
very partially in use, extend from three to four feet in length,
are about ten or twelve inches in breadth, and eight or ten
inches in depth. The stones of the tracks recommended by me, on
the other hand, are of a cubical form, measuring only from six to
eight inches in the lengthway of the track, and twelve to fourteen
inches in depth, eighteen inches in breadth at the base, and
twelve inches at the top or wheel-track. The stones are therefore
proportionate in all their dimensions, for unless they contain a
mass of matter corresponding to their length, they will be found to
want strength and stability. It would hardly be possible to keep
slender stone-rails in their places, and hence the chief benefit of
a connected railway would be lost. On the other hand, very large
materials are difficult to be got, and are also more expensive in
carriage and in workmanship than stones of a smaller size. The
Italian wheel-tracks are composed of stones two feet in breadth,
and of various lengths. To lessen the risk of horses falling,
these broad stones are kept in a rough state, by occasionally
cutting grooves with a pick-axe upon their upper surface. A mode
of paving with large blocks of granite, chequered or cut in this
manner, has been tried in some of the streets in London. In order,
however, to give pavement of this kind the necessary stability,
the blocks would require to have their dimensions equally large on
all sides, the expense of which would be too great. But cubical
stones of the size now recommended may be procured at a moderate
price, and throughout a great range of country; while the tracks,
if properly laid, will actually be more stable than if blocks
of larger dimensions were employed. For we may notice that a
carriage-wheel rests or impinges even upon a less surface than
one inch of its track at a time, in the course of each revolution
round its axis; hence, it may be conceived to produce a kind of
compensating effect, connected with the use of small stones, which
prevents the tremor from being communicated beyond the limited
sphere of each particular block, and, consequently, extending only
a few inches. This system of paving I originally proposed for the
main street of Linlithgow, forming part of the great western road
from Edinburgh to Stirlingshire, and a correct idea of the proposal
will at once be acquired by examining Fig. 13. By using tracks of
this description--giving the stones a proportionally broad bed, and
laying them upon a firm foundation (which is indispensable)--we
should have our streets and the acclivities of our highways
rendered smooth and durable, avoiding the expense and inconvenience
of the common road, and also the irksome noise and jolting motion
of the causeway.
“The tracks may be formed of granite, whinstone, or any of the hard
varieties of rock capable of being hammer-dressed.”
[Illustration: FIG. 13.--Section for Road Metal. Section for Causeway.]
Specimens of these stone tracks were laid in Edinburgh, in terms of
Mr. Stevenson’s specification, on South Bridge Street opposite to the
College, and in the Pleasance, and a third specimen was laid by the
Road Trustees on Liberton Hill, which still remains after a lapse of
half a century.
Subsequently to this Mr. Walker laid similar tramways in the Commercial
Road, London, and as is well known, they have been pretty largely used
in the principal towns in Italy.
For a “city road,” as Mr. Stevenson termed it, the system he proposed
has certain advantages, inasmuch as carriages with any form of wheel
may use it, and this freedom of use admits of any amount of traffic
being accommodated, carriages having the freedom of passing from the
stone track to any part of the road. The introduction of iron “street
tramways” may, however, be said, for the present, to have taken the
place of all other plans for improving city passenger traffic.