The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-08-21
EVOLUTION OF ROADS.
FIRST PATHS IN ENGLAND
 WE'RE MADE BY ROIrANs.
Some Strange Happenines On Roads Before 17S6-First Expert of
 English Highways was Blind.

in the course of our history. When the
 Romans came here, as all the world
 knows, they made the roadmaking busi-
 ness very lively, and the natives proba-
 bly had to devote a good deal of attention
 to the subject. whether they wanted 10
 or not. The Romans were famous road-
 makers everywhere. but when they ahan-
 doned Britain there was nobody left to
 carry on the business. Indeed. there was
 no motive for carrying 1t on. Roads were
 not wanted. There was no intercourse
 between distant parts of the country;
 there was no trade. there were practically
 no wheeled vehicles, and there was no
 military organization. There was no
 reason at all why the Saxons of the
 Heptarchy should make or maintain
 roads, but there was at least one excel
 lent reason why they should not do 50.
 To make q road through any section of
 the country would be to facilitate the in-
 vasion of enemies. just as . few years ago
 1t was maintained that the construction
 of the Channel tunnel would do.
 There were. of course, pathways
 through the forests. connecting the small
 centres of population, and some of these
 developed into weil-recognized bridle
 paths and lanes. and hence 1t is that in
 our own day rural thoroughfares turn and
 twist and xigxafl about so irregularly and
 capriciously. They were originally just
 footpaths through accidental openings in
 the woods. They skirted round clumps
 of trees and thickets of underwood, and
 along the feet of steep hills and rocks.
 They meandered across plains and n0ors,
 heaths and down, and they led to where
 there happened to be natural stepping
 stones across the brook or to the trunk of
 tree that had fallen in the wind and
 y7am a hrfA Apan nsrAp "a xrFa pFnha hIv
 all the oldest of our country lanes and
 by-ways. and not few important roads,
 orisinated in just that spontaneous, un-
 premeditative manner. Their direction
 was determined by natural objects or ac-
 cidental circumstances of tho time. As
 villages and small towns grew, and feudal castles and their lordly masters began to frown over the land, the peasantry
 were set to improve these footways. and
 here and there to make bridges where
 there had been only lords of stepping stones. Thus in course of time there grew out of these primitive tracks, all over England, network of toierably sers
 viceable bridle paths. along which traders and pilgrims, minstrels and mendicants,
 knights and nobles, annbled along on horses or mules, or trudged afoot, and inns sprang up to meet the requirements of these travellers.
 The sixteenth century advent of "coaches"-as all sorts of carriages were at first calied-threatened to render Q good many of these bridle paths obso- iete, just as in the nineteenth century threatened to render useless, and to a great extent actually did req der useless, the great highways of the kingdom; and at both periods there was a very similar outcry. "Coaches' were just as railways were de- as certain to be the ruin of the land, and the upset of all established But in spite of cutcry, "coaches" gradually asserted themselves and demanded wider roads. and after fashion they were made. But there were no such persons as skilled roadmakers. The Roman methods had been lost i,2o0 years before, and new tracks for vehi- cles were made without any sort of meth cd, and with just such materials as hap pened to be at hand. There was legis- Iation from time to time. In Queen Mary's time. for instance, an act made each parish responsible for It's own high ways. In different parts of the country a good deal of this kind of work must always have been going on. but so iso- lated were the various efforts and so slight were the means of disseminating on the subject that absolute ly no progress seeems to have been made even in the immediate vicinity of large towns. In 17s6 Mir. Nash stated be- fore a committee of the House of Com mons that the road between Camberwell and the Elephant and Castle was in sev- eral places. hardly passable by vehicles, and that quite recently several carriages had had their perches broken by the pitching about in holes and ruts. If that was the condition of things round about London in 17S6, 1t Is easy to believe re- ports of what they were a little earlier in date and a little further afield. In 177 George II. and Queen Caroline were a whole night in coming from Kew to St. James's Palace, owing to the state of the road, and once during the night they were completely, overturned. One may read of a foreign Prince come on a visit to this country getting stuck fast in the road in travelling up from Portsmouth and spending fourteen hours at a stretch without being able to leave his carriage or get a mouthful of food. In the middle of the eighteenth century the Duke of Somerset, having occasion to travel from London to Petworth, seet a servant on before him to herald his approach and to give orders that keepers and other persons having knowledge of the holes and sloughs should meet his grace with lanterns and poles to help him on his way. But what no doubt had a good deal to do with the general apathy on the matter was the fact that in times when most of the land of the country was un- lnclosed, it was often a very easy thing when road had been trampled and plowed into a slough, to strike off the old track and make & new one.
 Nothing could more strikingly show the absolute lack of professional roadmakers than the fact that the very first expert in the history of English highways was a man who not only had no experience when he took his first contract, but had been stone blind from his childhood. That was John Metcalf-"Blind Jack of Knar- It had been determined in lI65 to make 6 good substantial road be- tween Minskip and Farnsby, and Metcalf but in tender for three miles. He knew nothing about 1t, but he had proved him. self in other ways a clever, contemplating man, and as there was nobody to be had | who understood the business any better | than he did. he got the contract. He made his own surveys and superintended | the work personally, and, notwithstand- l Ing his blindness, made a good job of l 1t. He was roadmaking and bridgemak- ing for thirty years, and seems unques- l tionably entitled to be regarded as the | pioneer of English rOadmaking. It was not until fifty years after he began that | Telford and Macadam were heard of in | this connection. He led the way, and carried a road across a bog in | almost precisely the manner in which | Stevenson afterward carried his railway across Chat Moss. Blind Jack of Knar- 1 led the way, and then the de- 70