The Life of Thomas Telford | Page 7

enable the royal cavalcade to pass along.
In Henry VIII.'s reign, several remarkable statutes were passed relating
to certain worn-out and impracticable roads in Sussex and the Weald of
Kent. From the earliest of these, it would appear that when the old
roads were found too deep and miry to be passed, they were merely
abandoned and new tracks struck out. After describing "many of the
wayes in the wealds as so depe and noyous by wearyng and course of
water and other occasions that people cannot have their carriages or
passages by horses uppon or by the same but to their great paynes,
perill and jeopardie," the Act provided that owners of land might, with
the consent of two justices and twelve discreet men of the hundred, lay
out new roads and close up the old ones. Another Act passed in the
same reign, related to the repairs of bridges and of the highways at the
ends of bridges.
But as these measures were for the most part merely permissive, they
could have had but little practical effect in improving the
communications of the kingdom. In the reign of Philip and Mary (in
1555), an Act was passed providing that each parish should elect two
surveyors of highways to see to the maintenance of their repairs by
compulsory labour, the preamble reciting that "highwaies are now both
verie noisome and tedious to travell in, and dangerous to all passengers
and cariages;" and to this day parish and cross roads are maintained on

the principle of Mary's Act, though the compulsory labour has since
been commuted into a compulsory tax.
In the reigns of Elizabeth and James, other road Acts were passed; but,
from the statements of contemporary writers, it would appear that they
were followed by very little substantial progress, and travelling
continued to be attended with many difficulties. Even in the
neighbourhood of the metropolis, the highways were in certain seasons
scarcely passable. The great Western road into London was especially
bad, and about Knightsbridge, in winter, the traveller had to wade
through deep mud. Wyatt's men entered the city by this approach in the
rebellion of 1554, and were called the "draggle-tails" because of their
wretched plight. The ways were equally bad as far as Windsor, which,
in the reign of Elizabeth, is described by Pote, in his history of that
town, as being "not much past half a day's journeye removed from the
flourishing citie of London."
At a greater distance from the metropolis, the roads were still worse.
They were in many cases but rude tracks across heaths and commons,
as furrowed with deep ruts as ploughed fields; and in winter to pass
along one of them was like travelling in a ditch. The attempts made by
the adjoining occupiers to mend them, were for the most part confined
to throwing large stones into the bigger holes to fill them up. It was
easier to allow new tracks to be made than to mend the old ones. The
land of the country was still mostly unenclosed, and it was possible, in
fine weather, to get from place to place, in one way or another, with the
help of a guide. In the absence of bridges, guides were necessary to
point out the safest fords as well as to pick out the least miry tracks.
The most frequented lines of road were struck out from time to time by
the drivers of pack-horses, who, to avoid the bogs and sloughs, were
usually careful to keep along the higher grounds; but, to prevent those
horsemen who departed from the beaten track being swallowed up in
quagmires, beacons were erected to warn them against the more
dangerous places.*[2]
In some of the older-settled districts of England, the old roads are still
to be traced in the hollow Ways or Lanes, which are to be met with, in

some places, eight and ten feet deep. They were horse-tracks in summer,
and rivulets in winter. By dint of weather and travel, the earth was
gradually worn into these deep furrows, many of which, in Wilts,
Somerset, and Devon, represent the tracks of roads as old as, if not
older than, the Conquest. When the ridgeways of the earliest settlers on
Dartmoor, above alluded to, were abandoned, the tracks were formed
through the valleys, but the new roads were no better than the old ones.
They were narrow and deep, fitted only for a horse passing along laden
with its crooks, as so graphically described in the ballad of "The
Devonshire Lane."*[3]
Similar roads existed until recently in the immediate neighbourhood of
Birmingham, now the centre of an immense traffic. The sandy soil was
sawn through, as it were, by generation after generation of human feet,
and by packhorses, helped by the rains,