The Life of Thomas Telford | Page 8

until in some places the tracks
were as much as from twelve to fourteen yards deep; one of these,
partly filled up, retaining to this day the name of Holloway Head. In the
neighbourhood of London there was also a Hollow way, which now
gives its name to a populous metropolitan parish. Hagbush Lane was
another of such roads. Before the formation of the Great North Road, it
was one of the principal bridle-paths leading from London to the
northern parts of England; but it was so narrow as barely to afford
passage for more than a single horseman, and so deep that the rider's
head was beneath the level of the ground on either side.
The roads of Sussex long preserved an infamous notoriety. Chancellor
Cowper, when a barrister on circuit, wrote to his wife in 1690, that "the
Sussex ways are bad and ruinous beyond imagination. I vow 'tis
melancholy consideration that mankind will in habit such a heap of dirt
for a poor livelihood. The country is a sink of about fourteen miles
broad, which receives all the water that falls from two long ranges of
hills on both sides of it, and not being furnished with convenient
draining, is kept moist and soft by the water till the middle of a dry
summer, which is only able to make it tolerable to ride for a short
time."
It was almost as difficult for old persons to get to church in Sussex

during winter as it was in the Lincoln Fens, where they were rowed
thither in boats. Fuller saw an old lady being drawn to church in her
own coach by the aid of six oxen. The Sussex roads were indeed so bad
as to pass into a by-word. A contemporary writer says, that in travelling
a slough of extraordinary miryness, it used to be called "the Sussex bit
of the road;" and he satirically alleged that the reason why the Sussex
girls were so long-limbed was because of the tenacity of the mud in
that county; the practice of pulling the foot out of it "by the strength of
the ancle" tending to stretch the muscle and lengthen the bone!*[4] But
the roads in the immediate neighbourhood of London long continued
almost as bad as those in Sussex. Thus, when the poet Cowley retired
to Chertsey, in 1665, he wrote to his friend Sprat to visit him, and, by
way of encouragement, told him that he might sleep the first night at
Hampton town; thus occupying; two days in the performance of a
journey of twenty-two miles in the immediate neighbourhood of the
metropolis. As late as 1736 we find Lord Hervey, writing from
Kensington, complaining that "the road between this place and London
is grown so infamously bad that we live here in the same solitude as we
would do if cast on a rock in the middle of the ocean; and all the
Londoners tell us that there is between them and us an impassable gulf
of mud."
Nor was the mud any respecter of persons; for we are informed that the
carriage of Queen Caroline could not, in bad weather, be dragged from
St. James's Palace to Kensington in less than two hours, and
occasionally the royal coach stuck fast in a rut, or was even capsized in
the mud. About the same time, the streets of London themselves were
little better, the kennel being still permitted to flow in the middle of the
road, which was paved with round stones,--flag-stones for the
convenience of pedestrians being as yet unknown. In short, the streets
in the towns and the roads in the country were alike rude and
wretched,--indicating a degree of social stagnation and discomfort
which it is now difficult to estimate, and almost impossible to describe.
Footnotes for chapter I
*[1] Brunetto Latini, the tutor of Dante, describes a journey made by

him from London to Oxford about the end of the thirteenth century,
resting by the way at Shirburn Castle. He says, "Our journey from
London to Oxford was, with some difficulty and danger, made in two
days; for the roads are bad, and we had to climb hills of hazardous
ascent, and which to descend are equally perilous. We passed through
many woods, considered here as dangerous places, as they are infested
with robbers, which indeed is the case with most of the roads in
England. This is a circumstance connived at by the neighbouring
barons, on consideration of sharing in the booty, and of these robbers
serving as their protectors on all occasions, personally, and with the
whole strength of their band. However, as our company was numerous,
we had less to fear. Accordingly, we arrived the first night at Shirburn
Castle, in the neighbourhood of Watlington, under the chain