The Great North Road, the Old Mail Road to Scotland: London to York. Charles G. Harper

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СКАЧАТЬ in one mile, owing to the peevishness of these whifflers and market-folk. “I have often known many travellers,” he continues, “and myself very often, to have been necessitated to stand stock still behind a standing cart or wagon, on most beastly and unsufferable wet wayes, to the great endangering of our horses and neglect of public business: nor durst we adventure to stirr (for most imminent danger of those deep rutts and unreasonable ridges) till it has pleased Mr. Carter to jog on, which we have taken very kindly.”

      His plan was to once get the roads in good repair, and then, he says, with the employment of “day men” to every five miles or so, they could be easily kept in order. The prospect induces him to rise to poetry:

      “First, let the ways be regularly brought

       To artificial form, and truly wrought;

       So that we can suppose them firmly mended,

       And in all needful points, the work well ended,

       That not a stone’s amiss; but all complete,

       All lying smooth, round, firm, and wondrous neat.”

      So far good. But then comes the heavy traffic to destroy the good work:

      “Then comes a gang of heavy-laden wains

       Of carts and wagons, spoiling all our pains.”

      But he is ready for this. His proposed “day men” by at once filling up the ruts would make the damage good. All these things he commends to the notice of his Majesty with the concluding lines:

      “There’s only one thing yet worth thinking on,

       Which is, to put this work in execution.”

      That it was not “put into execution” is a matter of history.

      We have seen that Mace calls the road to Scotland a “highway,” and the terms “highroad” or “highway” are common enough; but what really is a highroad? or rather, how did the term originate? Such a road is usually understood to be a main artery of traffic between important towns, but that was not precisely the original meaning, which indicated the physical character of the road rather than its geographical status. “High roads” were originally in fact, causeways constructed across, and above the level of, marshes and low-lying lands, and the term was therefore excellently descriptive. The changed meaning no doubt arose from the fact that, as it would scarcely ever have been worth while to build embanked roads for the purpose of connecting obscure villages out of the way of trade, consequently the “high ways” and the “high roads” only came into existence between important centres. But this highly specialised meaning was destroyed when Turnpike Acts and Highway Acts began to be passed. The first Turnpike Act, one relating to the road to the North, referred to the Shoreditch, Stamford Hill, Ware, and Royston route, which joined the Great North Road at Alconbury Hill. It was passed in 1663, and authorised a toll-gate at Stilton, among other places. In the preamble to this Act we find the road spoken of as “the ancient highway and post-road leading from London to York and so into Scotland.” Later Acts providing for the collection of tolls on the main roads and for the formation of Turnpike Trusts, whose business it was to collect those tolls and with them keep the “turnpike” roads in repair, named them “turnpike roads”; while other legislation, culminating in the General Highway Act of William the Fourth, perpetrated a delightful paradox by especially designating by-roads “highways.” The cardinal difference, in the eyes of the law, was that a turnpike road was a main line of communication, to be maintained in proper order throughout its length by taxes collected from the users of the road; while highways were only local roads for local use and to be maintained by the respective parishes in which they were situated. The ways in which these parish roads were kept in repair were sufficiently curious. “Statute labour” preceded highway rates, and was so called from a statute of Philip and Mary providing for parish road-surveyors, and for men, horses, carts, and materials to be supplied by the farmers at their orders, for repairs. “Statute labour” survived in a fashion until the passing of the General Highway Act of 1835, when it was wholly superseded by rates. In later days parishes united and formed Highway Boards, just as they formed Poor Law Unions; and choosing a surveyor, levied a common highway rate. These surveyors were not always, nor often, competent men. They were, in fact, generally elected by the Boards or the Vestries from some necessitous inhabitants little above the status of the broken-down old men who were paid a trifle to break or spread stones in order to keep them from being burdens to the parish in the workhouse. These surveyors were appointed and work done in fear of the parishes being indicted and heavily fined for the dangerous condition of their roads, but it is obvious that they must have been very badly repaired in those times. Nowadays the roads are all highways, since the turnpikes have been abolished, and their repair, outside the boroughs, is the business of the County Councils.

II

       Table of Contents

      Before Macadam and Telford appeared upon the scene, the office of road-surveyor was very generally looked down upon. No self-respecting engineer, before the time of these great men, condescended to have anything to do with roads. It is true that a forerunner of Macadam and Telford had appeared in Yorkshire in 1765, when “Blind Jack of Knaresborough” began the construction of the Boroughbridge and Harrogate road, the first of the long series for which he contracted; but he was not an official road-surveyor, nor by profession an engineer. He was, in fact, an engineer born and wholly untaught.

      John Metcalf, the famous blind roadmaker, was born in 1717, and lost his eyesight at six years of age. A native of Knaresborough, he filled in his time many parts; being fiddler, huckster, soldier, carrier, proprietor of the first stage-wagon between York and Knaresborough, and road and bridge maker and contractor by turns. The marvellous instinct which served him instead of sight is scarce credible, but is well authenticated. He joined Thornton’s company of Yorkshire volunteers raised at Boroughbridge to meet the Scots rebels in the ’45, and marched with them and played them into action at Falkirk. His marvellous adventures have no place here, but his solitary walk from London to Harrogate in 1741 concerns the Great North Road. Being in London, and returning at the same time, Colonel Liddell of Harrogate offered Blind Jack a seat behind his carriage, which Metcalf declined, saying that he could easily walk as far in a day as the colonel could go in his carriage with post-horses. This incidentally shows us how utterly vile the roads were at the time. Metcalf, although blind and unused to the road, having travelled up to London by sea, walked back, and easily reached Harrogate before the colonel, who posted all the way.

      Liddell, who had an escort of sixteen mounted servants, started an hour later than Metcalf. It had been arranged that they should meet that night at Welwyn, but, a little beyond Barnet, on Hadley Green, where the roads divide, Metcalf took the left hand, or Holyhead, road by mistake and went a long distance before he discovered his mistake. Still he arrived at Welwyn first. The next day he was balked at Biggleswade by the river, which was in flood, and with no bridge to cross by. Fortunately, after wandering some distance along the banks, he met a stranger who led the way across a plank bridge. When they had crossed, Metcalf offered him some pence for a glass of beer, which his guide declined, saying he was welcome. Metcalf, however, pressed it upon him.

      “Pray, can you see very well?” asked the stranger.

      “Not very well,” replied Blind Jack.

      “God forbid I should tithe you,” said his guide. “I am the rector of this parish; so God bless you, and I wish you a good journey.”

      In the end, Metcalf reached Harrogate two days before the colonel.

      Metcalf СКАЧАТЬ