The Road

by Hilaire Belloc

iii

The gradual decay of the Roman Road in the Dark Ages was not everywhere the same, and the consequence is that the remaining fragments of Roman roads are connected in different ways with the modern road system which gradually grew out of them.

There are four types—overlapping, of course—of the fate attaching to the Roman roads of this country. They are, as I have said, the root of all our road system. All English roads subsequent to the period of the Roman occupation have grown out of the great network laid down for ever by the Roman engineers. But the fortune which the original road suffered, the way in which a modern system developed from it, were not uniform. There were four divergent developments, which ran thus:

(1) The Roman Road is preserved as a basis of the modern road, and remains a main artery: of this the great example is the Watling Street, in the first few days’ marches north-west of London.

(2) The Roman Road remains clearly the basis of the system of local roads which developed from it, and, though disappearing in sections, is, upon the whole, preserved; of these the great example is the Stane Street road from Chichester to London.

(3) The Roman Road, having produced a system of local roads based upon it, has almost entirely disappeared and has left the local system alone to witness to its original importance, just as filigree work remains after you have melted away the core of wax upon which it was built. Examples of this are very difficult to discover, precisely because the original country has gone. But the process can be followed here and there by a careful examination, and I think that, upon the whole, the best example is that of the series of roads which grew up out of the short cut between Penkridge and Chester.

(4) The Roman Road remains, in some parts at least, but, its original purpose having been such that it was of no continual use in the Dark Ages, the local system of roads can only indirectly be referred to it. Of this the great example is the famous Peddars Way, running through East Anglia.