The Road

by Hilaire Belloc

iii

The date to which must be referred the great change in this respect—the date from which we must count the growth of general national communications continuous throughout the island—is the year 1810. The turnpike system did indeed die slowly and only much later. It lingered on to well within living memory, and those who are curious to watch the rise and decay of institutions may even argue that some relics of it remain among us still. But in practice 1810 is the date of the first experimental change which was ultimately to produce the road system of to-day.

If we consider the use and character of the Road, its texture and appearance, its effect upon the landscape, its connection with society as distinct from the legislation connected with it, 1810 is much more of a pivotal date than such dates as 1555 or 1822, which mark the political changes in the statutory powers of dealing with roads. Already stage coaches driven from the box, and every year increasing the rate of travel, had been upon the road for a generation—for twenty-six years; and already great lengths of turnpike trust roads had come to a sufficient excellence of surface to permit travel at an average rate over those branches of ten miles an hour. But, as I have said, there was not as yet one continuous piece of road designed to connect two important termini, of equal value throughout, and ordered in all its length towards that one end of making equable and rapid transit possible between the two extremities. That is the point. The thing had not existed in this island (save in the “four Regal Ways”) since the breakdown of the Roman central government in the fifth century.

What happened in 1810, and what makes it such a memorable date, is the appointment, under the pressure of the Postmaster-General, of a stonemason who had risen to the practice of road engineering—Thomas Telford—to the overlooking of the Holyhead Road.

The initiative came from the Post Office Department: the administrative and engineering genius came from Telford. Incidentally, we should remark, as one of the innumerable examples of unforeseen and exceedingly important side developments in history, the fact that this great revolution in British roads ultimately derived from Pitt’s Act of Union with Ireland, which was already nine years old. It was the necessity of communication between London and Holyhead, and especially of postal communication, which did the business.

Telford had been in the employment for some years past of the Highland Roads Commission. He had therefore proved his capacity, and from it he was appointed to a Government position in the re-establishment of the Holyhead Road after the affair had been examined by a Parliamentary Committee in this year (1810). It was not only Telford’s skill, it was still more his energy and intense application to detail which wrought the change. His nominal masters were ten Commissioners and three Ministers at their head; his real chief was Parnell, later Lord Congleton. But it was Telford, by his ceaseless travelling and investigation and overlooking of everything, who pushed the thing through.

The whole distance to be reorganized was one of 194 miles. Of this the larger part, 109 miles, fell under seventeen English Trusts; the remaining 85 miles were under six Welsh Trusts, the latter with far less local traffic to provide them with income, and, it would seem, also of less general efficiency.

Telford’s task may be appreciated when we remember that the new policy gave him no direct statutory power to override trusts. Each one had to be argued with, bargained with, and persuaded. This at least was true of the English Trusts and the six Welsh Trusts. The Commissioners, or rather Telford and Parnell, despaired. The trusts controlled so very much the larger part of the trajectory that it was necessary in some way to dispose of them.

More than seven years passed before this could be done. But Parnell succeeded in persuading them, by industrious attendance before various meetings, to accept an Act of Parliament which cast them all into one body of fifteen, and they were, by statute, compelled to employ a professional civil engineer, who was, of course, Telford. The 85 remaining miles were taken over, scientifically divided into sections under assistant surveyors and foremen below them, and by 1830, after the labour of twenty years, the whole thing was done. A suspension bridge had been thrown over the Menai Straits, Holyhead Harbour had been improved. These, with the reconstruction of the road, had drawn from Parliament grants of three-quarters of a million. From that moment there existed at least one complete road in Britain, uniting two definite termini and everywhere making possible the rapid travel at the time. The tolls were, of course, maintained. Their cost was increased by one-half. The anomalies, complexities, and corruptions involved in the system were no more done away with on the Holyhead Road than on any other, except in so far as a closer supervision helped to alleviate things and in so far as amalgamation of trusts also helped. But, at any rate, there was at least one continuous and excellent road from the capital to a distant port, and we have the date 1830 for the completion of the great task which was begun in 1810.