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We must imagine this process of gradual local development continuing uninterruptedly throughout the Dark Ages, the Roman roads serving local purposes gradually ceasing to have continuous use save for the Fosse Way, the Watling Street, and one or two of the other greater roads: the local ways, very ill maintained, growing up out of the Roman system. When the Dark Ages came to an end, and when the mediaeval civilization succeeded it—that is, in the five great centuries between the Conquest and the Reformation—this new system of local ways was hardened and became the national system which we still inherit.
When I say the mediaeval system I mean the system which must have had its origin, or, at any rate, its mainspring, in the twelfth century, and which substituted for the use of the decayed Roman roads a competing system of roads no longer identical with them, though originally based upon them as a framework.
Here again we have no direct records, but we have indirect evidence sufficient for our purpose. The twelfth century was the moment when civilization was arising again everywhere throughout the west, and nowhere more strongly than Britain. That was true of the architecture and town life and education, and of letters, and, we may justly presume, of the road system as well.
Again, from that date onwards you begin to get sites unconnected with the old Roman road system, and their number increases rapidly as the Middle Ages advance. Again, we learn from any amount of evidence the comparative rapidity of travel after the Dark Ages, and that even over roads which certainly were not Roman. We can trace it in the marching of armies, the transport of grain and other provisions, and the travel of individuals.
We may take almost any district in England and discover for ourselves by a little study how the mediaeval road system, which continued to develop until the change in its use by the turnpike, grew up out of the Roman Road, and we can thus show how the Roman road system is at the foundation of all our English ways.
There was no regular plan or order in all this. Local usage, local necessity developed the tortuous network, and has left its stamp upon the face of England.
CHAPTER XIII
WHEELED TRAFFIC AND THE MODERN ROAD
The Transition from the Horse to the Vehicle: The Distinctive Mark of the Later Seventeenth Century: The Turnpike System and the Making of the Modern English Road: The Underlying Idea of the Turnpike and its Effects for Good and Ill: Its Decline and the First Emergence of the General National System in 1810: Thomas Telford and His Work: The Movement Connected with the Name of Macadam: The Coming of the Locomotive and its Results on Canals and Roads.