From the sixteenth to the middle of the eighteenth century the roads of Lancashire were less roads than slushy lanes, very narrow and full of ruts, mud, and water. Even the main route through to Scotland was no better, and had then but little need to be, for wheeled conveyances were almost entirely unknown. Pack-horses, as we have seen, conveyed what goods were ever sent, but for all practical purposes most communities were self-contained. Their wants were few and simple, and were easily supplied from their own resources; while persons obliged to travel made their way on horseback; only those of robust physique and in good health being able to undertake such journeys, and glad enough, amid the difficulties of the way, to find here and there a stretch of lane roughly paved with rude slabs of local millstone grit.
But if the ways were incredibly foul, the inns at the end of each day’s journey went some way towards compensating the fatigued horseman for his labours. The Lancashire inns were then, according to Holinshead, writing in 1577, exceptionally good, each guest being “sure to lie in clean sheets wherein no man hath lodged.” Evidently the innkeepers looked to make their profit out of the “entertainment” they supplied for man and beast, for the horseman’s bed cost him nothing, but “if he go on foot, he hath a penny to pay.” Mere public-houses, of the complexion of drink-shops, were not tolerated in Manchester and Preston; for at Manchester it was forbidden to brew or sell ale unless the brewer or vendor could make “two honest beddis,” while Preston was even more strict: lodgings for four men and four horses being the irreducible minimum.
The old “Seven Stars” inn in Withy Grove is ancient enough to have come under this ordinance, which must have affected also the picturesque old house now styled the “Wellington,” in the Market Place, and the even more picturesque “Bull’s Head,” in Greengate, Salford.
With the growth of trade referred to by Aikin, between 1730 and 1770, Manchester’s interests comprehended the whole of the kingdom, and its trade was greatly helped by the demand that by this time was growing for good roads, not alone here, but generally throughout the country. Road improvements, made possible by Turnpike Acts, began to be frequent from about 1710, and were very numerous and important between 1730 and 1770, when 420 Acts were passed. In this period business grew so heavy that pack-horses did not suffice to carry the increasing bulk of goods, and wagons came more and more into use; while the press of affairs was such that principals found it necessary to visit London and other centres at more frequent intervals. It was thus that the Manchester and London Flying Coach was established, in 1754.
BEGINNINGS OF EXPORT
In 1760 the exportation of cotton goods began; for, with the first tentative application of machinery to weaving, production had increased beyond the possible consumption of the country. The first improvement upon the primitive form of handloom weaving was the invention of the fly-shuttle, in 1738. This contrivance doubled the weaver’s powers; but it was followed in 1768 by the invention of the “spinning-jenny,” by James Hargreaves, which increased production eight-fold.
THE “BULL’S HEAD,” SALFORD.
The population of Manchester and Salford had by this time grown to close upon 40,000, and the local needs had increased in like degree. But still, although much had been done to improve roads throughout the country, and in Lancashire, those immediately around Manchester itself were still so bad in 1760 that although coal was mined at Worsley, less than ten miles away, it could not be brought into the town by wheeled conveyance, but had to be carried by long lines of pack-horses, in loads of 280 lb. Coals were cheap at the pit mouth—usually 10d. the load—but the carriage cost, as a rule, a shilling more.
Inventions do not burst upon a world that has felt no need for them. The need may not have been more than blindly felt, but the necessities of the ages have, nevertheless, been supplied as they have arisen. In this, almost more than in anything else, the thinking man sees an ordered scheme of existence which, in other directions, the brutalities and injustices of an imperfect world would seem to deny.