Sydney Smith professed to know—approximately—the number of "severe contusions" he received in going from Taunton to Bath "before stone-breaking McAdam was born." He put the figure at "between 10,000 and 12,000."
In Sussex the roads were especially bad. In 1702, the year of Queen Anne's accession to the throne, Charles III. of Spain paid a visit to London, travelling by way of Portsmouth. Prince George of Denmark went from Windsor to Petworth to meet him, and an account of this 40-mile journey by road says:—
"We set out at six in the morning ... and did not get out of the carriages (save only when we were overturned or stuck fast in the mire) till we arrived at our journey's end. 'Twas a hard service for the Prince to sit fourteen hours in the coach that day without eating anything, and passing through the worst ways I ever saw in my life.... The last nine miles of the way cost us six hours to conquer them."
Defoe tells how the transport of timber from the neighbourhood of Lewes to Chatham by road sometimes took two or three years to effect. He saw there twenty-two oxen engaged in dragging "a carriage known as a 'tug'" on which the trunk of a tree had been loaded; but the oxen would take it only a short distance, and it would then be thrown down again and left for other teams to take it still further short distances in succession. He also speaks of having seen, at Lewes, "an ancient lady, and a lady of very good quality," going to church in a "coach" drawn by six oxen, "the way being stiff and deep that no horses could go in it."
There would seem to have been difficulties not only in going to church in Sussex but even in getting buried there, for in the "Sussex Archæological Collections" mention is made of the fact that in 1728 Judith, widow of Sir Richard Shirley, of Preston, Sussex, directed in her will that her body should be brought for burial to Preston, "if she should die at such time of the year as the roads thereto were passable."
An authority quoted in the article on "Roads" in Postlethwayt's "Dictionary" (1745), in referring to "that impassable county of Sussex," bears the following testimony thereto: "I have seen, in that horrible country, the road 60 to 100 yards broad, lie from side to side all poached with cattle, the land of no manner of benefit, and yet no going with a horse but at every step up to the shoulders, full of sloughs and holes, and covered with standing water."
On the other hand the bad roads were regarded by many of the inhabitants of Sussex as a distinct advantage. They afforded increased facilities for the smuggling operations practised there down to the beginning of the nineteenth century, by rendering pursuit more difficult.
Arthur Young is an especially eloquent witness as to the conditions of travel in England about the year 1770. In making his tours through the country, with a view to investigating and reporting on the state of agriculture, he passed over all sorts of roads, and, though some of them were "good," "pretty good," and even "very good"—these compliments being more especially paid to roads constructed by the country gentry at their own cost—he experiences a difficulty in finding words sufficiently strong in which to express himself when he attempts to describe the roads that were really bad; and this was the case in regard to many of the turnpike roads on which alleged improvements had been carried out.
The following examples of his experiences are taken from his "Six Months' Tour through the North of England":—
"From Newport Pagnel I took the road to Bedford, if I may venture to call such a cursed string of hills and holes by the name of road; a causeway is here and there thrown up, but so high, and at the same time so very narrow that it was at the peril of our necks we passed a waggon with a civil and careful driver."