A History of Inland Transport and Communication in England

by Edwin A. Pratt

It was from conditions such as these that Thomas Telford and John Loudon McAdam came to rescue the country.

There had been one road-reformer before them, in John Metcalf, a native of Knaresboro', where he was born in 1717. Though totally blind from the age of six, he developed abundant resources, and became successively fiddler, soldier, chapman, fish-dealer, horse-dealer and waggoner. Taking at last to road-making, he constructed about 180 miles of road in Yorkshire, Lancashire, Cheshire and Derby, rendering an important service to the two first-mentioned counties, more especially by improving their means of communication at a time when they were greatly in need of better roads on account of their then rapidly increasing trade and industry. But though Metcalf did good work in these directions, and achieved some noteworthy successes in carrying solid roads across difficult bogs, he introduced no really new system, and the chief progress made did not come until after his death, in 1810.

Son of a shepherd at Eskdale, Dumfriesshire, where he was born in 1757, Telford started life as a stonemason's apprentice, but became an engineer, and undertook many important works, including canals, bridges, harbours and docks. Here, however, we are concerned with him only as a builder of roads—a department in which he showed great skill and activity.

On the appointment, in 1803, of a body of Commissioners who were to improve the system of communications in Scotland (one half of the expense being defrayed by Parliamentary grants, and one half by local contributions), Telford was selected to carry out the work, and he constructed 920 miles of road and 1,117 bridges in the Highlands, and 150 miles of road between Glasgow, Cumbernauld (Dumbarton) and Carlisle. Then, in 1815, money having been voted by Parliament for the improvement of the Holyhead road, with a view to the betterment of communications with Ireland, Telford was entrusted with the task, which involved the making or improvement of, altogether, 123 miles of road.

Telford's own opinion of the roads of England and Scotland was thus expressed in the evidence he gave before the Select Committee of the House of Commons in 1819:—

"They are in general very defective both as to their direction and inclination; they are frequently carried over hills, which might be avoided by passing along the adjacent valleys ... there has been no attention paid to constructing good and solid foundations; the materials, whether consisting of gravel or stones, have seldom been sufficiently selected and arranged; and they lie so promiscuously upon the roads as to render it inconvenient to travel upon them.... The shape of the roads, or cross section of the surface, is frequently hollow in the middle; the sides incumbered with great banks of road dirt, which have accumulated in some places to the height of six, seven, or eight feet; these prevent the water from falling into the side drains; they also throw a considerable shade upon the road, and are gross and unpardonable nuisances. The materials, instead of being cleaned of the mud and soil with which they are mixed in their native state, are laid promiscuously upon the road."

In planning new roads Telford cut right through the hills, wherever possible, in order to avoid unduly steep gradients. In making the roads he first arranged a solid foundation of pieces of durable stone, from 4 in. to 7 in. in size, these being carefully put into position by hand, with the broadest side downward, and packed with small stones in between. On the rough pavement thus formed he laid an upper course of small broken stones, with a binding of one inch of gravel. Between the two courses a drain was set across the road every hundred yards, Telford attaching great importance to the carrying off of all water that might percolate through the upper course on to the lower. He gave a uniform and only moderately convex shape to the surface of the road, abandoning, in this respect, the ideas of his more amateur predecessors. But his system was one that called for much labour and care, as well as for an abundant supply of the needful materials, and the cost of carrying it out was proportionately high, if not, in some situations, prohibitive.

McAdam preferred to be considered a road-repairer rather than a road-builder, and his methods differed materially from those of Telford. He became, also, much more of a propagandist in the work of road-improvement, enforcing his theories with such success that he brought a new word into the English language, roads made or mended according to the main principles he laid down having been known ever since his day as "macadamised."

Born in Ayrshire in 1756—one year before Telford—McAdam went to America at the age of 14 to start life in the counting-house of his uncle in New York. Subsequently he became a successful merchant, and returned in 1783 to Scotland, where he bought the estate of Sauchrie, and then, in 1785, began to devote his attention to road-making, which was to occupy his thoughts and absorb his energies for the rest of his days. Roads he came to regard as, in his own words, "perhaps the most important branch of our domestic economy." Many new roads were then being constructed in Scotland, and he himself became a commissioner of roads in that country. He also began a systematic course of travel over the roads of England and Scotland, covering, by 1814, no fewer than 30,000 miles.

In 1810 McAdam commenced a series of experiments in the construction of roads, and he published the following year some "Observations on the Highways of the Kingdom," recording the opinions he had formed as the result of his twenty-seven years' inquiries.