The Road

by Hilaire Belloc

At bottom, like so many other human arrangements, this “pulse” is a negation of its own principles—a sub-conscious effect which a fully thought-out plan could have avoided. There is no true economic basis for it, or, at any rate, not for the most of it.

There will always be advantages, of course, in the central point, and always some tendency in men to seek that central point in order to enjoy those advantages. Ten men may desire to seek daily the central point which has only habitation-room for one, and that will lead to the “pulse” of which I speak. But the necessity for seeking it daily is already very largely an artificial necessity and is becoming more and more artificial every day. The same work can be done perfectly well at a distance as is now done in centres, and in a roundabout way that truth is impressing itself through an economic effect. The rents become so high in the crowded centre that whole groups of activities which do not really need a central position tend to disperse themselves to the outer boundaries. The printing trade, in those branches which are not hurried (the printing of books, for instance), is a good example of this.

When men debate the probable future of our great cities they often omit one very likely development, which is the creation of a number of suburban centres which, if the material side of our civilization declines, will become independent towns and the probable decay of the central nucleus out of which they all grow. It is a speculation worth examining.

iii

The reaction of the Road upon society, its political reaction, has many other departments. For instance, in the communication of ideas the trace of a road will give you the advance of some religious development otherwise inexplicable. I have pointed out through more than one historical allusion in other work how the spread of the Christian religion may be directly followed along the trace of the chief Roman roads, and especially of the great trunk road of the Empire running from Egypt to the Wall in Northumberland. You have only to make a list of names standing on that trunk road to show that it corresponds to a list of dates and names in the story of the conversion of Europe—Alexandria, Jerusalem, Damascus, Antioch, Tarsus, Ephesus, Athens, Brindisi, Naples, Rome, Lyons, Autun, Canterbury, London, St. Albans.

Again, a road which for some reason has become established along an artificial line, a line not directly dictated by the formula of minimum effort, will “canalize” traffic, so that, even when an alternative and better way has been provided, institutions and towns and all that goes for human activity will have taken root along the old way and all history will be deflected by the deflection of the Road.

We have a very interesting example of this here in England in the case of the great road to the north-west. In the earliest times Chester was the one terminal and London the other. Chester was the port for Ireland, and, because it was much easier going along the coast than over the mountains, Chester was also the base point of departure for the penetration of North Wales. Chester was also the great garrison whence troops could be detached for the Lancashire plain and for the western end of the Wall. Nevertheless, Chester, though it maintained for centuries its inevitable importance, had a rival in the Roman town of Uriconium, under the Wrekin: one of the very few Roman towns which have disappeared—though it has its modern counterpart in Shrewsbury. The campaigns against the Welsh were based for hundreds of years as much on this middle section of Shrewsbury as on the northern one of Chester. Finally, when modern engineering made possible a direct trajectory through the mountains, this middle Shrewsbury section fixed the Holyhead road, which would otherwise have gone round by Chester. The main railway system to the north-west, as we know, has been compelled to follow the coast, and but for the deflection of the ancient road round by Shrewsbury that road would have done exactly what the modern railway does.

Now, why was there this strange bend westward and southward towards Shrewsbury in the road making ultimately for Chester? It was because, when the Roman Empire was at the height of its material power, when things were working best and public works were most energetically created and maintained, the Romans had not fully conquered the North.

Therefore their chief trouble with the Welsh mountaineers during that earlier moment was with those of the Central mountains rather than of the North. They had, it is true, established their garrison in Chester. But in making their first great trunk road they had been compelled to choose a more southern terminal, hence what is still called the Watling Street curls round by Penkridge (a Roman name descended from the Roman place-name of the Itinerary) and then makes westward. Later, when the conquest was more complete, a branch was thrown out from Shrewsbury northward to Chester. Long after a short cut was driven from Penkridge to Chester direct. We have grounds for belief that this last road was of later and inferior work, because, though the traces of it survive, the main work has almost wholly disappeared.

It stands to reason that the original trackway before the Romans came would have run pretty directly from London to Chester without going round by the Shrewsbury district; and, indeed, the course to which all the first part of the Watling Street points is evidence of that. When the Roman military engineers began their thorough rebuilding of the roads (in the most permanent fashion in the world) they were at first confined to the southern plain, in which alone they felt secure, and hence was that deflection round westward towards Shrewsbury created which has affected the whole of English history.