Our civilization fell into decay, as did that of the whole of the rest of Europe. The decay was not due to the pirate raids from North Germany and Holland any more than it was due to the raids of the Scottish Highlanders, which were just as frequent and violent, or the raids of Irish pirates from the west, which were at one moment so severe as to put up a separate realm on the west coast of this island. The history of England is continuous, and its foundation, from which we get all our institutions, more than half our language, all our ideas and religion and the rest of it, is in the 400 years of high civilization between the landing of the Roman armies and the breakdown of the imperial system in the West.
The Roman Road is the true and only root of the road system of Britain. All our local roads can be found developing slowly from the Roman roads of the district which had preceded them, and it is nearly always possible to trace the causes which led to each particular local system. In each you find the Roman Road is the backbone of the affair, and the later local roads existing only as developments of and changes from this basic Roman plan.
C.—The third division is one for which we have little direct, but plenty of indirect, evidence, and the remains of which are with us upon every side. It is the growth in the Early Middle Ages, presumably from about the Angevin period, of the mediaeval road system which was the deflection and extension of the old Roman road system. At the end of the Empire, during the Dark Ages (i.e. from the fifth to the eleventh century), though the Roman road system had remained the only available one, it had decayed, and numerous modifications of it had already appeared; but with the Early Middle Ages those modifications seem to have grown prodigiously, and the indirect network of local roads would then seem to have arisen.
D.—The fourth chapter is even more obscure. It is a partial decline, only affecting certain districts, and affecting some much more than others: a decline which corresponds more or less to the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century. It went with the flooding of the fen lands, with the breakdown of central authority, the increase of local interests, and so on.
E.—The fifth chapter is the great revolution in road planning and construction which may be called the turnpike era: beginning early in the eighteenth century and flourishing at its close.
The turnpike system continued to develop with continual changes through three or four generations. It survived the competition of the railroads. It was vastly improved by the new local legislation of from forty to twenty years ago. It left us with the road system we now enjoy, which must, under the pressure of quite recent changes, be modified if our communications are to be saved, or, at any rate, to keep pace with the present conditions of travel.
CHAPTER X
THE TRACKWAYS
The Three Divisions of the British Pre-Roman Road System—The System of which Salisbury Plain was the “Hub”: The System Connected with London: Cross-Country Communications—The Three Factors which Have Determined Travel in Britain.
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The origin of the trackways is, of course, unknown, and can only be guessed at by inference; but their character, and especially the geographical causes which determined their trace, we can establish on the largest lines with some accuracy.