For instance, in [sketch VII] you begin with the “evens,” looking northward. No. 38, looking north towards No. 40, sees that No. 39 (who faces him, looking south) is somewhat too much to the east and does not stand properly between him and No. 40. He signals to No. 39 to move westward as along the dots until No. 39 is at a new position, shown by the dotted circle exactly between No. 38 and No. 40. Next, No. 36 signals to No. 37, who is too much to the west, until No. 37 is exactly between himself and No. 38. When this has been done all along the line by the evens the order is given to the odds to repeat the process from their new positions. No. 39, looking southward from his new position at the dotted circle, sees that No. 38 is too far to the east to be in perfect alignment with No. 39’s next odd neighbour No. 37, at whom he is looking, southward. No. 39 signals, therefore, to No. 38, who is looking northward, to move westward, and No. 38 does so until the signal stops him, when he is just in line between the new positions of No. 39 and No. 37.
It will be evident that after this first stage of the process the original irregular line between A and B will have been much straightened. You have but to repeat the manœuvre half a dozen or a dozen times to get the whole body of men into a strictly straight line between the two extremities many miles apart, and that although those in the middle cannot see either extreme and neither extremity can see the other. In theory this method can be used for an indefinite extent of country. In practice it seems to have been used (if it were indeed that upon which the Roman engineers relied) for spaces sometimes as great as a three days’ march, and quite often as great as one day’s march or more.
iv
The scheme of Roman roads, following in the main these great straight limbs, covered the whole country, and was for the most part completed, we may presume, by the end of the second century.
It must not, of course, be imagined that these great military ways were the only means of communication in Roman times. Many historians have fallen into that grotesque error, with the result that history becomes meaningless to their readers. These great ways were only the main arteries, which were linked up in all the intervening spaces by a mass of local ways not specially constructed or engineered—most of them presumably aboriginal, and also maintained presumably by a local authority.
CHAPTER XII
THE DARK AGES
The Decline of the Roman Road: The Period at its Occurrence: Gaps: Roman Roads which Fell into Disuse: The Relationship of the Modern to the Roman System: Watling Street: Stane Street: The Short Cut Between Penkridge and Chester: Peddars Way: The coming of the New Civilization in the Twelfth Century.
i
The next phase in the development of the English Road is the very gradual breakdown of the great Roman ways. The Dark Ages—that is, the 500 or 600 years between the fifth and the tenth or eleventh centuries—formed the period during which this process took place.
The Roman Road in England suffered the fate of all our ancient civilization. It very slowly declined and coarsened, but it remained the one necessary means of communication. We have no dates and no contemporary record after the fourth century for Britain, but we have the analogy of Northern France, in which we know that the upkeep and repair of the great Roman roads continued until well into the seventh century, and we have the evidence of the Roman roads as they now stand before us, with the result of their very gradual and only partial breakdown in a use of centuries. We have also the fact that much the most of the great battles took place on or near the Roman roads until the twelfth century, that most of the new great monastic and other houses were built near them, or on them, and that the ports most commonly used in the Dark Ages were nearly always ports with a Roman road serving them. We can thereby roughly judge (although we have no direct evidence) what happened to the system.