Describe what improvement of the main road has taken place under your direction, in Woburn?—The whole of the line of the road through Woburn, except about three hundred yards in different places, is on a very strong alluvial clay: the road passes over naked sand, only for three hundred yards; this road had been rendered so sandy and so bad, entirely by bringing soft sand-stone out of Buckinghamshire, at three miles carriage, upon the average, in Woburn, and some of that stone was brought almost to the end of Hockliff Town, where the best gravel abounds. It appeared, from the remains of a number of gravel pits, that there had been formerly a great deal of gravel dug in Woburn; this circumstance I mentioned to the duke of Bedford, and he desired search to be made; and it was ascertained that Woburn might furnish gravel enough, adequate to any purpose. In consequence of which, his Grace directed, when the labourers were much in want of employment, that the poor persons should be employed in preparing a great quantity of gravel for the purposes of this turnpike road. I undertook to direct the taking of this gravel out, and to level the siftings and dirt in a uniform manner, and lay all the soil again upon the top; by which means the land was in no degree injured, but, in fact, considerably benefited, by being loosened to that depth. A great many hundreds of cubic yards of clean-sifted and picked gravel were prepared in numerous square stacks, and the trustees at a meeting, or else their clerk, were informed, that this gravel his Grace offered to the road at the mere cost of labour, without any thing for the gravel, or the temporary damage to the occupiers of the land. After a long time of hesitation, the trustees or their clerk returned an answer, that they did not like that mode, alleging that their surveyor ought to be allowed to dig materials where and how he liked, and they would not have this gravel: it lay there, some of it for two or three years, upon the land. In that time a number of private roads were making of his Grace’s, and a good deal of it was used on these. The main road became progressively worse and worse, and the post-office caused the parish to be indicted. I was then surveyor, and made an application to the trustees, stating the circumstances the road was under: that road-trust is thirteen miles in length, two of which, or rather more, are in the parish of Woburn; there is a toll-gate in the parish which the inhabitants are liable to all the toll of; some of them, even in going and returning to and from their fields: the trustees had exacted very strictly the half of the statute duty, although the parish had, I think, eleven miles of private roads to maintain. I mention this circumstance to show there was no default on the part of the parish; and it was afterwards proved, that they had done their duty; the trustees merely laughed at the application, and said, that they had nothing to do with it: we must repair the road, and till we did so, they would not lay out a farthing upon our road. It happened, very fortunately for the parish of Woburn, that their act was very nearly out, and they applied for a new one; the parish opposed it, stating, that the trustees had misapplied the tolls, and praying, that the part of the road, through Woburn, should be taken out of their management; the act accordingly directed, that two-thirteenths of the tolls should be paid over to the parish surveyors of Woburn, and the trustees were not to call for any statute duty, or interfere in the management of this part of the road; in consequence of this, the gravel mentioned, which remained, and great quantities dug on purpose, was used upon the road, in a sufficient quantity at once, so as to admit of its settling down together; for it wanted lining nine inches thick, or more, and the road has since been perfectly good.
Jovis, 25º die Martii, 1819.
John Farey, Esquire, called in; and Examined,
In effecting the improvement of the Woburn road, did you make use of any particular mode of applying the gravel?—The gravel, before the time of using it, had been very clean-sifted, and separated from the dirt and sand; the great stones had been picked out, and such of the flints which were of a long and irregular shape, in order that they might be broken. After laying the gravel upon the road men were daily employed to rake the gravel into the ruts, and, at the same time, to carefully pick off the surface any stones that were either soft or improperly shaped, like long flints, or too large.
What is your opinion, in regard to the form the most preferable for turnpike roads?—A small convexity in the middle.
Will you state the fall, in any given width of road, that you would prefer?—Referring to my brother, Mr. Benjamin Farey’s evidence, I agree with him in wishing that the section which he produced, might be received by the Committee, as an answer to this question.
Is there any particular circumstance, in the formation of roads, more particularly applicable to the immediate neighbourhood of London?—In the neighbourhood of London, and of several other large towns, the materials that are to be readily procured, are of too tender and brittle a nature to endure the wear of the heavy carriages; I therefore am of opinion, that it would be proper to pave the sides of all the principal entrances into London; but not the middle, as has been done on the Commercial road and Borough Stones’-end road. My reasons for preferring the sides being paved are, that it is next to impossible to compel the carters to keep upon the pavement in the middle of the road, in too many instances; the fear of damage, from the swift going carriages, occasions them, either to draw their carts close to the sides, and walk upon the footpaths, or what is worse to leave their horses in the middle, beyond a train of carriages. The sides being paved, would enable one of those trains of carriages to enter London on one side of the road, and go out of it on the other, without many occasions to turn out of their tracks: which keeping nearly to the same tracks, upon a well-paved road, would not be prejudicial; but on a road formed of gravel is entirely ruinous.
Do you consider that the plan of rolling the roads in the neighbourhood, of London, might be advantageously introduced?—The centre of the roads I should recommend to remain covered with clean-sifted and picked gravel, having as many as possible of its large, roundish and smooth stones broken by means of a hammer before the time of laying it on the road, and that an heavy iron roller, of from four to five feet diameter, and not less, might be advantageously used in the first settling down of this gravel; a small roller, such as I believe to have been tried in the neighbourhood of London, very heavily loaded on its top, might have a tendency to force the loose gravel before it so as not easily to be drawn or to mount on to the gravel driven before it without crushing the flints. I will add, I am of opinion, that a roller could not be beneficially used upon a road at any other times but after new coating it with gravel, or after a frost or the sticking of materials to the wheels may have loosened up the materials.
Do you consider that the present regulations in regard to exemptions of tolls to waggons with broad wheels, are justified by sound policy?—In my opinion, those exemptions have wholly originated in mistaken principles, and that no wheels wider than about six inches are now, in fact, used upon the roads, owing to the general and gross deceptions which the waggoners practise as to the breadth of surface that their wheels roll on; and that if by any more efficient regulations, the users of broad wheels were compelled to roll the breadths of surface, which the laws contemplate, all such wheels would be immediately disused, from the great additional force of draught which broad wheels occasion during the average state of all the roads.
Are you of opinion that any regulation by statute, for substituting cylindrical for conical wheels, would remedy that evil, or justify an exemption from toll?—As far as I have observed, there are no conical wheels in use: all the wheels are rounding or barrelled, and it is comparatively an immaterial circumstance whether they approach the form of a cone or a cylinder, while they remain so rounding or barrelled, because their enormous loads roll on a very small portion of the surface of all those broad wheels. I think that six-inch cylindrical wheels, or under, are the most practicable and useful, provided the projecting nails are most rigidly prohibited, which I believe can never be done but by a penalty per nail upon the wheelers who put in those nails, and upon the drivers of the carriages who used such roughly-nailed wheels.