At the present time, when authorities on town-planning have long made it clear that orderly development is both desirable and practicable, the haphazard growth of suburbs into the country is a deplorable and even a painful sight to every intelligent person. English individualism, sometimes an asset, becomes almost a curse when it interferes, as it still does, with nearly everything that can be done to save the English countryside from complete uglification. Consideration of the possibilities of town-planning in this direction must be deferred to our last chapter; for the moment let us consider one or two characteristics of nineteenth-century town growth.
Almost without exception, any man could buy a plot of land anywhere, and build on it anything he wanted. Tripe-dressing, sausage-skin making, and one or two other “noxious” trades might be prohibited in a few favoured localities; the obscure and often absurd law of “Ancient Lights” occasionally restrained his ardour. Otherwise, so long as his building was strong enough to remain standing, and provided with adequate means of drainage, he was as free as air. Building was essentially a commercial business; the rights or needs of the community did not enter into the question. Each man built for his day and generation: the future was left to take care of itself. Yet even from a financial point of view this was a short-sighted policy. When Wren’s plan for rebuilding London was upset by vested interests, a chance was lost of making wide streets that are now urgently necessary but cannot be formed except by payments of incredible sums for compensation. A more modern instance is to be seen in the Euston Road, which was a residential thoroughfare looking over fields when my grandfather knew it a century ago. Then shops came to be built over the front gardens as the old residents fled from the invading streets: and now these shops have to be swept away with heavy payments for compensation to allow the road to be converted into the great artery that any intelligent person could have foreseen when it was first built. This phenomenon is not peculiar to towns: it applies with equal force to the country districts that are continually being absorbed by towns. Half the squalor of modern suburbs is due to indiscriminate development. Trees are cut down and houses are run up along a main road. Traffic increases, and the tenants move away. The houses are clumsily converted into inefficient shops, extending over the front garden, or into seedy inefficient tenements. Empty plots are covered with hideous hoardings. Without undue interference with the liberty of the subject, much of this feckless muddling could be avoided by the exercise of a little rational foresight.
For this is a question deeply affecting the whole community, not a petty professional grievance. The mad race from towns to the fringe of the country is destroying the country for miles round: and the pathology of destruction is now clearly understood. A brilliantly realistic description of the growth of “Bromstead,” a typical London suburb, is to be found in Mr. H. G. Wells’ The New Machiavelli. All who have witnessed the slow spread of this malignant disease will agree that he does not overstate the case.
IV
THE AGE OF PETROL (1910 ONWARDS)
IT may well be objected that this is a mere journalese title, for the influence of motoring on the appearance of the countryside is not always apparent, and many other factors have been at work, among them the Great War and its considerable legacy of troubles. Moreover, some readers may point out that motor-cars were to be seen in England long before 1910. That is true; but they did not appreciably alter our countryside before that date, and the number of them was relatively small.
The most obvious influence that motoring has exerted on England has been in the direction of road “improvements,” especially since the War. Few of us foresaw that the clumsy and not very speedy vehicles which made their first appearance on our highways some thirty years ago, preceded by a man bearing a red flag, would eventually cause so radical a change in our ideas of the nature of a road. For a long time nothing happened. As motors increased in number and speed and bulk, they continued to become more and more of a nuisance to the cyclists and pedestrians and horse-drawn vehicles still forming the majority of road-users. Clouds of dust whitened the hedges, and choked the inhabitants of all houses anywhere near a main highway. Accidents became frequent. All this was unavoidable, because even the best roads made by Telford and Macadam were unequal to the new conditions, and the far larger number of narrow winding country lanes were altogether inadequate for the strain that was now put upon them. An excellent instance of the resulting state of affairs may still be seen in the Isle of Wight, where several of the “main” roads are tortuous narrow lanes sunk between high banks topped with thick hedges. In the summer months a stream of huge charabancs tears over the whole island every day. At many places there is no possibility of these Juggernauts passing each other. Even a hay-cart presents such a complete obstacle that one or other vehicle has to back till the road widens, and in places the blockage caused by the charabanc forces a cyclist or a pedestrian to climb up on to the steep grassy bank while the monster with its cargo of yelling hooligans pushes past him. Either roads must be widened almost everywhere or motor vehicles of all types must be abolished, and, as the latter alternative is out of the question, we must accept the former as inevitable. How it may be effected with the minimum of damage to the beauty of our countryside will be discussed in the next chapter. England has not yet sunk to the level of the Western States, where it is a simple matter to shift a barbed-wire fence a few yards back on each side of the furrows that do duty for a road, and where the iron or wooden shacks that constitute a “home” may readily be wheeled to a new site on the prairie. England is a crowded little country full of sacred associations that go back to the beginnings of our race, and that is why we hate to see crazy new bungalows lining the Pilgrim’s Way. Their very appearance is an insult to our English sense of orderliness and decency, such as we should feel if a negro cheapjack started selling mouth-organs in Canterbury Cathedral.
In some parts of the country there are stretches of road that can be widened without material defacement of the landscape, but they are few. Ancient landmarks hamper progress in most places. Old bridges, for example, are altogether unsuited to heavy and fast motor-traffic. Often built askew with the line of a main road, they are nearly always very steep, very narrow, and, though often sturdy in appearance, are incapable of bearing the weight of a heavy lorry and trailer moving with the speed of a railway train. Here again is a problem requiring solution. Some people would attempt to adapt the old bridge to modern needs, others prefer an entirely new structure placed parallel with the old one, and, of course, the third alternative is complete demolition. The first method is generally impossible, and there is much to be said for a frankly modern design in reinforced concrete, provided that it does not stand in too close proximity to the ancient monument that it supersedes.
Another familiar rural feature that must perforce give way to the insistent needs of the motorist is the ford or “watersplash.” Much as we may regret its disappearance, it has to go.
But most difficult of all is the question of dealing with the narrow High Street of a town or village through which a main artery passes. Occasionally the jerry-builder has anticipated us here, and has erected some terrible Victorian nightmare of a shop right up to the old building-line of the historical cottages that he has demolished. In such a case the children of the Petrol Age may be able to expiate the sins of their fathers by pulling down that shop. But more often there is a building of real merit standing at the very bottleneck through which the procession of traffic has to squeeze its way, such as the old church at Barnet or the Whitgift Hospital at Croydon; and then we are in a quandary, impressed on the one hand by the legitimate needs of our time, deterred on the other hand by an almost religious sense of the sanctity of the past. Sometimes the obstacle is a mere cottage, a barn, a pump, a stone cross, or a quaint structure such as blocks Hampstead Lane near the Spaniard’s Tavern, yet even these must be treated with respect. The “by-pass” road, as suggested in the next chapter, is sometimes the best solution, but is not practicable everywhere. And lastly, there are the trees. As I write these lines I can hear the crashes of falling elms and yews that I have known since childhood. A snorting tractor is pulling them down bodily with a steel hawser, so that the grass-lined lane that runs near my home may be widened for the growing needs of what was once a pretty village.
But a wide straight road does not exhaust the motorist’s requirements. He becomes thirsty at times, and the village inn has already risen to the occasion, usually, it must be admitted, without detriment to the village street. The architecture of licensed premises is looking up. His car also becomes thirsty, (hence the petrol-station), and its occasional liability to gastric trouble involves the provision at frequent intervals of telephone-cabins and repair-shops or garages. We may profitably consider the design of these accessories and their relation to country surroundings in the next chapter. The phenomenal development in the use of motor charabancs has involved the provision of extensive “parking-places” in all pleasure resorts, e.g., at Brighton, where a large part of the sea-view from the Esplanade is blocked. The provision of a “park” at Glastonbury has led to an outcry recently, and everywhere the problem is pressing.