The Old Post Office, Tintagel
24. Communications—Roads, Railways.
The great road from London to Falmouth ran through Launceston, Bodmin, and Truro, and was kept in good order, and over it raced the mail coaches that conveyed letters on to the packets at Falmouth. This was the main artery of communication for more than a century, till Falmouth was abandoned as a mail-packet station by the Government. From 18 to 20 fine vessels performed this service, carrying letters and papers to all parts of the world, until the extension of railways caused the service to be transferred to Southampton.
Whether there were systematically constructed Roman roads in Cornwall has been doubted. One curious ancient road—the Giant's Hedge—is found near Lanreath, and appears to have been a portion of a road raised on a bank that started from a ferry over the Tamar and was carried into the west of Cornwall. There was a road also that came from Exeter and crossed the Tamar at Polson Bridge and then turned north to Camelford. Another ran past Stratton to the estuary of the Camel opposite Padstow, where Romano-British remains have been found on Bray Hill. But it is possible enough that these roads were of British and not of Roman construction.
In the Middle Ages little or nothing was done to keep the roads in repair. Even in the eighteenth century all that was thought necessary was to throw down a load of boulders into the ruts, rake them in, and leave coach and cart wheels to grind them up. But the roads were taken in hand at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and the turnpikes served to provide funds for keeping them in order, while Macadam's invention of breaking the stones before laying them on the roads assisted enormously in facilitating transit along them.
A Cornish Stile