"On the next morning, I took an inside place for London. We started early in the morning. The journey from Northampton to the metropolis, however, I can scarcely call a ride, for it was a perpetual motion, or endless jolt from one place to another, in a close wooden box, over what appeared to be a heap of unhewn stones and trunks of trees scattered by a hurricane. To make my happiness complete, I had three travelling companions, all farmers, who slept so soundly that even the hearty knocks with which they hammered their heads against each other and against mine did not awake them. Their faces, bloated and discoloured by ale and brandy and the knocks aforesaid, looked, as they lay before me, like so many lumps of dead flesh.
"I looked, and certainly felt, like a crazy fool when we arrived at London in the afternoon."*[3]
[Image] The Basket Coach, 1780.
Arthur Young, in his books, inveighs strongly against the execrable state of the roads in all parts of England towards the end of last century. In Essex he found the ruts "of an incredible depth," and he almost swore at one near Tilbury. "Of all the cursed roads, "he says, "that ever disgraced this kingdom in the very ages of barbarism, none ever equalled that from Billericay to the King's Head at Tilbury. It is for near twelve miles so narrow that a mouse cannot pass by any carriage. I saw a fellow creep under his waggon to assist me to lift, if possible, my chaise over a hedge. To add to all the infamous circumstances which concur to plague a traveller, I must not forget the eternally meeting with chalk waggons, themselves frequently stuck fast, till a collection of them are in the same situation, and twenty or thirty horses may be tacked to each to draw them out one by one!"*[4] Yet will it be believed, the proposal to form a turnpike-road from Chelmsford to Tilbury was resisted "by the Bruins of the country, whose horses were worried to death with bringing chalk through those vile roads!"
Arthur Young did not find the turnpike any better between Bury and Sudbury, in Suffolk: "I was forced to move as slow in it," he says, "as in any unmended lane in Wales. For, ponds of liquid dirt, and a scattering of loose flints just sufficient to lame every horse that moves near them, with the addition of cutting vile grips across the road under the pretence of letting the water off, but without effect, altogether render at least twelve out of these sixteen miles as infamous a turnpike as ever was beheld." Between Tetsworth and Oxford he found the so-called turnpike abounding in loose stones as large as one's head, full of holes, deep ruts, and withal so narrow that with great difficulty he got his chaise out of the way of the Witney waggons. "Barbarous" and "execrable" are the words which he constantly employs in speaking of the roads; parish and turnpike, all seemed to be alike bad. From Gloucester to Newnham, a distance of twelve miles, he found a "cursed road," "infamously stony," with "ruts all the way." From Newnham to Chepstow he noted another bad feature in the roads, and that was the perpetual hills; "for," he says, "you will form a clear idea of them if you suppose the country to represent the roofs of houses joined, and the road to run across them." It was at one time even matter of grave dispute whether it would not cost as little money to make that between Leominster and Kington navigable as to make it hard. Passing still further west, the unfortunate traveller, who seems scarcely able to find words to express his sufferings, continues:—
"But, my dear Sir, what am I to say of the roads in this country! the turnpikes! as they have the assurance to call them and the hardiness to make one pay for? From Chepstow to the half-way house between Newport and Cardiff they continue mere rocky lanes, full of hugeous stones as big as one's horse, and abominable holes. The first six miles from Newport they were so detestable, and without either direction-posts or milestones, that I could not well persuade myself I was on the turnpike, but had mistook the road, and therefore asked every one I met, who answered me, to my astonishment, 'Ya-as!' Whatever business carries you into this country, avoid it, at least till they have good roads: if they were good, travelling would be very pleasant."*[5]
At a subsequent period Arthur Young visited the northern counties; but his account of the roads in that quarter is not more satisfactory. Between Richmond and Darlington he found them like to "dislocate his bones," being broken in many places into deep holes, and almost impassable; "yet," says he, "the people will drink tea!" —a decoction against the use of which the traveller is found constantly declaiming. The roads in Lancashire made him almost frantic, and he gasped for words to express his rage. Of the road between Proud Preston and Wigan he says: "I know not in the whole range of language terms sufficiently expressive to describe this infernal road. Let me most seriously caution all travellers who may accidentally propose to travel this terrible country, to avoid it as they would the devil; for a thousand to one they break their necks or their limbs by overthrows or breakings-down.
They will here meet with ruts, which I actually measured, four feet deep, and floating with mud only from a wet summer. What, therefore, must it be after a winter? The only mending it receives is tumbling in some loose stones, which serve no other purpose than jolting a carriage in the most intolerable manner. These are not merely opinions, but facts; for I actually passed three carts broken down in those eighteen miles of execrable memory."*[6]
It would even appear that the bad state of the roads in the Midland counties, about the same time, had nearly caused the death of the heir to the throne. On the 2nd of September, 1789, the Prince of Wales left Wentworth Hall, where he had been on a visit to Earl Fitzwilliam, and took the road for London in his carriage. When about two miles from Newark the Prince's coach was overturned by a cart in a narrow part of the road; it rolled down a slope, turning over three times, and landed at the bottom, shivered to pieces. Fortunately the Prince escaped with only a few bruises and a sprain; but the incident had no effect in stirring up the local authorities to make any improvement in the road, which remained in the same wretched state until a comparatively recent period.
When Palmer's new mail-coaches were introduced, an attempt was made to diminish the jolting of the passengers by having the carriages hung upon new patent springs, but with very indifferent results. Mathew Boulton, the engineer, thus described their effect upon himself in a journey he made in one of them from London into Devonshire, in 1787:—