He next agreed to make the mile and a half of turnpike-road between his native town of Knaresborough and Harrogate—ground with which he was more than ordinarily familiar. Walking one day over a portion of the ground on which the road was to be made, while still covered with grass, he told the workmen that he thought it differed from the ground adjoining it, and he directed them to try for stone or gravel underneath; and, strange to say, not many feet down, the men came upon the stones of an old Roman causeway, from which he obtained much valuable material for the making of his new road. At another part of the contract there was a bog to be crossed, and the surveyor thought it impossible to make a road over it. Metcalf assured him that he could readily accomplish it; on which the other offered, if he succeeded, to pay him for the straight road the price which he would have to pay if the road were constructed round the bog. Metcalf set to work accordingly, and had a large quantity of furze and ling laid upon the bog, over which he spread layers of gravel. The plan answered effectually, and when the materials had become consolidated, it proved one of the best parts of the road.
It would be tedious to describe in detail the construction of the various roads and bridges which Metcalf subsequently executed, but a brief summary of the more important will suffice. In Yorkshire, he made the roads between Harrogate and Harewood Bridge; between Chapeltown and Leeds; between Broughton and Addingham; between Mill Bridge and Halifax; between Wakefield and Dewsbury; between Wakefield and Doncaster; between Wakefield, Huddersfield, and Saddleworth (the Manchester road); between Standish and Thurston Clough; between Huddersfield and Highmoor; between Huddersfield and Halifax, and between Knaresborough and Wetherby.
In Lancashire also, Metcalf made a large extent of roads, which were of the greatest importance in opening up the resources of that county. Previous to their construction, almost the only means of communication between districts was by horse-tracks and mill-roads, of sufficient width to enable a laden horse to pass along them with a pack of goods or a sack of corn slung across its back. Metcalf's principal roads in Lancashire were those constructed by him between Bury and Blackburn, with a branch to Accrington; between Bury and Haslingden; and between Haslingden and Accrington, with a branch to Blackburn. He also made some highly important main roads connecting Yorkshire and Lancashire with each other at many parts: as, for instance, those between Skipton, Colne, and Burnley; and between Docklane Head and Ashton-under-Lyne. The roads from Ashton to Stockport and from Stockport to Mottram Langdale were also his work.
Our road-maker was also extensively employed in the same way in the counties of Cheshire and Derby; constructing the roads between Macclesfield and Chapel-le-Frith, between Whaley and Buxton, between Congleton and the Red Bull (entering Staffordshire), and in various other directions. The total mileage of the turnpike-roads thus constructed was about one hundred and eighty miles, for which Metcalf received in all about sixty-five thousand pounds. The making of these roads also involved the building of many bridges, retaining-walls, and culverts. We believe it was generally admitted of the works constructed by Metcalf that they well stood the test of time and use; and, with a degree of justifiable pride, he was afterwards accustomed to point to his bridges, when others were tumbling during floods, and boast that none of his had fallen.
This extraordinary man not only made the highways which were designed for him by other surveyors, but himself personally surveyed and laid out many of the most important roads which he constructed, in difficult and mountainous parts of Yorkshire and Lancashire. One who personally knew Metcalf thus wrote of him during his life-time:. "With the assistance only of a long staff, I have several times met this man traversing the roads, ascending steep and rugged heights, exploring valleys and investigating their several extents, forms, and situations, so as to answer his designs in the best manner. The plans which he makes, and the estimates he prepares, are done in a method peculiar to himself, and of which he cannot well convey the meaning to others. His abilities in this respect are, nevertheless, so great that he finds constant employment. Most of the roads over the Peak in Derbyshire have been altered by his directions, particularly those in the vicinity of Buxton; and he is at this time constructing a new one betwixt Wilmslow and Congleton, to open a communication with the great London road, without being obliged to pass over the mountains. I have met this blind projector while engaged in making his survey. He was alone as usual, and, amongst other conversation, I made some inquiries respecting this new road. It was really astonishing to hear with what accuracy he described its course and the nature of the different soils through which it was conducted. Having mentioned to him a boggy piece of ground it passed through, he observed that 'that was the only place he had doubts concerning, and that he was apprehensive they had, contrary to his directions, been too sparing of their materials.'"*[1]
Metcalf's skill in constructing his roads over boggy ground was very great; and the following may be cited as an instance. When the high-road from Huddersfield to Manchester was determined on, he agreed to make it at so much a rood, though at that time the line had not been marked out. When this was done, Metcalf, to his dismay, found that the surveyor had laid it out across some deep marshy ground on Pule and Standish Commons. On this he expostulated with the trustees, alleging the much greater expense that he must necessarily incur in carrying out the work after their surveyor's plan. They told him, however, that if he succeeded in making a complete road to their satisfaction, he should not be a loser; but they pointed out that, according to their surveyor's views, it would be requisite for him to dig out the bog until he came to a solid bottom. Metcalf, on making his calculations, found that in that case he would have to dig a trench some nine feet deep and fourteen yards broad on the average, making about two hundred and ninety-four solid yards of bog in every rood, to be excavated and carried away. This, he naturally conceived, would have proved both tedious as well as costly, and, after all, the road would in wet weather have been no better than a broad ditch, and in winter liable to be blocked up with snow. He strongly represented this view to the trustees as well as the surveyor, but they were immovable. It was, therefore, necessary for him to surmount the difficulty in some other way, though he remained firm in his resolution not to adopt the plan proposed by the surveyor. After much cogitation he appeared again before the trustees, and made this proposal to them: that he should make the road across the marshes after his own plan, and then, if it should be found not to answer, he would be at the expense of making it over again after the surveyor's proposed method. This was agreed to; and as he had undertaken to make nine miles of the road within ten months, he immediately set to work with all despatch.
Nearly four hundred men were employed upon the work at six different points, and their first operation was to cut a deep ditch along either side of the intended road, and throw the excavated stuff inwards so as to raise it to a circular form. His greatest difficulty was in getting the stones laid to make the drains, there being no firm footing for a horse in the more boggy places. The Yorkshire clothiers, who passed that way to Huddersfield market —by no means a soft-spoken race—ridiculed Metcalf's proceedings, and declared that he and his men would some day have to be dragged out of the bog by the hair of their heads! Undeterred, however, by sarcasm, he persistently pursued his plan of making the road practicable for laden vehicles; but he strictly enjoined his men for the present to keep his manner of proceeding; a secret.
His plan was this. He ordered heather and ling to be pulled from the adjacent ground, and after binding it together in little round bundles, which could be grasped with the hand, these bundles were placed close together in rows in the direction of the line of road, after which other similar bundles were placed transversely over them; and when all had been pressed well down, stone and gravel were led on in broad-wheeled waggons, and spread over the bundles, so as to make a firm and level way. When the first load was brought and laid on, and the horses reached the firm ground again in safety, loud cheers were set up by the persons who had assembled in the expectation of seeing both horses and waggons disappear in the bog. The whole length was finished in like manner, and it proved one of the best, and even the driest, parts of the road, standing in very little need of repair for nearly twelve years after its construction. The plan adopted by Metcalf, we need scarcely point out, was precisely similar to that afterwards adopted by George Stephenson, under like circumstances, when constructing the railway across Chat Moss. It consisted simply in a large extension of the bearing surface, by which, in fact, the road was made to float upon the surface of the bog; and the ingenuity of the expedient proved the practical shrewdness and mother-wit of the blind Metcalf, as it afterwards illustrated the promptitude as well as skill of the clear-sighted George Stephenson.
Metcalf was upwards of seventy years old before he left off road-making. He was still hale and hearty, wonderfully active for so old a man, and always full of enterprise. Occupation was absolutely necessary for his comfort, and even to the last day of his life he could not bear to be idle. While engaged on road-making in Cheshire, he brought his wife to Stockport for a time, and there she died, after thirty-nine years of happy married life. One of Metcalf's daughters became married to a person engaged in the cotton business at Stockport, and, as that trade was then very brisk, Metcalf himself commenced it in a small way. He began with six spinning-jennies and a carding-engine, to which he afterwards added looms for weaving calicoes, jeans, and velveteens. But trade was fickle, and finding that he could not sell his yarns except at a loss, he made over his jennies to his son-in-law, and again went on with his road-making. The last line which he constructed was one of the most difficult he had everundertaken,— that between Haslingden and Accrington, with a branch road to Bury. Numerous canals being under construction at the same time, employment was abundant and wages rose, so that though he honourably fulfilled his contract, and was paid for it the sum of 3500L., he found himself a loser of exactly 40L. after two years' labour and anxiety. He completed the road in 1792, when he was seventy-five years of age, after which he retired to his farm at Spofforth, near Wetherby, where for some years longer he continued to do a little business in his old line, buying and selling hay and standing wood, and superintending the operations of his little farm, During the later years of his career he occupied himself in dictating to an amanuensis an account of the incidents in his remarkable life, and finally, in the year 1810, this strong-hearted and resolute man —his life's work over—laid down his staff and peacefully departed in the ninety-third year of his age; leaving behind him four children, twenty grand-children, and ninety great grand-children.
[Image] Metcalf's house at Spofforth.