The Life of Thomas Telford, Civil Engineer / With an Introductory History of Roads and Travelling in Great Britain

by Samuel Smiles

The country lying to the west of the Great Glen was absolutely without a road of any kind. The only district through which travellers passed was that penetrated by the great Highland road by Badenoch, between Perth and Inverness; and for a considerable time after the suppression of the rebellion of 1745, it was infested by gangs of desperate robbers. So unsafe was the route across the Grampians, that persons who had occasion to travel it usually made their wills before setting out. Garrons, or little Highland ponies, were then used by the gentry as well as the peasantry. Inns were few and bad; and even when postchaises were introduced at Inverness, the expense of hiring one was thought of for weeks, perhaps months, and arrangements were usually made for sharing it among as many individuals as it would contain. If the harness and springs of the vehicle held together, travellers thought themselves fortunate in reaching Edinburgh, jaded and weary, but safe in purse and limb, on the eighth day after leaving Inverness.*[4] Very few persons then travelled into the Highlands on foot, though Bewick, the father of wood-engraving, made such a journey round Loch Lomond in 1775. He relates that his appearance excited the greatest interest at the Highland huts in which he lodged, the women curiously examining him from head to foot, having never seen an Englishman before. The strange part of his story is, that he set out upon his journey from Cherryburn, near Newcastle, with only three guineas sewed in his waistband, and when he reached home he had still a few shillings left in his pocket!

In 1802, Mr. Telford was called upon by the Government to make a survey of Scotland, and report as to the measures which were necessary for the improvement of the roads and bridges of that part of the kingdom, and also on the means of promoting the fisheries on the east and west coasts, with the object of better opening up the country and preventing further extensive emigration. Previous to this time he had been employed by the British Fisheries Society— of which his friend Sir William Pulteney was Governor—to inspect the harbours at their several stations, and to devise a plan for the establishment of a fishery on the coast of Caithness. He accordingly made an extensive tour of Scotland, examining, among other harbours, that of Annan; from which he proceeded northward by Aberdeen to Wick and Thurso, returning to Shrewsbury by Edinburgh and Dumfries.*[5] He accumulated a large mass of data for his report, which was sent in to the Fishery Society, with charts and plans, in the course of the following year.

In July, 1802, he was requested by the Lords of the Treasury, most probably in consequence of the preceding report, to make a further survey of the interior of the Highlands, the result of which he communicated in his report presented to Parliament in the following year. Although full of important local business, "kept running," as he says, "from town to country, and from country to town, never when awake, and perhaps not always when asleep, have my Scotch surveys been absent from my mind." He had worked very hard at his report, and hoped that it might be productive of some good.

The report was duly presented, printed,*[6] and approved; and it formed the starting-point of a system of legislation with reference to the Highlands which extended over many years, and had the effect of completely opening up that romantic but rugged district of country, and extending to its inhabitants the advantages of improved intercourse with the other parts of the kingdom. Mr. Telford pointed out that the military roads were altogether inadequate to the requirements of the population, and that the use of them was in many places very much circumscribed by the want of bridges over some of the principal rivers. For instance, the route from Edinburgh to Inverness, through the Central Highlands, was seriously interrupted at Dunkeld, where the Tay is broad and deep, and not always easy to be crossed by means of a boat. The route to the same place by the east coast was in like manner broken at Fochabers, where the rapid Spey could only be crossed by a dangerous ferry.

The difficulties encountered by gentlemen of the Bar, in travelling the north circuit about this time, are well described by Lord Cockburn in his 'Memorials.' "Those who are born to modem travelling," he says, "can scarcely be made to understand how the previous age got on. The state of the roads may be judged of from two or three facts. There was no bridge over the Tay at Dunkeld, or over the Spey at Fochabers, or over the Findhorn at Forres. Nothing but wretched pierless ferries, let to poor cottars, who rowed, or hauled, or pushed a crazy boat across, or more commonly got their wives to do it. There was no mail-coach north of Aberdeen till, I think, after the battle of Waterloo. What it must have been a few years before my time may be judged of from Bozzy's 'Letter to Lord Braxfield,' published in 1780. He thinks that, besides a carriage and his own carriage-horses, every judge ought to have his sumpter-horse, and ought not to travel faster than the waggon which carried the baggage of the circuit. I understood from Hope that, after 1784, when he came to the Bar, he and Braxfield rode a whole north circuit; and that, from the Findhorn being in a flood, they were obliged to go up its banks for about twenty-eight miles to the bridge of Dulsie before they could cross. I myself rode circuits when I was Advocate-Depute between 1807 and 1810. The fashion of every Depute carrying his own shell on his back, in the form of his own carriage, is a piece of very modern antiquity."*[7] North of Inverness, matters were, if possible, still worse. There was no bridge over the Beauly or the Conan. The drovers coming south swam the rivers with their cattle. There being no roads, there was little use for carts. In the whole county of Caithness, there was scarcely a farmer who owned a wheel-cart. Burdens were conveyed usually on the backs of ponies, but quite as often on the backs of women.*[8] The interior of the county of Sutherland being almost inaccessible, the only track lay along the shore, among rocks and sand, and was covered by the sea at every tide. "The people lay scattered in inaccessible straths and spots among the mountains, where they lived in family with their pigs and kyloes (cattle), in turf cabins of the most miserable description; they spoke only Gaelic, and spent the whole of their time in indolence and sloth. Thus they had gone on from father to son, with little change, except what the introduction of illicit distillation had wrought, and making little or no export from the country beyond the few lean kyloes, which paid the rent and produced wherewithal to pay for the oatmeal imported."*[9] Telford's first recommendation was, that a bridge should be thrown across the Tay at Dunkeld, to connect the improved lines of road proposed to be made on each side of the river. He regarded this measure as of the first importance to the Central Highlands; and as the Duke of Athol was willing to pay one-half of the cost of the erection, if the Government would defray the other—the bridge to be free of toll after a certain period—it appeared to the engineer that this was a reasonable and just mode of providing for the contingency. In the next place, he recommended a bridge over the Spey, which drained a great extent of mountainous country, and, being liable to sudden inundations, was very dangerous to cross. Yet this ferry formed the only link of communication between the whole of the northern counties. The site pointed out for the proposed bridge was adjacent to the town of Fochabers, and here also the Duke of Gordon and other county gentlemen were willing to provide one-half of the means for its erection.

Mr. Telford further described in detail the roads necessary to be constructed in the north and west Highlands, with the object of opening up the western parts of the counties of Inverness and Ross, and affording a ready communication from the Clyde to the fishing lochs in the neighbourhood of the Isle of Skye. As to the means of executing these improvements, he suggested that Government would be justified in dealing with the Highland roads and bridges as exceptional and extraordinary works, and extending the public aid towards carrying them into effect, as, but for such assistance, the country must remain, perhaps for ages to come, imperfectly opened up. His report further embraced certain improvements in the harbours of Aberdeen and Wick, and a description of the country through which the proposed line of the Caledonian Canal would necessarily pass— a canal which had long been the subject of inquiry, but had not as yet emerged from a state of mere speculation.

The new roads, bridges, and other improvements suggested by the engineer, excited much interest in the north. The Highland Society voted him their thanks by acclamation; the counties of Inverness and Ross followed; and he had letters of thanks and congratulation from many of the Highland chiefs. "If they will persevere," says he, "with anything like their present zeal, they will have the satisfaction of greatly improving a country that has been too long neglected. Things are greatly changed now in the Highlands. Even were the chiefs to quarrel, de'il a Highlandman would stir for them. The lairds have transferred their affections from their people to flocks of sheep, and the people have lost their veneration for the lairds. It seems to be the natural progress of society; but it is not an altogether satisfactory change. There were some fine features in the former patriarchal state of society; but now clanship is gone, and chiefs and people are hastening into the opposite extreme. This seems to me to be quite wrong."*[10] In the same year, Telford was elected a member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, on which occasion he was proposed and supported by three professors; so that the former Edinburgh mason was rising in the world and receiving due honour in his own country. The effect of his report was such, that in the session of 1803 a Parliamentary Commission was appointed, under whose direction a series of practical improvements was commenced, which issued in the construction of not less than 920 additional miles of roads and bridges throughout the Highlands, one-half of the cost of which was defrayed by the Government and the other half by local assessment. But in addition to these main lines of communication, numberless county roads were formed by statute labour, under local road Acts and by other means; the land-owners of Sutherland alone constructing nearly 300 miles of district roads at their own cost.

[Image] Map of Telford's Roads.

By the end of the session of 1803, Telford received his instructions from Mr. Vansittart as to the working survey he was forthwith required to enter upon, with a view to commencing practical operations; and he again proceeded to the Highlands to lay out the roads and plan the bridges which were most urgently needed. The district of the Solway was, at his representation, included, with the object of improving the road from Carlisle to Portpatrick—the nearest point at which Great Britain meets the Irish coast, and where the sea passage forms only a sort of wide ferry.

It would occupy too much space, and indeed it is altogether unnecessary, to describe in detail the operations of the Commission and of their engineer in opening up the communications of the Highlands. Suffice it to say, that one of the first things taken in hand was the connection of the existing lines of road by means of bridges at the more important points; such as at Dunkeld over the Tay, and near Dingwall over the Conan and Orrin. That of Dunkeld was the most important, as being situated at the entrance to the Central Highlands; and at the second meeting of the Commissioners Mr. Telford submitted his plan and estimates of the proposed bridge. In consequence of some difference with the Duke of Athol as to his share of the expense—which proved to be greater than he had estimated—some delay occurred in beginning the work; but at length it was fairly started, and, after being about three years in hand, the structure was finished and opened for traffic in 1809.