[21] The Public Carriages of Great Britain. J. E. Bradfield, London, 1855.
ROADS IN GEORGE III’s TIME.
The turnpike road had been improved by the year 1773, when Mr. Daniel Bourn wrote a pamphlet[22] answering some objections which had been urged against his waggon on rollers (see p. 79). Mr. Jacob had asserted that the roughness of the roads was an insuperable obstacle to the enormously wide wheels invented by Mr. Bourn; and the latter, while admitting the wretched condition of local roads, refutes this argument as applied to the great roads:—
“A person might follow a waggon from London to York and meet with very few great stones ... let us now view this more agreeable turnpike road, yet even here you will find that there is less degrees of loose dirt and mangled materials.”
[22] Some Brief Remarks upon Mr. Jacob’s Treatise. London, 1773.
In this connection it will be remembered that the road roller had been brought into use in the previous year (see footnote p. 80).
The improvement was by no means universal, however. Arthur Young[23] writes:—
“I know not in the whole range of language terms sufficiently expressive to describe this infernal road. To look over a map, and perceive that it is a principal one, not only to some towns, but even whole counties, one would naturally conclude it to be at least decent; but let me most seriously caution all travellers who may accidentally purpose to travel this terrible country, to avoid it as they would the devil, for a thousand to one but 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 the winter? The only mending it receives, in places, is the tumbling in loose stones, which serve no other purpose but jolting the carriage in a most intolerable manner. These are not merely opinions, but facts, for I actually passed three carts broken down in these eighteen miles of execrable memory.”
[23] Tour in the North of England. London, 1770.
IMPROVEMENTS IN STAGE COACHES.