The beginning of roads starts with wild animals who wandered about the countryside, down to the water and migrating from worn out feed grounds to pastures new. Stone Age man followed these animals as they hunted and gathered. Eventually the Stone Age people became farmers and found the need to trade with other communities, developing tracks all over the British Isles. There are track ways over the Somerset Levels which prove that ancient man built roads of a sort long before the Romans arrived in Britain.
However, the Romans were great road builders and many of our major roads, A1 and A5 particularly, are still in use today, albeit improved, altered and re-aligned by 19th and 20th century engineers. Roman roads were built in as direct line as possible, but contrary to popular opinion, they were not always straight, quite often the Romans levelled out diagonal terraces to assist climbing a steep slope, or maybe the route zig-zagged up a short, steep slope. The Romans were skilful engineers and planners and their roads lasted for centuries.
In the Middle Ages road maintenance was left to the parishes and those people who lived in the parishes. Each parish had to look after the roads in their area and local people were expected, by law, to work unpaid to keep the roads maintained. Other people within the parish would contribute financial to the upkeep of the roads. This system was used from the middle 16th Century to 1835. This system did not work very well and many roads were poorly maintained and unsuitable for horse carts and coaches, especially as the traffic became heavier over major roads.
In the late 18th century turnpike trusts began to take over the maintenance and building of new roads, a group of wealthy people would get together and ask for permission from Parliament to take over a section of road or build a new one. Parliament would grant an Act of Parliament to establish individual Turnpike Trusts. This was similar to the system used to build canals and railways, where the money was raised by ‘public subscription’.
After collecting capital sufficient to take over a stretch of road the Trust would pay for the road’s maintenance and then collect tolls from everyone who used the road to pay their costs and to keep the road maintained. Small oddly shaped houses built very close to the side of roads can still be seen today. These were the tollgate houses, the Trusts would employ people and allow them to live in these houses, in return for which the tollgate keeper would collect the tolls and open the gate or gates to travellers.
Even this system of maintaining roads didn’t work very well, there were no set standards, they were expensive to use and maintain and if a trust lacked the necessary funds they simply did not maintain the roads. First of all canals were built in direct competition to roads and then railways were beginning to be built and they were considerably faster and safer then the roads and canals. By 1830 there were over a thousand Turnpike Trusts maintaining 32,000 kilometres of roads, in 1895 the last Turnpike Trust folded.
At this time care and maintenance of the roads fell to the main local councils, whether they were town or country, urban or rural district councils. But it gradually became evident that roads should be maintained and built on a national basis, therefore, the Ministry of Transport was formed, the Ministry built and maintained major routes and the local councils continued to maintain local roads. This system has now been replaced by the Highways Agency.
All this has evolved into a complicated road network with motorways, A,B and unclassified roads, public footpaths (on foot only and normally referred to as a public right of way), bridleway for use on foot, on horseback and by pedal cycle. There are restricted byways for use by non-motorised vehicles eg horse and cart, horses, pedal cycles or on foot. Then there are BOATs a byway open to all traffic and can be used on foot, horseback, pedal cycle and wheeled vehicles of all kinds, these byways are normally not maintained by a public authority of any kind. Occasionally a landowner will give permission for people to use a footpath across his or her land, these are known as permissive footpaths, they are not public rights of way.
So many of our major, main and local routes, whether by motorised vehicle, hoofed conveyance, pedal power or shank’s pony have developed over the centuries to what we use today. Many more miles of road, lane and path which have not been used over the centuries have been lost.
Written in 2003
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