PRIMITIVE AND MODERN

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 31, 6 February 1932, Page 17

PRIMITIVE AND MODERN

What kind \of roads did Neolithic Man use?-And the ancient Britons, the Romans, the medieval pilgrims? What are the best materials for roads now, or in the future? Such are some of the questions Professor Gregory answers in "The Story of the Road,',' ■with the aid of twenty-eight plates and four maps. ■•■ ■ ' " ■ • *

Roads are' roads, he points out, even before they are."made" roads. The: [primitive bison track was not a i"mado" road, but many American roads follow its course. The equally primitive ridgeway is still common in (Victoria. Caesar in. Kent, judging from the marches ho made, must have found roads better than these,, if not so good as the later Roman roads. Posts on the Roman roads travelled forty to fifty miles a day; as late as 1834 no faster travelling . was possible in Europe, and Sir Robert Peel, rushing from Rome to London, took-thirteen days to do it. Between those da|es the Roman roads seemed an unattainable ideal. Geoffrey of Monmouth attributed them to sorcery; Camden thought : they were built to provide employment, "that the people might not grow factious thro ease" (a rare source of factiousness!). Professor . Gregory does not think wheeled traffic ever dislappeared entirely from England for want of roads, for King John's baggage lost in the Welland was in carts. 1 But, in general, commerce took to long lines of pack-horses on narrow tracks. The Roman bridges vanished (stone bridges always perish in a century by vibration), and were replaced by wood, or (oftener) not at all. Few of the Roman roads wore out, but many became grass-grown, while the new routes were seas of mud. The name Slough is probably significant; and even in 1770 Arthur Young measured ruts four feot deep between Preston and Wigan. Yet some roads must have been fair, at least in dry weather, else so many cannon could not have been moved about in the Civil War, nor could "Swift NiekV in 1676 have established his alibi by riding in fifteea hours from Gravesend to York. - A

The history of turnpikes is given, and an amusing section of the book deals with the many English laws from 1621 onward, which, ,to save roadmending, prohibited four-wheeled vehicles or ordered tires ststeon inches wide. Still more drastic laws were sometimes demanded. .Dwellers in the ".home counties" about 1720 petitioned against the extension of turnpikes, lest the foreigners of Lincoln and Warwick should undersoil them in. the London markets.^ Gressot in 1673 wanted to forbid stage-eoaehes, because passongors wore out fewer clothes, and so threw tailors out of work. The statute mile with the awkward number of 1760 yards, now used for all our roads, is an, accidental by-product of an Act of 1593 for limiting the growth of london,. whose only -effect ■ wasi to extend a local London measure to the rest of.the Kingdom. •