Book II. PAVED ROADS. 537 



3445. Paving the wliolg or any part of a road is entirely dimpjrroved (rfhy M'Adam. 

 " The measure," he says, *' of substituting pavements, for convenient and useful roads, 

 is a kind of desperate remedy, to which ignorance has had recourse." The badness, or 

 scarcity of materials, cannot be considered a reasonable excuse ; because the same quan- 

 tity of stone required for paving, is fully sufficient to make any excellent road any where : 

 and it must be evident, that road materials of the best quality may be procured at less 

 cost than paving stone. The very bad quality of the gravel round London, combined 

 with want of skill and exertion, either to obviate its defects, or to procures better mate- 

 rial, has induced several of the small trusts, leading from that city, to have recourse to the 

 plan of paving their roads, as far as their means will admit. Instead of applying their 

 ample funds to obtain good materials for the roads, they have imported stone from Scot- 

 land, and have paved their roads, at an expense ten times greater than that of the excel- 

 lent roads lately made on some of the adjoining trusts. Very few of these pavements 

 have been so laid as to keep in good order for any length of time ; so that a very heavy 

 expense has been incurred without any beneficial result, and it is to be lamented that this 

 wasteful and ineffectual mode is upon the increase in the neighborhood of London. 



3446. The practice of paving roads has also been adopted in places where the same mo- 

 tive cannot be adduced : in Lancashire, almost all the roads are paved at an enormous 

 cost, and are, in consequence, proverbially bad. At Edinburgh, where they have the best 

 and cheapest materials in the kingdom, the want of science to construct good roads, has 

 led the trustees to adopt the expedient of paving to a considerable extent ; and at an ex- 

 pense hardly credible, when compared with what would have been the cost of roads on 

 the best principles. 



3447. The advantages of good roads, when compared with pavements, are universally ac- 

 hnowledged ; the extension of pavement is therefore to be deprecated as an actual evil, 

 besides the greatness of the expense. Pavements are particularly inconvenient and 

 dangerous on steep ascents, such as the ascent to bridges, &c. A very striking example 

 of this may be observed on the London end of Blackfriars bridge, where heavy loads 

 are drawn up with great difficulty, and where more horses fall and receive injury than in 

 any other place in the kingdom. The pavement in such places should be lifted, and con- 

 verted into a good road, which may be done with the same stone at an expense not ex- 

 ceeding \0d. per square yard. This road would be more lasting than the pavement, and, 

 when out of order, may be repaired at less than one-tenth of the expense which relaying 

 the pavement would require. This measure has been adopted with great success, and 

 considerable saving of expense, in the suburbs of Bristol, where the pavements were taken 

 up, and converted into good roads, about three years ago. The same thing has lately 

 been successfully adopted on Westminster and Blackfriars bridges. 



3448. In preparing for laying dow7i pavements, the first thing, Edgeworth observes, to 

 be attended to is the foundation. This must be made of strong and uniform materials, 

 well rammed together, and accurately formed to correspond with the figure of the super- 

 incumbent pavement. This has no where been more effectually accomplished, than in 

 some late pavement in Dublin. Major Taylor, who is at the head of the paving board, 

 before he began to pave a street, first made it a good gravel-road, and left it to be beaten 

 down by carriages for several months ; it then became a fit foundation for a good pave- 

 ment. The Romans, in preparing for pavement, laid a substratum of masonry in some 

 cases two or more feet thick, and never less than a foot or eighteen inches. This mode 

 is adopted in one or two cases near St. Petersburgh, and might be advantageously 

 used in this country were not the expense an objection. Planking, broad stones, iron 

 plates, slates, tiles, and brick work has also been proposed in this country ; but a con- 

 solidated stratum of broken stone of ten inches in -thickness is perhaps the simplest and 

 best preparation, especially for the sides of roads. A substratum of sand is sure to 

 be deranged after the first rains. 



3449. The kinds of stone used in paving are chiefly granite, whinstone or trap, 

 Guernsey or other pebbles, or water worn granitic or trapstones. Walker prefers the 

 granite of Guernsey to that of Aberdeen. 



3450. The size of the stones used in road pavements is commonly from five to seven 

 inches long, from four to six inches broad, and from six to eight inches deep. Walker 

 prefers stones nine inches deep ; and Telford is of opinion that the general shape of the 

 stones at present used for paving, and the modes of distributing them, are very imperfect, 

 the lower part of the stones being of a triangular wedge-like shape, which, instead of 

 enabling them to resist the weights which come upon them, easily penetrate into the 

 substratum ; the stones are also broken of an unequal size. The remedies for these 

 defects are obvious ; they should be as nearly as possible of a cubical form, the lower bed 

 having an equal surface with the upper face ; they should be selected as nearly as possible 

 of an equal size, and they should never be of equal length on the face. In quarrying 

 and preparing the stones there would certainly be an additional expense in tlie prepara- 

 tion, because there would be more work required in the dressing, and many stones must 



