The Age of Bad Roads 65 



marshes, heaths, etc., or through woods, where drivers of carts, 

 waggons or coaches picked and chose to the best advantage, 

 discarding an old path when it became a deep rut or was 

 otherwise impassable, in favour of a new one alongside, or 

 some distance away, and leaving the new one, in turn, when it 

 got into the same state as the old. 1 



The crossing of heaths and other open spaces was rendered 

 the more difficult by the general absence of finger-posts. 2 In 

 some instances land-beacons were constructed as a guide to 

 travellers. One which had a height of seventy feet, served as 

 a landmark by day and was provided with a lantern at night, 

 was raised in 1751 by Squire Dash wood on a dreary, barren 

 and wholly trackless waste in the neighbourhood of Lincoln 

 known as Lincoln Heath. The lantern was regularly lighted 

 until 1788. The beacon itself stood until 1808, when it fell and 

 was not rebuilt. 



One especially important factor in the situation was the 

 nature of the soil. 



I have already mentioned, on page 5, Defoe's references 

 in his " Tour " to this particular matter ; but the description 

 he gives of some of the roads which crossed the 5O-mile belt 

 of " deep stiff clay or marly " soil throws a good deal of light 

 on the conditions of travel in his day. Thus, in dealing with 

 the roads from London to the north, he says : 



" Suppose we take the great Northern Post Road from 

 London to York, and so into Scotland ; you have tolerably 

 good Ways and hard Ground, 'till you reach Royston about 32, 

 and to Knees worth, a Mile farther : But from thence you enter 

 upon the clays which, beginning at the famous Arrington 

 Lanes, and going on Caxton, Huntington, Stilton, Stamford, 

 Grantham, Newark, Tuxford (called for its Deepness Tuxford 

 in the Clays), holds on 'till we come almost to Bautree, which 



1 Incidentally, this fact may explain why country roads to-day, still 

 following old tracks, often have so many twists and turns when, one 

 might think, they could just as well have been made straight. 



2 A writer in the "Westminster Review "for October, 1825, referring 

 to the lack of finger-posts, says: "There is scarcely a parish in the 

 country, and not one in the remoter parts, where a stranger can possibly 

 find his way, for want of this obvious remedy. South Wales is an 

 inextricable labyrinth ; it is a chance if there is a finger-post in the whole 

 principality. Cornwall and Devonshire are as bad. If by chance they 

 are once erected they are never repaired or replaced. The justices know 

 their own roads and care nothing for the traveller." 



