CHAPTER XII 



SCIENTIFIC ROAD-MAKING 



ONE question which naturally arises in connection with the 

 turnpike roads is, " Why was it, when there was so wide- 

 spread an organisation of turnpike trusts, and when so much 

 money was being spent on the repair of the roads, that the 

 roads themselves were still so defective, and only relatively 

 better than they had been before ? " this being the real 

 position, notwithstanding the praises bestowed on the turn- 

 pike system by those who were gratified with the stimulus 

 given to trade, travel and commerce by the improvements 

 actually made. 



The answer is that although a vast amount of road-making 

 or road-repairing was going on, at the very considerable ex- 

 pense of the road users, and to the advantage of a small army of 

 attorneys, officials and labourers, it was not road-making of 

 a scientific kind, but merely amateur work, done at excessive 

 cost, either with unintelligent zeal or in slovenly style, and 

 yielding results which mostly failed to give the country the 

 type of road it required for the ever-increasing traffic to 

 which expanding trade, greater travel, and heavier and more 

 numerous waggons and coaches were leading. 



Before the adoption of scientific road -making, the usual way 

 of forming a new road was, first to lay along it a collection of 

 large stones, and then to heap up thereon small stones and 

 road dirt in such a way that the road assumed the shape of the 

 upper half of an orange, the convexity often being so pro- 

 nounced that vehicles kept along the summit of the eminence 

 because it was dangerous for them, especially in rainy weather, 

 to go along the slope on either side. 



This form of road was adopted in order to ensure good 

 drainage for rain-water ; and in this connection the writer 

 on " Roads " in Postlethwayt's " Dictionary " (1745) says : 



" The chief and almost the only cause of the deepness and 



98 



