ioo History of Inland Transport 



important service to the two first-mentioned counties, more 

 especially by improving their means of communication 

 at a time when they were greatly in need of better roads on 

 account of their then rapidly increasing trade and industry. 

 But though Metcalf did good work in these directions, and 

 achieved some noteworthy successes in carrying solid roads 

 across difficult bogs, he introduced no really new system, and 

 the chief progress made did not come until after his death, 

 in 1810. 



Son of a shepherd at Eskdale, Dumfriesshire, where he was 

 born in 1757, Telford started life as a stonemason's apprentice, 

 but became an engineer, and undertook many important 

 works, including canals, bridges, harbours and docks. Here, 

 however, we are concerned with him only as a builder of roads 

 a department in which he showed great skill and activity. 



On the appointment, in 1803, of a body of Commissioners 

 who were to improve the system of communications in Scot- 

 land (one half of the expense being defrayed by Parliamentary 

 grants, and one half by local contributions), Telford was 

 selected to carry out the work, and he constructed 920 miles 

 of road and 1,117 bridges in the Highlands, and 150 miles of 

 road between Glasgow, Cumbernauld (Dumbarton) and 

 Carlisle. Then, in 1815, money having been voted by Parlia- 

 ment for the improvement of the Holyhead road, with a view 

 to the betterment of communications with Ireland, Telford 

 was entrusted with the task, which involved the making or 

 improvement of, altogether, 123 miles of road. 



Telford's own opinion of the roads of England and Scotland 

 was thus expressed in the evidence he gave before the Select 

 Committee of the House of Commons in 1819 : 



" They are in general very defective both as to their direction 

 and inclination ; they are frequently carried over hills, 

 which might be avoided by passing along the adjacent valleys 

 . . . there has been no attention paid to constructing good 

 and solid foundations ; the materials, whether consisting of 

 gravel or stones, have seldom been sufficiently selected and 

 arranged ; and they lie so promiscuously upon the roads as to 

 render it inconvenient to travel upon them. . . . The shape 

 of the roads, or cross section of the surface, is frequently hollow 

 in the middle ; the sides incumbered with great banks of road 

 dirt, which have accumulated in some places to the height 



