160 



OLD ROADS. 



PART III. 



encompassed with difficulties. Even in the neighbour- 

 hood of the metropolis the roads were in certain seasons 

 scarcely passable. The great Western road into London 

 was especially bad, and about Kiiightsbridge, in winter, 

 the traveller had to wade through deep mud. Wyatfs 

 men entered the city by this approach in the rebellion 

 of 1554, and were called the " draggle-tails," because of 

 their wretched plight. 



At a greater distance from the metropolis the roads 

 were still worse. They were in many cases but rude 

 tracks across heaths and commons, as furrowed with 

 deep ruts as ploughed fields, and in winter to pass along 

 one of them was like travelling in a ditch. The attempts 

 made by the adjoining occupiers to mend them were for 

 the most part confined to throwing large stones into the 

 bigger holes to fill them up. It was easier to allow 

 new tracks to be made than to mend the old ones. The 

 lands of the country were still mostly unenclosed, and it 

 was thus possible, in fine weather, to get from place to 

 place, in one way or another, with the help of a guide. 

 In the absence of bridges, guides were necessary to point 

 out the safest fords as well as to pick out the least miry 

 tracks. The most frequented lines of road were struck 

 out from time to time by the drivers of pack-horses, 

 who, to avoid the bogs and the sloughs, were usually 

 careful to keep along the higher grounds ; but, to pre- 

 vent those horsemen who departed from the beaten track 

 being swallowed up in quagmires, beacons were erected 

 to warn them against the more dangerous places. 1 



In some of the older-settled districts of England the 

 old roads are still to be traced in the hollow Ways or 



1 See Ogilvy's c Britannia Depicta,' 

 the traveller's ordinary guide-book 

 between 1675 and 1717, as Brad- 

 shaw's Railway Time-book is now. 

 The Grand Duke. Cosmo, in his * Tra- 

 vels in England in 1669,' speaks of 

 the country between Northampton 

 and Oxford as for the most part un- 



enclosed and uncultivated, abounding 

 in weeds. From Ogilby's fourth edi- 

 tion, published in 1749, it ap] tears 

 that the roads in the midland and 

 northern districts of Knghind were 

 still, for the most part, entirely unen- 

 closed. 



