Content area
Full Text
I
The literature on road improvements in Britain during the industrial revolution has traditionally given prominence to the achievements of John Loudon McAdam.1 Though his reputation was not without challenge among his contemporaries, his method of building roads from broken stones using 'scientific principles' has been much revered over the generations, and approbatory references to the advances he made have become commonplace.2 By implication at least, the improvement he and his road-building sons and grandsons made to Britain's industrial infrastructure, especially when they were in business as road surveyors between 1816 and 1861, was substantial if not profound.3
In the more recent discussion on the matter, however, greater attention has been paid to the importance of gradient easing, especially along turnpike routes. Contemporaries were keen to realise the savings that could be obtained from providing less steep and more even gradients as the volume of horse-drawn vehicles rose enormously, for both passengers and freight. Moreover, historians have noted examples of gradient easing taking place in several parts of the country and have shown that the process was achieved not only by realigning existing roads and constructing new ones, but also by reducing the summit heights to which roads rose, by forming cuttings and embankments and by raising the height of bridges. In some instances, striking improvements were achieved, especially in easing the steepest gradients and providing long stretches of virtually flat roadway.4
A further means by which roads were improved during the period, however, namely by the provision of stone paving, has received all too little attention from historians. As with gradient easing, the use of stone paving evoked a good deal of comment from contemporary road engineers, particularly about whether, on balance, paved surfaces made from stone were superior to those formed from broken stone. The differing views they held certainly found expression in the variety of approaches that road builders adopted. Even so, stone paving, formed from both pebbles (or boulders) and setts (blocks of stone cut to shape at quarries), was widely applied, with setts coming to assume particular importance.
In considering the development of paving techniques, a case study of Lancashire is highly instructive, since, from the late eighteenth century, extensive road improvements took place in the county. Some of them...