Читать книгу A Book of Britain: The Lore, Landscape and Heritage of a Treasured Countryside - Johnny Scott - Страница 22

Although intensely unpopular, income raised by the turnpike trusts was radically improving the condition of Britain’s highways. ‘Turnpike’ alludes to the similarity between the gate used to control access to the road and the weapon used by infantry to deter cavalry in the wars of the Middle Ages. The turnpike consisted of a row of pikes or bars, each sharpened at one end and attached to horizontal members, secured at one end to an upright pole or axle, which could be rotated to open or close the gate. The name expressed the resentment of people who had previously used the roads freely suddenly finding them barred.

During the first three decades of the eighteenth century, sections of the main radial roads into London were put under the control of individual turnpike trusts. The pace at which new turnpikes were created picked up in the 1750s as 150 trusts were formed to maintain the cross-routes between the Great Roads radiating from London. At this time, roads leading into provincial towns, particularly in western England, were put under single trusts and key roads in Wales were turnpiked. In South Wales, the roads of complete counties were put under single turnpike trusts by the 1760s. A further 400 were established in the 1770s, with the turnpiking of subsidiary connecting roads, routes over new bridges and new routes in the growing industrial areas in Scotland. This had doubled by 1800, and in 1825 about 1,000 trusts controlled 29,000 miles of road across the country. The trusts were required to erect milestones indicating the distance between the main towns on the road, many of which still survive as do the old toll houses, such as the one at Stanton Drew, in Somerset, or Honiton, in Devon.

The improved road system heralded the Golden Age of Coaching, with fast mail coaches and passenger stagecoaches hammering along the new highways at what were considered unbelievable speeds. The excitement of driving a coach and four fascinated members of the Regency set, who competed with professional coachmen in the skill of handling a team of ‘cattle’ and often bribed professionals to let them take over the ‘ribbons’ on one of the regular coach routes, to the alarm and discomfort of the passengers. Most notable among the amateurs were Sir St Vincent Cotton, who bought the stagecoach The Age with the last of a fortune he had gambled away and ran a passenger service between London and Brighton. There was also Sir John Lade, who caused a scandal by marrying the wife of the highwayman ‘Sixteen String Jack’ Rann shortly after he had been hanged for robbing the Royal Chaplain; Harry Stevenson, a Cambridge graduate and a genius with coach horses; Lord Worcester; Lord Sefton; Colonel Berkeley; and Lord Barrymore, known as ‘Hellgate’ for his outrageous behaviour. As the turnpike roads spread across the country, coaching inns became a feature of many villages as the existing ale houses were upgraded to accommodate passengers whilst the coach horses were changed. These survive as the ever-popular village pub.

A new generation of agricultural improvers emerged in the second half of the eighteenth century with ideas to meet the challenge of a population that had risen to around nine million, the rapid development of industrial towns, expanding colonisation and an army and navy on active service of about 160,000.