Making Ways
These days, driving around local roads seems a bit primitive, especially when the surface is so potholed the hardcore can be seen – if it isn’t full of water. It’s almost like staring through an open wound to raw flesh and organs beneath.
Many roads began in prehistory. It’s not surprising: early trackways linked ancient sites such as Stonehenge and Avebury. Pagan tribes used these ways. The Dobunni had a fortified camp, at Bagendon, close to the old drovers’ road from west to east, now known as the Welshway. The modern Monarch’s Way, on the route of The Saltway, linked to the north, parallel to The Whiteway and the later Fosse Way: Crickley Hill, a neolithic hillfort – a Dobunni ancestral settlement as much as six-thousand years ago – commanded a prominent position on the east to west route of The Ridgeway. The continued use for over a thousand years, of the Welshway, for driving cattle to London from Wales, is evident from the width between field boundaries of the original unmetalled track.
When the Romans arrived, they used many existing routes as the basis for building their more permanent stone-paved roads, enabling the movement of troops and materials around the country they’d conquered and occupied. Because they needed to keep close to centres of the native population, many of their roads were constructed directly over the same trackways as the tribes had used for centuries. It’s not true that the Romans invented long, straight roads. They were obviously the most efficient way to travel, and the ancient Brits weren’t stupid. Back a century ago, Alfred Watkins wrote about ‘The Old Straight Track’, arguing that tracks in Britain formed straight lines between pagan religious sites. To imagine these tracks have magical significance is probably stretching things. Since the availability of drones, it’s become obvious that people tend to follow routes from landmark to landmark – often producing dog-legged paths as a consequence.
Cirencester was a Roman hub. The Fosse Way, which began as a border-marker with ditches on both sides, was slightly different from the more military roads which converged on Corinium. Akeman Street, leading to St Albans, passed through the town at the Verulamium Gate, the remains of which are still seen in The Abbey Grounds. Other roads went to Gloucester in the north and Exeter to the south.
After the Romans left (without teaching their technology to the remaining population) roads fell into disrepair, and – as with Roman buildings – the Britons stole the stone. With the invention of turnpike roads in 1663, travellers had to pay to use the Great North Road from Hertfordshire to Stilton in Huntingdonshire. The idea of owning a road and being paid in order to keep it in good repair began. By the mid 1700s most major roads were operated by licenced turnpike companies. Since the mid 1500s, other roads had become the responsibility of the Parishes through which they’d passed. On the left a short distance up the Cheltenham Road in Stratton is The Pike House, with an angular frontage. It was moved from its earlier location where Gloucester Road divided to Cheltenham Road where travellers paid to use both roads.
The Industrial Revolution throughout the nineteenth century brought about the failure of the turnpike companies and the division of responsibility for public roads between local and national government. The costs of both development and maintenance have been met – or have failed to be met – by various methods of taxation affecting not only road users, but also the general population who are considered to benefit from the infrastructure.
Today livestock reaches markets in huge lorries in hours. Many drover lanes have disappeared completely. Now that roads are publicly owned, you can claim compensation if maintenance failure damages your vehicle. Good luck, if you try…
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