This Ancient Road

Andrew Hudson

Description

Roads shape our society and are shaped by it: they are a slice through history, a slice through landscape, and a slice through life. They are the most basic part of the transport network, used daily by most people, but their fascinating stories are largely ignored. This is the tale of one such road - the Holyhead Road - that runs through the heart and history of Britain. This road dates back to Roman times and has a rich history of battles and pilgrimages, trade and exploration. In the last two centuries its importance has waxed and waned, from the great days of the coaching trade, through decline with the advent of the railways, to coming back to life with the invention of the motor car. This Ancient Road is a truly fascinating journey through time. Nostalgic, informative, quirky and charming Andrew Hudson brings history to life in this marvellous debut.

Informations

• Publié par: Distributed by eBookpartnership
• Date de parution: 21 septembre 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781912317295
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

THIS ANCIENT ROAD
THIS ANCIENT ROAD
LONDON TO HOLYHEAD A JOURNEY THROUGH TIME
ANDREW HUDSON
Published by RedDoor www.reddoorpublishing.com
© 2017 Andrew Hudson The right of Andrew Hudson to be identified as the author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
ISBN 978-1-912317-29-5
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the author.
Approximately ninety-three (93) words from THE ANNALS OF ANCIENT ROME by Tacitus, translated by Michael Grant (Penguin Books, 2003). Copyright © Michael Grant Publications Ltd, 1956, 1959, 1971, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1989, 1996. Reproduced with permission by Penguin Books Ltd.
Two hundred and forty-two (242) words from A HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH CHURCH AND PEOPLE by Bede, translated with an introduction by Leo Sherley-Price, revised by R. E. Latham (Penguin Classics 1955, Revised edition 1968). Copyright © Leo Sherley-Price, 1955, 1968.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The author apologises for any errors or omissions in the above list and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.
Cover design: Lee-May Lim
Typesetting: Tutis Innovative E-Solutions Pte. Ltd
Maps 1 and 2 : Leanne Kelman www.lwrightdesign.co.uk
To my parents
Contents
Introduction
1. Which Way? The Roads from London to Holyhead
2. Conquest and Settlement: The Roman Road, 43–410 CE
3. Waetlingastraet : Saints and Boundaries: From the Romans to Domesday
4. Markets, Bridges, Pilgrims, and Progresses: The Medieval Road
5. Trade, Plots, and Civil War: The Road Between 1500 and 1700
6. Turnpikes, Coaches, and Inns: The Road in the Eighteenth Century
7. Telford and the Improvement of the Road, 1810–1835
8. Railways, Industry, and Politicians: The Road in the Nineteenth Century
9. The Advent of the Motor Car: From Edwardian Pioneers to 1950s Mass Travel
10. The Motorways Change the Game Again
11. The Road Today
Acknowledgements
References
List of Illustrations and Maps
Index
About the Author
Introduction
The Holyhead Road, in its long course towards the Irish Sea, holds much of this old romance, and not a little of a newer sort. […] But better than the cities and towns and villages along these 260 miles is the scenery, ranging from the quiet pastoral beauties of the Home Counties to the rocks and torrents, the mountains and valleys of North Wales. This road and its story are a very epitome of our island’s scenery and history.
— Charles G Harper, The Holyhead Road: The Mail-coach Road to Dublin (1902)
I’ve always enjoyed journeys and exploration, looking at my surroundings and seeing what they tell me about the area I am in.
When I was small, I used to draw up detailed plans for the car ride to the seaside for the family holiday, labelled ‘Itinerary’, a word I may have picked up from the plans the AA supplied to its members in the 1960s. As a student, I enjoyed driving round rural Worcestershire as part of my researches into an eighteenth-century MP for the county. When I moved to London, to a bedsitter just off Shoot-Up Hill between Kilburn and Cricklewood – it does what it says on the sign, shoots up a hill – I became intrigued by that road. As I got to know the area better, I realised that Shoot-Up Hill was part of a very long road, the A5, which ran all the way from Marble Arch to Holyhead in Anglesey, some 250 miles from the heart of London to a far corner of Wales. One day, I thought, it would be interesting to drive the full length of that road, and maybe write about it.
What I discovered was far more fascinating than I had dared hope. The A5, based largely on the Roman Watling Street, connects Britain with Ireland, Druids with long-distance lorry drivers, ancient boroughs with New Towns, pilgrims with peddlers, holidaymakers with government officials. The route through southern England was one of the earliest metalled roads built by the Romans, and the route through Wales is one of the greatest achievements of the multi-talented Scottish engineer Thomas Telford. It has carried generals and royalty, St Alban and Disraeli, Sir John Falstaff and Samuel Pickwick – plus millions of (so-called) ordinary people making journeys for business and pleasure, on daily errands and life-changing journeys, in faith and despair, to prayer and to battle.
The A5 is one of a number of routes from London to Holyhead, and I found that these had far more touchpoints with my own past than I had realised. For much of its history, the main route didn’t follow Watling Street through the Midlands, but cut a corner off, running through Coventry, Birmingham and Wolverhampton to rejoin near modern-day Telford. In the process, it went across the Stonebridge roundabout, the first landmark on most of our journeys to the seaside, along the Coventry Road into Birmingham, past where my uncle worked, and through Digbeth, where my dad’s operatic society rehearsed Gilbert and Sullivan shows in a room above a pub. Some of the variants even went through Castle Bromwich, where we lived when I was small. At the London end, our holiday route followed the eighteenth-century coaches down the Holloway Road: I can still remember looking for ‘A1 City signs’, as the AA route put it – sadly now all gone – as we made our way to Blackfriars Bridge en route for the Kent coast.
Travelling along a road also provides an insight into the area it passes through, and what shaped it. Roads are the oldest and most basic form of transport, and the most adaptable. Almost every journey begins and ends with a trip along a road. Walking is the most basic form of transport. And the other ways of getting along a road – riding a horse or driving a cart (the options for much of the past 2000 years), cycling, taking a bus, or travelling by car – are simpler and more independent than a journey by train or plane. It’s surprising that roads aren’t studied more.
Paths, and then roads, were the first routes the human race actively carved out. And although some people have always travelled more than others, everyone uses the same road. In the earliest days, slaves on foot would have shared the road with the wealthy in carriages and on horseback. Today, the billionaire in the limousine drives past the youngster nursing an old banger through its last few miles – they may only meet at the service station, but they share the same stretch of tarmac.
Roads connect places and the people who live in them: that’s their purpose. The earliest tracks linked summer and winter grazing sites for animals. The Romans built roads to consolidate their conquest of the country. Medieval roads developed to take people to market, and pilgrims to a favoured shrine. These days, we instinctively think of visiting family, taking children to school, heading to work, going to the shops, or just going for a walk or a drive. The roads adapt to facilitate these connections.
Roads also divide . Like rivers, they are often used as formal boundaries between counties or districts. More generally, the bigger and more important the road, the more likely that its physical presence will make it harder for people on either side to get to know each other, or to cross it to work or socialise in another area. The barrier can be psychological as well as physical.
Roads can be an enabler of change, which some will welcome and others not: a new bypass will mean peace and quiet for some, but economic ruin for others; a new roundabout will boost trade in one area but mean less elsewhere. In the end, however, the development of roads and the landscape along them will reflect wider developments in society. If an area is growing, perhaps because coal has been found there, a road will be built or improved – history suggests that it takes time for the authorities to get round to this, and nobody is keen on paying, but it happens. Similarly, roads to areas in decline will become rutted and potholed. And the buildings lining the roadside can adapt much more quickly to changes in society – old shops go out of business and new ones spring up, traditional pubs reopen as Chinese restaurants, Victorian factories become retail parks.
The London to Holyhead road provides a unique opportunity to explore these ideas. It is one of our oldest roads, one of the first built by the Romans, and the one most closely followed by a modern road – in this case the A5. It runs from the heart of London to the north-west corner of Wales, through cosmopolitan inner-city areas and suburbia, through Roman towns, market towns, and post-War New Towns, through ex-mining country, farmland and a National Park.
The seventeenth-century poet, Michael Drayton, writes about Watling Street in his poem ‘Poly-Olbion’. It’s a long piece, part history, part fantasy, using different ways of describing the England of the day. He gives a voice to Watling Street itself, and another character in the drama clamours for more:
Right Noble Street, quoth he, thou hast liv’d long, gone far,
Much traffic had in peace, much travailed in war;
[…]
On with thy former speech: I pray thee somewhat say.
For, Watling , as thou art a military Way,
The story of old Streets likes me wondrous well,
That of the ancient folk I fain would hear thee tell.
Let us explore the story of this most noble of streets, the journeys along it, and the mirror it holds up to society, from London to Holyhead, from the Romans to today, through Britain and through time.
Chapter 1
Which Way?
The Roads from London to Holyhead
Afoot and light-hearted I