The largely landlocked Persian Empire built and maintained the Silk Road(s) long before Rome was even thought of. Herodotus observed that a road of 1600 miles could be travelled in seven days. Being landlocked, the sea was not an alternative although perhaps rivers were.

Britain, as an island, offered places near to the coast a relatively quick form of transport. Inland it was roads and rivers, the latter if navigable. There is evidence of roads before the arrival of the Romans.

The Icknield Way ran from Buckinghamshire to Norfolk with lanes linking farmsteads.. Ermine Street became the Great North Road. The Fosse Way linked Lincoln with Oxfordshire, and Watling Street, Canterbury with St Albans running through London which then was probably no larger. When the Romans came at first they simply improved the existing routes.

Simply improved is a misnomer for Roman road building was serious engineering. Public roads were built to last – the Appian Way being a prime example. A wide trench would be dug and stones placed on end to aid drainage. A layer of gravel and sand would be next with the surface layer in a curved profile of paving slabs in towns and compacted pebbles in the countryside. Each side there would be kerb stones and ditches to collect rain water.

It is one thing to build a road, quite another to maintain it. From the sixteenth century local parishes in England had the duty to maintain roads in their area, but were failing largely because of lack of resource. This was in spite of the levy of local rates and the requirement on residents to provide six days of labour free of charge. Incidentally they were referred to as the King’s Roads although he did little to maintain them. The increase in particular of wheeled traffic was causing chaos particularly in the south east from where food was carried to the growing population of London. Bad weather created rivers of mud. The first Toll Act was passed in 1663 for a section of the Great North Road in Hertfordshire. Thus the Turnpikes came into existence. These were stretches of road maintained by local trustees from the income their earned in tolls. The ‘turnpike’ was the entrance which would be opened only on payment of the toll.

Canals

The impetus for a faster form of transport for heavy loads came from the owners of coal mines and owners of quarries of limestone which was increasingly being used to burn for fertiliser to increase agricultural yields. The answer was the Canal but their builders faced a number of challenges. How to stop water leaking? This was addressed by lining the canal with puddled clay. How to traverse undulating country? The simplest method was to follow the contour. If hills had to be crossed, series of locks could be used to raise and lower craft. We can look to pioneers like James Brindley and his sponsor the Duke of Bridgewater. Locks, especially long flights, have the disadvantage of wasting water. Aqueducts were built to cross valleys and rivers. Tunnels were a challenge when the composition of the ground to be tunnelled was unknown. I referred in an earlier post to the success the Romans had had with tunnelling. In England it would take the second generation of canal builders better versed in science, such as Telford, to drive the system forward. The Institution of Civil Engineers was founded in 1818 two years after the Leeds and Liverpool canal was completed.

I make a number of references to canal building in my manufacturing blog, including Wigan and Wolverhampton among many others. The canals were dug by hand by many thousands of navvies (those who worked on navigations). It was hard and sometimes dangerous work; those who lost their lives are not numbered.

The canals opened the industrial areas of the country to cheaper sources of fuel and raw material and essential access to markets including by sea from Liverpool and other ports.

Railways

We go back to George and Robert Stephenson for the origin of the railways. Once again it was the muscle and sweat of navvies which built the cuttings and embankments. Civil engineers designed bridges and viaducts; miles of tunnels were cut. Iron and later steel works produced many miles of rail. Brickworks such as those near Fareham produced millions of the bricks we still see from carriage windows.

So to the railway buildings, the great workshops and stations.

  • The GWR workshops at Swindon were built by JD and C Rigby. The overall designb was by Isambard Kingdom Brunel and included the station, station hotel and workers cottages. I write more in my manufacturing blog.
  • St Pancras Station was built by Charles and William Waring alongside Jackson and Shaw with Butterley building the roof to the design of Henry Barlow. The hotel and frontage was designed by George Gilbert Scott
  • The North Midland Railway workshops at Derby were built by Thomas Jackson of Pimlico with Robert Stephenson as engineer. I write more in my manufacturing blog
  • William Cubitt conceived the idea of railway platforms on the same level as railway carriage doors, and put it into effect at Euston and Fenchurch Street. Cubitts built the Great Western Hotel at Paddington.
  • Taylor Woodrow Construction worked on The Channel Tunnel Rail Link, the Redevelopment of Kings Cross Station
  • Lucas Brothers built Charing Cross and Liverpool Street Stations.

Roads

John Loudon McAdam was the Scot who invented a method of surfacing roads with crushed angular stone. It took the Nottinghamshire surveyor Edgar Hooley to see that the addition of tar bound the stone and dust and set to a hard surface. He patented his invention in 1902 with the name Tarmac and formed the Tarmac Syndicate. In 1905 this became Tarmac Ltd which expanded with branches across the country. Tarmac layed the road surface for the Preston bypass, England’s first motorway which became part of the M6.

1959 saw the opening of the first stretch of the M1, built by John Laing and Sons.