Remarks on the Present System of Road Making: With Observations, Deduced from Practice and Experience, With a View to a Revision of the Existing Laws, and the Introduction of Improvement in the Method of Making, Repairing, and Preserving Roads, and Defending the Road Funds from Misapplication. Seventh Edition, Carefully Revised, With an Appendix, and Report from the Select Committee of the House of Commons, June 1823, with Extracts from the EvidenceMcAdam, John Loudon
History
Remarks on the Present System of Road Making: With Observations, Deduced from Practice and Experience, With a View to a Revision of the Existing Laws, and the Introduction of Improvement in the Method of Making, Repairing, and Preserving Roads, and Defending the Road Funds from Misapplication. Seventh Edition, Carefully Revised, With an Appendix, and Report from the Select Committee of the House of Commons, June 1823, with Extracts from the Evidence
McAdam, John Loudon
Macadam roads; Roads -- Great Britain
Was that granite stone?—No, a kind of stone called the blue pennet in
that county, and part of a light stone called Brandon Hill stone; both
tolerably good stones: the blue pennet is certainly not so good as
granite; the Brandon Hill stone, when broken, is pretty nearly as good
as granite. But those suburbs having been taken up, and given great
satisfaction the year before last, the magistrates took up half of the
street, called Stoke’s Croft, which is the great entrance of the town
from Gloucestershire. The inhabitants were very much afraid of dust; and
therefore they requested the magistrates not to take up the whole of the
street, but to make an experiment on one half of it, and after a year’s
experiment they consented to the whole being taken up. When I left
Bristol, which is now three months ago, they were busy taking up the
remainder of that street; and I understood it was the intention of the
magistrates to proceed gradually to take up a great number of other
streets in the town.
Do you know what difference it has made in the expense?—That part of the
suburbs that was lifted, and laid again with the same stone broken, cost
5_d._ a square yard for doing it. I took up the stone; I had nothing to
purchase; the stone that came out of the streets fully made the road,
and we had a little remaining for repair afterwards, and that operation
cost 5_d._ a square yard; paving, in the city of Bristol, cost 5_s._
6_d._ a square yard when stone is found by the paviour, and I believe
they reckon the laying down to be eighteen-pence of that.
What would be the difference of expense annually between & paved street
and a road?—I think that road required no repair for the first three
years after it was done.
A paved street would require no repair for seven years after it was
done?—I think we repaired it for about a fifth part of the money, when
it required repair, that a pavement would have cost. We seldom find our
streets in Bristol last above three years; the pavements become rugged,
and full of holes, and so on; they are obliged to be taken up, and they
relay them generally once in three years. There is another street in
Bristol which has been taken up, but I cannot recollect the name of it;
it goes from Stoke’s Croft to Kingston; it has been taken up by the
magistrates, not under my direction.
Has any objection been taken by any person to the alteration that has
been made at Bristol?—No, except the alarm that the inhabitants of Stone
Croft had when it was begun to be done, and they got the magistrates to
delay doing more than half of it till they were satisfied that it would
not inconvenience them; and the circumstance of their sending a request
to the magistrates to finish it induces me to believe that they were
very much satisfied with the experiment. Park-street, in Bristol, has
been done in that way for, I think, seventeen years; I was then a
commissioner for watching and paving the streets of Bristol.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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