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
Are you not frequently obliged to put six horses to your coaches, on the
roads from London?—Sometimes that is the case; we do work with six
horses where the roads are bad and heavy. I may say, from the knowledge
I have of one particular road, namely, from London to Birmingham, it
requires twelve horses to perform the same number of miles as eight
horses will do between Birmingham and Holyhead.
How many coach-horses do you keep?—About four hundred.
Are you acquainted with the new roads in North Wales, made by Mr.
Telford?—Yes, I am.
Do you think that three of your horses would draw the Holyhead mail as
easily on those roads as four of them do the same coach on any part of
the road from London to Dunchurch?—I have no doubt about it.
Does that arise from the construction of the road, or nature of the
materials, or both?—Both. The construction of the new road is
extraordinarily good, and the materials also are very good.
Can you state what particular construction those roads are of?—They are
laid in a form sufficiently round to wash themselves, if there is a
shower of rain that comes upon them. They are not very high; and their
excellence consists in the smallness of the convexity. They are in the
best form I have ever seen roads made.
Mr. _William Horne_, called in; and Examined.
You keep the Golden Cross Inn, Charing Cross?—Yes.
You are the proprietor of many mail and stage coaches?—I am.
Your attention of course has been directed to the state of the roads
over which they travel?—It has.
Can you inform the Committee in what state the roads generally are, in
point of goodness?—I think in general they have been better for the last
seven years than formerly, though they are now bad. They are generally
bad, and might be very much improved.
Can you state to the Committee any particular instances of improvement
that have taken place within your own knowledge?—Yes; one between London
and Hounslow, which must be known to every body to have been very bad;
that road has been made good, which was extremely bad before.
Do you consider that the application of the materials upon that road is
at present good?—Yes. It is the better construction of the road,
together with the different materials from what they used formerly,
which have been the means of making that road better. They have brought
chalk and flints from Kent by the canal, and have got them at as small
an expense as gravel; and these have formed a hard well-bound road,
which was formerly bad.
Upon what other roads do your coaches travel?—I will mention one which
is precisely the contrary, the Uxbridge road.
Gravel is usually employed on that?—Solely gravely and the road is very
flat. It is made lower than the fields, which draws the water upon it,
and therefore it cannot be drawn off from it. That is the chief cause of
the road being so bad.
Is it not the practice upon that road to pile up the scrapings or drift
by the side of the road?—It is.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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