Road Necessity & Maintenance

[Projeear]

EDIT: Here's a link to the Samuel Smiles book for those interested, https://www.dropbox.com/s/jbd056h60uj8t ... s.pdf?dl=0

In summary, back before the transport revolution (in England), roads were so rough that over two generations a deer trail would become a 4-meter high valley from rutting and it could take 6 hours to go 9 miles.

In winter, if a village ran out of food, it would starve because the roads were completely inaccessible even to the next town.

Roads should be made reuired because carts have a higher chance from breaking down, getting stuck (and need right click > repair) from wilderness tiles, and rutting could form.

Excerpt from Samuel Smile's "Life of Thomas Telford" (Free for download due to being over a hundred years old... 1800s I believe);



Such being the ancient state of the roads, the only practicable
modes of travelling were on foot and on horseback. The poor walked
and the rich rode. Kings rode and Queens rode. Judges rode circuit
in jack-boots. Gentlemen rode and robbers rode. The Bar sometimes
walked and sometimes rode. Chaucer's ride to Canterbury will be
remembered as long as the English language lasts. Hooker rode to
London on a hard-paced nag, that he might be in time to preach his
first sermon at St. Paul's. Ladies rode on pillions, holding on by
the gentleman or the serving-man mounted before.

Shakespeare incidentally describes the ancient style of travelling
among the humbler classes in his 'Henry IV.'*[1]

The Party, afterwards set upon by Falstaff and his companions,
bound from Rochester to London, were up by two in the morning,
expecting to perform the journey of thirty miles by close of day,
and to get to town "in time to go to bed with a candle." Two are
carriers, one of whom has "a gammon of bacon and two razes of
ginger, to be delivered as far as Charing Cross;" the other has his
panniers full of turkeys. There is also a franklin of Kent,
and another, "a kind of auditor," probably a tax-collector,
with several more, forming in all a company of eight or ten, who
travel together for mutual protection. Their robbery on Gad's Hill,
as painted by Shakespeare, is but a picture, by no means exaggerated,
of the adventures and dangers of the road at the time of which he
wrote.

Distinguished personages sometimes rode in horse-litters; but
riding on horseback was generally preferred. Queen Elizabeth made
most of her journeys in this way,*[2] and when she went into the
City she rode on a pillion behind her Lord Chancellor. The Queen,
however, was at length provided with a coach, which must have been
a very remarkable machine. This royal vehicle is said to have been
one of the first coaches used in England, and it was introduced by
the Queen's own coachman, one Boomen, a Dutchman. It was little
better than a cart without springs, the body resting solid upon the
axles. Taking the bad roads and ill-paved streets into account,
it must have been an excessively painful means of conveyance.
At one of the first audiences which the Queen gave to the French
ambassador in 1568, she feelingly described to him "the aching
pains she was suffering in consequence of having been knocked about
in a coach which had been driven a little too fast, only a few days
before."*[3]

Such coaches were at first only used on state occasions.
The roads, even in the immediate neighbourhood of London, were so
bad and so narrow that the vehicles could not be taken into the
country. But, as the roads became improved, the fashion of using
them spread. When the aristocracy removed from the City to the
western parts of the metropolis, they could be better accommodated,
and in course of time they became gradually adopted. They were
still, however, neither more nor less than waggons, and, indeed,
were called by that name; but wherever they went they excited great
wonder. It is related of "that valyant knyght Sir Harry Sidney,"
that on a certain day in the year 1583 he entered Shrewsbury in his
waggon, "with his Trompeter blowynge, verey joyfull to behold and
see."*[4]

From this time the use of coaches gradually spread, more
particularly amongst the nobility, superseding the horse-litters
which had till then been used for the conveyance of ladies and
others unable to bear the fatigue of riding on horseback.
The first carriages were heavy and lumbering: and upon the execrable
roads of the time they went pitching over the stones and into the
ruts, with the pole dipping and rising like a ship in a rolling sea.
That they had no springs, is clear enough from the statement of
Taylor, the water-poet--who deplored the introduction of carriages
as a national calamity--that in the paved streets of London men and
women were "tossed, tumbled, rumbled, and jumbled about in them."
Although the road from London to Dover, along the old Roman
Watling-street, was then one of the best in England, the French
household of Queen Henrietta, when they were sent forth from
the palace of Charles I., occupied four tedious days before they
reached Dover.

But it was only a few of the main roads leading from the metropolis
that were practicable for coaches; and on the occasion of a royal
progress, or the visit of a lord-lieutenant, there was a general
turn out of labourers and masons to mend the ways and render the
bridges at least temporarily secure. Of one of Queen Elizabeth's
journeys it is said:-- "It was marvellous for ease and expedition,
for such is the perfect evenness of the new highway that Her
Majesty left the coach only once, while the hinds and the folk of a
base sort lifted it on with their poles."

Sussex long continued impracticable for coach travelling at certain
seasons. As late as 1708, Prince George of Denmark had the
greatest difficulty in making his way to Petworth to meet Charles VI.
of Spain. "The last nine miles of the way," says the reporter,
"cost us six hours to conquer them." One of the couriers in
attendance complained that during fourteen hours he never once
alighted, except when the coach overturned, or stuck in the mud.

When the judges, usually old men and bad riders, took to going the
circuit in their coaches, juries were often kept waiting until
their lordships could be dug out of a bog or hauled out of a slough
by the aid of plough-horses. In the seventeenth century, scarcely
a Quarter Session passed without presentments from the grand jury
against certain districts on account of the bad state of the roads,
and many were the fines which the judges imposed upon them as a
set-off against their bruises and other damages while on circuit.

For a long time the roads continued barely practicable for wheeled
vehicles of the rudest sort, though Fynes Morison (writing in the
time of James I.) gives an account of "carryers, who have long
covered waggons, in which they carry passengers from place to
place; but this kind of journeying," he says, "is so tedious, by
reason they must take waggon very early and come very late to their
innes, that none but women and people of inferior condition travel
in this sort."

[Image] The Old Stage Waggon.

The waggons of which Morison wrote, made only from ten to fifteen
miles in a long summer's day; that is, supposing them not to have
broken down by pitching over the boulders laid along the road, or
stuck fast in a quagmire, when they had to wait for the arrival of
the next team of horses to help to drag them out. The waggon,
however, continued to be adopted as a popular mode of travelling
until late in the eighteenth century; and Hogarth's picture
illustrating the practice will be remembered, of the cassocked
parson on his lean horse, attending his daughter newly alighted
from the York waggon.

A curious description of the state of the Great North Road, in the
time of Charles II., is to be found in a tract published in 1675 by
Thomas Mace, one of the clerks of Trinity College, Cambridge. The
writer there addressed himself to the King, partly in prose and
partly in verse; complaining greatly of the "wayes, which are so
grossly foul and bad;" and suggesting various remedies. He pointed
out that much ground "is now spoiled and trampled down in all wide
roads, where coaches and carts take liberty to pick and chuse for
their best advantages; besides, such sprawling and straggling of
coaches and carts utterly confound the road in all wide places, so
that it is not only unpleasurable, but extreme perplexin and
cumbersome both to themselves and all horse travellers." It would
thus appear that the country on either side of the road was as yet
entirely unenclosed.

But Mace's principal complaint was of the "innumerable
controversies, quarrellings, and disturbances" caused by the
packhorse-men, in their struggles as to which convoy should pass
along the cleaner parts of the road. From what he states, it would
seem that these "disturbances, daily committed by uncivil,
refractory, and rude Russian-like rake-shames, in contesting for
the way, too often proved mortal, and certainly were of very bad
consequences to many." He recommended a quick and prompt punishment
in all such cases. "No man," said he, "should be pestered by
giving the way (sometimes) to hundreds of pack-horses, panniers,
whifflers (i.e. paltry fellows), coaches, waggons, wains, carts,
or whatsoever others, which continually are very grievous to weary
and loaden travellers; but more especially near the city and upon a
market day, when, a man having travelled a long and tedious
journey, his horse well nigh spent, shall sometimes be compelled to
cross out of his way twenty times in one mile's riding, by the
irregularity and peevish crossness of such-like whifflers and
market women; yea, although their panniers be clearly empty, they
will stoutly contend for the way with weary travellers, be they
never so many, or almost of what quality soever." "Nay," said he
further, "I have often known many travellers, and myself very
often, to have been necessitated to stand stock still behind a
standing cart or waggon, on most beastly and unsufferable deep wet
wayes, to the great endangering of our horses, and neglect of
important business: nor durst we adventure to stirr (for most
imminent danger of those deep rutts, and unreasonable ridges) till
it has pleased Mister Garter to jog on, which we have taken very
kindly."

Mr. Mace's plan of road reform was not extravagant. He mainly
urged that only two good tracks should be maintained, and the road
be not allowed to spread out into as many as half-a-dozen very bad
ones, presenting high ridges and deep ruts, full of big stones,
and many quagmires. Breaking out into verse, he said --

"First let the wayes be regularly brought
To artificial form, and truly wrought;
So that we can suppose them firmly mended,
And in all parts the work well ended,
That not a stone's amiss; but all compleat,
All lying smooth, round, firm, and wondrous neat."

After a good deal more in the same strain, he concluded--

"There's only one thing yet worth thinking on
which is, to put this work in execution."*[5]

But we shall find that more than a hundred years passed before the
roads throughout England were placed in a more satisfactory state
than they were in the time of Mr. Mace.

The introduction of stage-coaches about the middle of the
seventeenth century formed a new era in the history of travelling
by road. At first they were only a better sort of waggon, and
confined to the more practicable highways near London. Their pace
did not exceed four miles an hour, and the jolting of the
unfortunate passengers conveyed in them must have been very hard to
bear. It used to be said of their drivers that they were "seldom
sober, never Civil, and always late."

The first mention of coaches for public accommodation is made by
Sir William Dugdale in his Diary, from which it appears that a
Coventry coach was on the road in 1659. But probably the first
coaches, or rather waggons, were run between London and Dover, as
one of the most practicable routes for the purpose. M. Sobriere,
a French man of letters, who landed at Dover on his way to London
in the time of Charles II., alludes to the existence of a
stagecoach, but it seems to have had no charms for him, as the
following passage will show: "That I might not," he says,
"take post or be obliged to use the stage-coach, I went from Dover
to London in a waggon. I was drawn by six horses, one before another,
and driven by a waggoner, who walked by the side of it. He was
clothed in black, and appointed in all things like another St. George.
He had a brave montrero on his head and was a merry fellow, fancied
he made a figure, and seemed mightily pleased with himself."

Shortly after, coaches seem to have been running as far north as
Preston in Lancashire, as appears by a letter from one Edward
Parker to his father, dated November, 1663, in which he says,
"I got to London on Saturday last; but my journey was noe ways
pleasant, being forced to ride in the boote all the waye.
Ye company yt came up with mee were persons of greate quality,
as knights and ladyes. My journey's expense was 30s. This traval
hath soe indisposed mee, yt I am resolved never to ride up againe
in ye coatch."*[6]
These vehicles must, however, have considerably increased, as we
find a popular agitation was got up against them. The Londoners
nicknamed them "hell-carts;" pamphlets were written recommending
their abolition; and attempts were even made to have them
suppressed by Act of Parliament.

Thoresby occasionally alludes to stage-coaches in his Diary,
speaking of one that ran between Hull and York in 1679, from which
latter place he had to proceed by Leeds in the usual way on
horseback. This Hull vehicle did not run in winter, because of the
state of the roads; stagecoaches being usually laid up in that
season like ships during Arctic frosts.*[7]

Afterwards, when a coach was put on between York and Leeds, it
performed the journey of twenty-four miles in eight hours;*[8]
but the road was so bad and dangerous that the travellers were
accustomed to get out and walk the greater part of the way.

Thoresby often waxes eloquent upon the subject of his manifold
deliverances from the dangers of travelling by coach. He was
especially thankful when he had passed the ferry over the Trent in
journeying between Leeds and London, having on several occasions
narrowly escaped drowning there. Once, on his journey to London,
some showers fell, which "raised the washes upon the road near Ware
to that height that passengers from London that were upon that road
swam, and a poor higgler was drowned, which prevented me travelling
for many hours; yet towards evening we adventured with some country
people, who conducted us over the meadows, whereby we missed the
deepest of the Wash at Cheshunt, though we rode to the
saddle-skirts for a considerable way, but got safe to Waltham
Cross, where we lodged."*[9] On another occasion Thoresby was
detained four days at Stamford by the state of the roads, and was
only extricated from his position by a company of fourteen members
of the House of Commons travelling towards London, who took him
into their convoy, and set out on their way southward attended by
competent guides. When the "waters were out," as the saying went,
the country became closed, the roads being simply impassable.
During the Civil Wars eight hundred horse were taken prisoners
while sticking in the mud.*[10] When rain fell, pedestrians,
horsemen, and coaches alike came to a standstill until the roads
dried again and enabled the wayfarers to proceed. Thus we read of
two travellers stopped by the rains within a few miles of Oxford,
who found it impossible to accomplish their journey in consequence
of the waters that covered the country thereabout.

A curious account has been preserved of the journey of an Irish
Viceroy across North Wales towards Dublin in 1685. The roads were
so horrible that instead of the Viceroy being borne along in his
coach, the coach itself had to be borne after him the greater part
of the way. He was five hours in travelling between St. Asaph and
Conway, a distance of only fourteen miles. Between Conway and
Beaumaris he was forced to walk, while his wife was borne along in
a litter. The carriages were usually taken to pieces at Conway and
carried on the shoulders of stout Welsh peasants to be embarked at
the Straits of Menai.

The introduction of stage-coaches, like every other public
improvement, was at first regarded with prejudice, and had
considerable obloquy to encounter. In a curious book published in
1673, entitled 'The Grand Concern of England Explained in several
Proposals to Parliament,'*[11] stagecoaches and caravans were
denounced as among the greatest evils that had happened to the
kingdom, Being alike mischievous to the public, destructive to
trade, and prejudicial to the landed interest. It was alleged that
travelling by coach was calculated to destroy the breed of horses,
and make men careless of good horsemanship,--that it hindered the
training of watermen and seamen, and interfered with the public
resources. The reasons given are curious. It was said that those
who were accustomed to travel in coaches became weary and listless
when they rode a few miles, and were unwilling to get on horseback
--"not being able to endure frost, snow, or rain, or to lodge in
the fields;" that to save their clothes and keep themselves clean
and dry, people rode in coaches, and thus contracted an idle habit
of body; that this was ruinous to trade, for that "most gentlemen,
before they travelled in coaches, used to ride with swords, belts,
pistols, holsters, portmanteaus, and hat-cases, which, in these
coaches, they have little or no occasion for: for, when they rode
on horseback, they rode in one suit and carried another to wear
when they camp to their journey's end, or lay by the way; but in
coaches a silk suit and an Indian gown, with a sash, silk
stockings, and beaver-hats, men ride in, and carry no other with
them, because they escape the wet and dirt, which on horseback they
cannot avoid; whereas, in two or three journeys on horseback, these
clothes and hats were wont to be spoiled; which done, they were
forced to have new very often, and that increased the consumption
of the manufactures and the employment of the manufacturers; which
travelling in coaches doth in no way do."*[12] The writer of the
same protest against coaches gives some idea of the extent of
travelling by them in those days; for to show the gigantic nature
of the evil he was contending against, he averred that between
London and the three principal towns of York, Chester, and Exeter,
not fewer than eighteen persons, making the journey in five days,
travelled by them weekly the coaches running thrice in the week),
and a like number back; "which come, in the whole, to eighteen
hundred and seventy-two in the year." Another great nuisance,
the writer alleged, which flowed from the establishment of the
stage-coaches, was, that not only did the gentlemen from the
country come to London in them oftener than they need, but their
ladies either came with them or quickly followed them. "And when
they are there they must be in the mode, have all the new fashions,
buy all their clothes there, and go to plays, balls, and treats,
where they get such a habit of jollity and a love to gaiety and
pleasure, that nothing afterwards in the country will serve them ,
if ever they should fix their minds to live there again; but they
must have all from London, whatever it costs."

Then there were the grievous discomforts of stage-coach travelling,
to be set against the more noble method of travelling by horseback,
as of yore. "What advantage is it to men's health," says the
writer, waxing wroth, "to be called out of their beds into these
coaches, an hour before day in the morning; to be hurried in them
from place to place, till one hour, two, or three within night;
insomuch that, after sitting all day in the summer-time stifled
with heat and choked with dust, or in the winter-time starving and
freezing with cold or choked with filthy fogs, they are often
brought into their inns by torchlight, when it is too late to sit
up to get a supper; and next morning they are forced into the coach
so early that they can get no breakfast? What addition is this to
men's health or business to ride all day with strangers, oftentimes
sick, antient, diseased persons, or young children crying; to whose
humours they are obliged to be subject, forced to bear with, and
many times are poisoned with their nasty scents and crippled by the
crowd of boxes and bundles? Is it for a man's health to travel with
tired jades, to be laid fast in the foul ways and forced to wade up
to the knees in mire; afterwards sit in the cold till teams of
horses can be sent to pull the coach out? Is it for their health to
travel in rotten coaches and to have their tackle, perch, or
axle-tree broken, and then to wait three or four hours (sometimes
half a day) to have them mended, and then to travel all night to
make good their stage? Is it for a man's pleasure, or advantageous
to his health and business, to travel with a mixed company that he
knows not how to converse with; to be affronted by the rudeness of
a surly, dogged, cursing, ill-natured coachman; necessitated to
lodge or bait at the worst inn on the road, where there is no
accommodation fit for gentlemen; and this merely because the owners
of the inns and the coachmen are agreed together to cheat the
guests?" Hence the writer loudly called for the immediate
suppression of stagecoaches as a great nuisance and crying evil.

Travelling by coach was in early times a very deliberate affair.
Time was of less consequence than safety, and coaches were
advertised to start "God willing," and "about" such and such an
hour "as shall seem good" to the majority of the passengers.
The difference of a day in the journey from London to York was a
small matter, and Thoresby was even accustomed to leave the coach
and go in search of fossil shells in the fields on either side the
road while making the journey between the two places. The long coach
"put up" at sun-down, and "slept on the road." Whether the coach
was to proceed or to stop at some favourite inn, was determined by
the vote of the passengers, who usually appointed a chairman at the
beginning of the journey.

In 1700, York was a week distant from London, and Tunbridge Wells,
now reached in an hour, was two days. Salisbury and Oxford were
also each a two days journey, Dover was three days, and Exeter
five. The Fly coach from London to Exeter slept at the latter place
the fifth night from town; the coach proceeding next morning to
Axminster, where it breakfasted, and there a woman Barber "shaved
the coach."*[13]

Between London and Edinburgh, as late as 1763, a fortnight was
consumed, the coach only starting once a month.*[14] The risk of
breaks-down in driving over the execrable roads may be inferred
from the circumstance that every coach carried with it a box of
carpenter's tools, and the hatchets were occasionally used in
lopping off the branches of trees overhanging the road and
obstructing the travellers' progress.

Some fastidious persons, disliking the slow travelling, as well as
the promiscuous company which they ran the risk of encountering in
the stage, were accustomed to advertise for partners in a postchaise,
to share the charges and lessen the dangers of the road; and,
indeed, to a sensitive person anything must have been preferable to
the misery of travelling by the Canterbury stage, as thus described
by a contemporary writer:--

"On both sides squeez'd, how highly was I blest,
Between two plump old women to be presst!
A corp'ral fierce, a nurse, a child that cry'd,
And a fat landlord, filled the other side.
Scarce dawns the morning ere the cumbrous load
Boils roughly rumbling o'er the rugged road:
One old wife coughs and wheezes in my ears,
Loud scolds the other, and the soldier swears;
Sour unconcocted breath escapes 'mine host,'
The sick'ning child returns his milk and toast!"

When Samuel Johnson was taken by his mother to London in 1712, to
have him touched by Queen Anne for "the evil," he relates,--
"We went in the stage-coach and returned in the waggon, as my mother
said, because my cough was violent; but the hope of saving a few
shillings was no slight motive.... She sewed two guineas in her
petticoat lest she should be robbed.... We were troublesome to the
passengers; but to suffer such inconveniences in the stage-coach
was common in those days to parsons in much higher rank."

Mr. Pennant has left us the following account of his journey in
the Chester stage to London in 1789-40: "The first day," says he,
"with much labour, we got from Chester to Whitchurch, twenty
miles; the second day to the 'Welsh Harp;' the third, to Coventry;
the fourth, to Northampton; the fifth, to Dunstable; and, as a
wondrous effort, on the last, to London, before the commencement of
night. The strain and labour of six good horses, sometimes eight,
drew us through the sloughs of Mireden and many other places.
We were constantly out two hours before day, and as late at night,
and in the depth of winter proportionally later. The single
gentlemen, then a hardy race, equipped in jackboots and trowsers,
up to their middle, rode post through thick and thin, and, guarded
against the mire, defied the frequent stumble and fall, arose and
pursued their journey with alacrity; while, in these days, their
enervated posterity sleep away their rapid journeys in easy
chaises, fitted for the conveyance of the soft inhabitants of
Sybaris."

No wonder, therefore, that a great deal of the travelling of the
country continued to be performed on horseback, this being by far
the pleasantest as well as most expeditious mode of journeying.
On his marriage-day, Dr. Johnson rode from Birmingham to Derby with
his Tetty, taking the opportunity of the journey to give his bride
her first lesson in marital discipline. At a later period James
Watt rode from Glasgow to London, when proceeding thither to learn
the art of mathematical instrument making.

And it was a cheap and pleasant method of travelling when the
weather was fine. The usual practice was, to buy a horse at the
beginning of such a journey, and to sell the animal at the end of
it. Dr. Skene, of Aberdeen, travelled from London to Edinburgh in
1753, being nineteen days on the road, the whole expenses of the
journey amounting to only four guineas. The mare on which he rode,
cost him eight guineas in London, and he sold her for the same
price on his arrival in Edinburgh.

Nearly all the commercial gentlemen rode their own horses, carrying
their samples and luggage in two bags at the saddle-bow; and hence
their appellation of Riders or Bagmen. For safety's sake, they
usually journeyed in company; for the dangers of travelling were
not confined merely to the ruggedness of the roads. The highways
were infested by troops of robbers and vagabonds who lived by
plunder. Turpin and Bradshaw beset the Great North Road; Duval,
Macheath, Maclean, and hundreds of notorious highwaymen infested
Hounslow Heath, Finchley Common, Shooter's Hill, and all the
approaches to the metropolis. A very common sight then, was a
gibbet erected by the roadside, with the skeleton of some
malefactor hanging from it in chains; and " Hangman's-lanes" were
especially numerous in the neighbourhood of London.*[15] It was
considered most unsafe to travel after dark, and when the first
"night coach" was started, the risk was thought too great, and it
was not patronised.

[Image] The Night Coach

Travellers armed themselves on setting out upon a journey as if
they were going to battle, and a blunderbuss was considered as
indispensable for a coachman as a whip. Dorsetshire and Hampshire,
like most other counties, were beset with gangs of highwaymen; and
when the Grand Duke Cosmo set out from Dorchester to travel to
London in 1669, he was "convoyed by a great many horse-soldiers
belonging to the militia of the county, to secure him from
robbers."*[16]

Thoresby, in his Diary, alludes with awe to his having passed
safely "the great common where Sir Ralph Wharton slew the
highwayman," and he also makes special mention of Stonegate Hole,
"a notorious robbing place" near Grantham. Like every other
traveller, that good man carried loaded pistols in his bags, and on
one occasion he was thrown into great consternation near Topcliffe,
in Yorkshire, on missing them, believing that they had been
abstracted by some designing rogues at the inn where he had last
slept.*[17] No wonder that, before setting out on a journey in
those days, men were accustomed to make their wills.

When Mrs. Calderwood, of Coltness, travelled from Edinburgh to
London in 1756, she relates in her Diary that she travelled in her
own postchaise, attended by John Rattray, her stout serving man, on
horseback, with pistols at his holsters, and a good broad sword by
his side. The lady had also with her in the carriage a case of
pistols, for use upon an emergency. Robberies were then of
frequent occurrence in the neighbourhood of Bawtry, in Yorkshire;
and one day a suspicious-looking character, whom they took to be a
highwayman, made his appearance; but "John Rattray talking about
powder and ball to the postboy, and showing his whanger, the fellow
made off" Mrs. Calderwood started from Edinburgh on the 3rd of
June, when the roads were dry and the weather was fine, and she
reached London on the evening of the 10th, which was considered a
rapid journey in those days.

The danger, however, from footpads and highwaymen was not greatest
in remote country places, but in and about the metropolis itself.
The proprietors of Bellsize House and gardens, in the
Hampstead-road, then one of the principal places of amusement, had
the way to London patrolled during the season by twelve "lusty
fellows;" and Sadler's Wells, Vauxhall, and Ranelagh advertised
similar advantages. Foot passengers proceeding towards Kensington
and Paddington in the evening, would wait until a sufficiently
numerous band had collected to set footpads at defiance, and then
they started in company at known intervals, of which a bell gave
due warning. Carriages were stopped in broad daylight in Hyde
Park, and even in Piccadilly itself, and pistols presented at the
breasts of fashionable people, who were called upon to deliver up
their purses. Horace Walpole relates a number of curious instances
of this sort, he himself having been robbed in broad day, with Lord
Eglinton, Sir Thomas Robinson, Lady Albemarle, and many more.
A curious robbery of the Portsmouth mail, in 1757, illustrates the
imperfect postal communication of the period. The boy who carried
the post had dismounted at Hammersmith, about three miles from Hyde
Park Corner, and called for beer, when some thieves took the
opportunity of cutting the mail-bag from off the horse's crupper
and got away undiscovered!

The means adopted for the transport of merchandise were as tedious
and difficult as those ordinarily employed for the conveyance of
passengers. Corn and wool were sent to market on horses'
backs,*[18] manure was carried to the fields in panniers, and fuel
was conveyed from the moss or the forest in the same way. During
the winter months, the markets were inaccessible; and while in some
localities the supplies of food were distressingly deficient, in
others the superabundance actually rotted from the impossibility
of consuming it or of transporting it to places where it was
needed. The little coal used in the southern counties was
principally sea-borne, though pack-horses occasionally carried coal
inland for the supply of the blacksmiths' forges. When Wollaton
Hall was built by John of Padua for Sir Francis Willoughby in 1580,
the stone was all brought on horses' backs from Ancaster, in
Lincolnshire, thirty-five miles distant, and they loaded back with
coal, which was taken in exchange for the stone.

[Image] The Pack-horse Convoy

The little trade which existed between one part of the kingdom and
another was carried on by means of packhorses, along roads little
better than bridle-paths. These horses travelled in lines, with
the bales or panniers strapped across their backs. The foremost
horse bore a bell or a collar of bells, and was hence called the
"bell-horse." He was selected because of his sagacity; and by the
tinkling of the bells he carried, the movements of his followers
were regulated. The bells also gave notice of the approach of the
convoy to those who might be advancing from the opposite direction.
This was a matter of some importance, as in many parts of the path
there was not room for two loaded horses to pass each other, and
quarrels and fights between the drivers of the pack-horse trains
were frequent as to which of the meeting convoys was to pass down
into the dirt and allow the other to pass along the bridleway. The
pack-horses not only carried merchandise but passengers, and at
certain times scholars proceeding to and from Oxford and Cambridge.
When Smollett went from Glasgow to London, he travelled partly on
pack-horse, partly by waggon, and partly on foot; and the
adventures which he described as having befallen Roderick Random
are supposed to have been drawn in a great measure from his own
experiences during; the journey.

A cross-country merchandise traffic gradually sprang up between the
northern counties, since become pre-eminently the manufacturing
districts of England; and long lines of pack-horses laden with
bales of wool and cotton traversed the hill ranges which divide
Yorkshire from Lancashire. Whitaker says that as late as 1753 the
roads near Leeds consisted of a narrow hollow way little wider than
a ditch, barely allowing of the passage of a vehicle drawn in a
single line; this deep narrow road being flanked by an elevated
causeway covered with flags or boulder stones. When travellers
encountered each other on this narrow track, they often tried to
wear out each other's patience rather than descend into the dirt
alongside. The raw wool and bale goods of the district were nearly
all carried along these flagged ways on the backs of single horses;
and it is difficult to imagine the delay, the toil, and the perils
by which the conduct of the traffic was attended. On horseback
before daybreak and long after nightfall, these hardy sons of trade
pursued their object with the spirit and intrepidity of foxhunters;
and the boldest of their country neighbours had no reason to
despise either their horsemanship or their courage.*[19]
The Manchester trade was carried on in the same way. The chapmen
used to keep gangs of pack-horses, which accompanied them to all the
principal towns, bearing their goods in packs, which they sold to
their customers, bringing back sheep's wool and other raw materials
of manufacture.

The only records of this long-superseded mode of communication are
now to be traced on the signboards of wayside public-houses.
Many of the old roads still exist in Yorkshire and Lancashire; but
all that remains of the former traffic is the pack-horse still
painted on village sign-boards -- things as retentive of odd bygone
facts as the picture-writing of the ancient Mexicans.*[20]

[Granger]

Sorry, I see no suggestion here.

[MrPunchers]

tl;dr

[Massa]

this idea gave me butt cancer

sorry but building a road is already awful compared to old vidol trading

this garbage having to actually BUILD A ROAD is terrible

it's like you thought "how can i make the only thing that makes this game remotely usable for player interaction complete aids for everyone"

[Attas]

To be fair, roads have always been hard to maintain in real life. After the Romans left, most of the European roads decayed, being invaded by grass or forest. So having a sort of maintenance would not be very unrealistic.

The argument that "roads promote player interaction" is a false one, simply because roads nowadays can only be used by those who own its terminals. Therefore it promotes only interaction between two parties, leaving the people who happen to live between the two terminals with no communication to either sides.

There are other ways to improve player interaction in a more democratic way.

[Potjeh]

^ I've been advocating forever that roads should let you travel from any point on a road to any other point on the same road, as long as you got the whole route mapped (ie you have to walk the first time).

Anyway, what I'm getting from OP is that overland travel is too easy. So what's the actual suggestion, stamina drain on forest even at walk speed? Not sure if that'd be too annoying, but it would be kinda nice if moving through wilderness was a bit harder so waterways are the easiest way to get around. With that and a sensible river network (ie a couple of major rivers instead of a million tiny ones) we could see some organic settlement clustering.

[viznew]

i understand current road system in a easy death world but after the ko update i think acually going out and travling the roads could add some fun

i didnt read it all, but longest post iv seen yet

[Projeear]

Sorry for the half-baked post, I was on my phone at the time.

My point was, that without roads, trade, culture and expansion was neigh impossible even in the 'civilized' world, a time that I believe Haven and Hearth features itself in.

Unfortunately, there is a great lacking of roads in Haven and Hearth - and as a Trainee Civil Engineer, this upsets me deeply - and I would love to see more of them, and moreso, their benefits brought to realisation. If not greater movement speed as a benefit of them being used, then perhaps they should be brought to use by forcing bad events on using wilderness.

I don't know if it's still in place, but "Thorn in the foot" was bloody deadly running around barefoot in the forests in HnH World 7 and prior, and forced many if not all players to seek footwear. Likewise, having your cart break down, your horse's foot spraining, or your wagon's wheel fall off - all of which being a great Pain in the Ass, but otherwise not deadly - would, in my opinion, bring about the transport revolution in haven and hearth.

Furthermore as a secondary goal of roadways, perhaps simply moving over a tile should have a small percent chance of running the grass down into dirt - effectively forming deer trails over repeated travel over the same area. Thereafter, it's not a great reach for the tiles to have a programming 'condition' that if the tile is already dirt, that there's a chance of the elevation decreasing (and if there's already a dropped elevation, then to effectively drop neighbouring tile elevations)... this would very easily, and very beautifully, simulate road rutting.

[jorb]

I kind of like where fast travel is at. Not sure it needs to be made more difficult.

[Lunarius_Haberdash]

Thank you Jorb, for that depressing "state of the fast-travel union" address. I'm with the OP, fast travel is trivialized at the moment, and is rather depressing as a result.