Smooth as a bowling green

‘The road through it is smooth as a bowling green and the ride is all the way as delightful as man could wish.’ So wrote the American traveller Jabez Maud Fisher in 1776, clearly relieved to have found a decent stretch of English highway. His words (see An American Quaker in the British Isles: The Travel Journals of Jabez Maud Fisher, 1775-1779) feature in new research from the University of Cambridge, published this spring, which argues that the much-maligned turnpike trusts of the 18th century did far more to improve Britain’s roads than historians have generally acknowledged. Drawing on nearly 100 travellers’ diaries, the researchers suggest that ordinary road users cared less about speed than about avoiding mud, holes, broken wheels and the danger of being pitched into a ditch.

The study, by Leigh Shaw-Taylor, Alan Rosevear and Dan Bogart, examined comments scattered through diaries written between the mid-17th century and the early 19th century. These diarists often wrote with extraordinary feeling about the state of the roads. In 1698, the indefatigable traveller Celia Fiennes (see A remedy for laziness) described roads near Ely as ‘so full of holes and quicksands . . . a stranger then cannot easily escape the danger’. Elsewhere, travellers used terms such as ‘execrable’, ‘detestable’, ‘vile’ and ‘ruinous’ for roads which modern motorists, even when complaining about potholes, might hesitate to compare with today’s conditions.

Turnpike trusts emerged because parish authorities had proved unable to maintain the expanding road network. From the late 17th century onwards, trusts were authorised to collect tolls in return for maintaining specific roads. According to the Cambridge researchers, travellers’ diaries reveal measurable improvements once roads were turnpiked. Roads under turnpike management were substantially more likely to be judged ‘good’ or at least ‘acceptable’, while non-turnpiked roads remained notorious for deep ruts, flooding and mud.

What is striking, however, is the diarists’ emphasis on comfort rather than haste. Dr Alan Rosevear notes that travellers ‘rarely mentioned speed’. Instead, they worried about safety, jolting and exhaustion. The research argues that many journeys were social or recreational - visits to relations, tours into Wales or the Lake District, or attendance at assemblies and weddings. A traveller wanted to arrive upright and presentable, not necessarily dramatically earlier.

The diaries also chart the emergence of tourism. Better roads encouraged wealthier Britons to venture into areas previously considered remote or almost impassable. Regions such as Wales, the North of England and the Southwest benefited particularly from turnpike investment. Before the trusts, wheeled traffic in some of these districts had been nearly impossible in winter conditions.

The study is a welcome reminder that private journals often preserve aspects of everyday history overlooked by official records. A passing complaint about mud, a broken axle, or a terrifying descent into a flooded lane can illuminate an entire transport system. These diarists were not trying to write economic history, the study demonstrates, yet, through their candid observations, they documented one of the infrastructural transformations that helped underpin Britain’s industrial expansion.