THE ROADS, BRIDGES, CANALS, AND RAILWAYS OF MONTGOMERYSHIRE. By A. HOWELL, RHIEWPORT. THE state of the roads in Montgomeryshire was very much the same down to a hundred years ago when turnpike trusts were introduced into the county, as the state of the roads generally in England was two hundred years ago when the introduction of turnpike trusts commenced. Of the state then of the most important lines in England we have a graphic description in the introduction to Lord Macaulay's History. On the best lines the ruts were deep, the descents precipitous, and the way often such as it was hardly possible to distinguish in the dark. Only in fine weather the whole breadth of the road was available for wheeled vehicles, only a narrow track rising above the quagmire; continually coaches sticking fast until a team of cattle could be produced from neighbouring farms to tug them out of the slough. Between Ware and London passengers swimming for their lives, some perishing in the attempt to cross, others turning out of the road and conducted across meadows, riding to the saddle skirts in water. One gentleman mentioned to be detained at Stamford four days, and venturing to proceed only because fourteen members of the House of Commons were going in a body to Parliament with guards and numerous attendants taking him into their company; travellers in constant fears for their necks. A viceroy going to Ireland in 1685 was five hours travelling VOL. VIII. Y fourteen miles, from St. Asaph to Conway, and between Conway and Beaumaris obliged to walk a great part of the way, his lady being carried in a litter, and his coach with difficulty, and with the help of many hands, brought entire after him. Prince George of Denmark, in visiting the stately mansion of Petworth, was six hours going nine miles, with a body of sturdy hinds on each side of his coach to prop it. The first Turnpike Act was 15 Charles II, ch. 1, passed soon after the restoration. But still at the end of that reign, in 1685, on many roads goods and passengers were carried on trains of pack-horses. Six horses were not sufficient to drag a gentleman's carriage. Public carriages were much improved during the years following the restoration, so that a diligence ran between London and Oxford in two days. Persons not very long dead, and who were many years contemporaries of persons now living, carried their recollection to a hundred years ago; and we are well aware from their information that at that time the intercourse of persons in this county, and the transmission of their traffic, was all or nearly all carried on on foot and on horseback. Two was mentioned as the number of carriages then possessed in the county. Amongst the correspondence of Francis Herbert, of Dolguog, with his wife, in 1640 to 1650, there is a letter in which he alludes to an accident to his knee, which he regrets prevented his seeing a friend staying at Dolguog, and requests his wife to entertain him well. He says, "and truly could a coach come to my house I would have borrowed one rather than have failed him." From this it is evident that Dolguog, then the residence of one of the principal men of the county, was inaccessible to any vehicle. The sheriff of Montgomeryshire in the beginning of last century (1717) was a Herbert of Dolforgan. In those days, as now, the gentry held in hand portions of their estates, 1 Mont. Coll., vol. iv, p. 200. and so bad were the roads that they could not use a cart. The people, including even the high sheriff, had to carry their lime from Llanymynech rocks to their farms in panniers on the backs of animals, and it is said that the team of the high sheriff was none other than a team of asses. One day some wags (as is still too frequently the custom in these enlightened days) were lounging about the cross at Welshpool, and it happened that the high sheriff's team of asses was passing on its way to Kerry with its loads of lime, when one of the wags sang out, in an ironical tone, "Make way! Make way, there, for the sheriff of Montgomeryshire's equipage." The Rev. Walter Davies, writing in 1813, and speaking of North Wales, says, "Fifty years ago there were comparatively but few miles of travelable road within the whole district. Coal for fuel and lime for manure could not be carried in quantities to any great distance.” The introduction of turnpike trusts, and the improvement of the roads which followed such introduction, had no doubt a good many years previously to their introduction into Montgomeryshire-probably as early as about the commencement of last century-extended as far at least as Shrewsbury and Chester, and other border towns. Shrewsbury was then, as now, the chief place of an extensive and fertile district, and, in the language of the gentry many miles round the Wrekin, to go to Shrewsbury was to go to Town. There the courts of the marches of Wales were in their time held, and Shrewsbury had from remote times been a kind of metropolis of Powys-land, including what is now the recently constituted county of Montgomery and its adjoining districts. The provincial wits and beauties imitated in Shrewsbury the fashions of St. James's Park in the walks along the side of the Severn. The way in which any improvements—such 1 Mont. Coll., vol. iii, p. 25. 2 General View of Agriculture and Domestic Economy of North Wales, p. 372. |