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The Transport Revolution Essay

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The Transport Revolution Until late in the 1700’s, in both Europe and America, most roads were either rough tracks created by hoof and wheel or mere paths blazed through the wilderness. People traveled by horseback or on foot between towns. During cold or wet seasons, traffic was especially difficult or impossible. One of the problem was that each parish had to mend its own roads. Most people in the parish had to work 4 or 6 days on the roads each year, or pay money instead. Not surprisingly, they disliked this and skirted the work. During the eighteenth century, a new system developed. Groups of men agreed to keep a stretch of road in good repair if they could charge a fee to every one who …show more content…

The fast running mail and stage- coaches needed better roads. In the early 1800s, three great roadbuilders began to provide them. One of the most remarkable was John Metcalfe from Knaresborough in Yorkshire (even though he was blind, he led a very active life). He was nearly fifty years old when he constructed his first Turnpike road (1765) and in the next twenty seven years, he supervised the construction of nearly 300 kilometers of Turnpikes (mostly in Yorkshire and Lancashire). He paid special attention to the bed of the road and where the soil was soft, he laided great quantities of heather as a foundation for layers of stone and gravel. John used jagged broken stones which bound together under the pressure of wheeled vehicles (see source 3). Thomas Telford was born in Westerkirk, Dumfries, Scotland, in 1757, the son of a poor Scottish shepherd. He apprenticed for a time to a stonemason, but then trained as a surveyor, before moving to London in 1792 in search of work. He found employment working on Somerset House in the capitol, but later moved to Portsmouth to work on the docks. A patron from Dumfries got him the post of Surveyor of Public Works for the County of Shropshire. In this capacity he was responsible for the construction of the Ellesmere Canal in 1793, and the Severn Suspension Bridge at Montford (1790). This bridge was an

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