A GREAT ROAD BUILDER

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXX, 26 November 1936, Page 6

A GREAT ROAD BUILDER

TO-DAY is the centenary of the death of Macadam, the great engineer who has been called “the father of modern roads,” though it must be acknowledged that he was greatly assisted by John Metcalf, “the blind Yorkshire road contractor,” and Thomas Telford, who ranked with the great engineers of his day. Macadam lived in the coaching days, when the need of good roads in England was urgent, indeed imperative; but, on the contrary, he found them faultily constructed and exceedingly bad, especially in wet weather. He was of the opinion that the first essential was to have- a welldrained foundation to a road; next “he held that if the road bed was well drained, the road metal could be placed on the natural subsoil, and there was no need for costly, stonepaved foundations.” The result was the macadamised road, which made coaching a pleasurable mode of travelling, and holds its own even to-day in many regions where the motor car does not demand the use of concrete, tar, or bitumen as adjuncts in roadmaking. To show how good the macadamised road was at its best, it may be said that the journey from London to Edinburgh (400 miles) could be accomplished in 40 hours; that from London to Holyhead (260 miles) in 27 hours. But sixty years ago wiseacres in England used to say that since the advent of the “railway the roads were neglected and consequently had deteriorated. To-day the advent of the motor car and its immense popularity have caused the old macadamised coaching roads to be rejuvenated, and though they may be surfaced in the modern manner with concrete, tar, or bitumen, their general construction still conforms largely in well-known instances to the principles of roadmaking invented by Macadam.