Highways Agency - Safe roads, Reliable journeys, Informed travellers

History of Roads -  Where did all the roads come from?

A brief history of our roads: from the beginning to today.

The beginning of roads starts as long ago as the stone age when trackways were made by primitive man to help him trade with other primitive people. However, it was the Romans who first built roads as we know them today. These roads were one of the greatest achievements of the Roman Empire; some of them remained in use for more than 1,000 years after the Empire finished.

The first Roman road was the Via Appia and it was built in the year 312 B.C. This road stretched for over 6,018 kilometres across Western and Southern Europe. Roman roads were built mainly for the armies to conquer other countries, letting them travel quickly and safely, but, they were soon used for trade and for people to simply go from one city to another.

In Britain, the Roman roads stretched from London out across the country and they followed the route of the Roman conquest:

• London-Lincoln-York;
• London-Verulamium-Wroxeter/Chester; and
• London-Silchester-Exeter.

Roman roads were built in a straight line as they did not have to worry about who owned the land or the effect of the roads on the environment. They would also have been able to see enemies approaching. These roads show how skilful the Romans were as engineers and planners as their techniques meant that the roads lasted for centuries.

The most famous Roman roads in Britain are Watling Street and Ermine Street. Some of our roads still use the same route as the original Roman road, for example the A46 from Leicester to Lincoln and the A5 from St Albans to Wales.  Try looking them up in a road atlas!

Many of today's towns have grown from old Roman settlements.  Place names ending in 'chester' often show that a town was Roman in origin as the Romans spoke Latin and 'chester' is from the Latin word for "camp" or "fortress". So Manchester and Colchester, as well as Chester itself, all started as Roman towns. 

But, after the Romans left Britain in the 5th century the roads started to wear away because nobody maintained them.

In the Middle Ages, road maintenance was left to the parishes and those people who lived in them. Each parish had the responsibility for the roads in their area and local people were forced by law to work unpaid to keep the roads maintained. This system of looking after the roads where both paid and unpaid labour was used, continued from about 1555 to 1835.

By the 18th century it became clear that this system of free and paid labour was failing and roads were becoming worn away as a result. Most of the traffic was horse carts and new wheeled vehicles. The soft dirt track roads were never built to carry those sort of vehicles and were not able to cope with this heavy traffic. It became clear that alternatives to improve the roads had to be found.

So came the era of the Turnpike trusts - an imaginative new way of getting the roads built and maintained. Turnpike trusts were made up of a group of people who would get together and ask for permission from Parliament to take over a section of road, or build a new one, for about 21 years. They would pay for its maintenance by collecting tolls from the people who used them. These roads were commonly called turnpike roads. You can still see some signs of the location of these roads where you see tiny houses on the edge of the road. It is there that the man who collected the tolls lived. Many of the roads were improved this way and the Turnpike trusts experimented with new ways to build roads, adding new methods of making roads stronger and last longer so that wheeled traffic could travel more easily.

By 1830 there were more than 1,000 Turnpike companies in England, maintaining 32,000 kilometres of road. London and other big cities were now well connected by a stagecoach network - for example it took fewer than two days to travel from London to Edinburgh by coach whereas one hundred years earlier it had taken almost a fortnight. The roads were of course very dangerous because the highway men used to often rob the stagecoaches. Probably the most famous of these highwaymen was Dick Turpin who was eventually caught and hanged for murder.

The Turnpike system of roads was not without its problems. Many of the trusts simply did not know how to look after the roads and when they were short of money they did not maintain them. They failed to provide a road network that covered the whole of the country to a similar standard. At the same time Britain saw the arrival of the first railway lines which became a very popular and safe way to travel. They were fast and more difficult for highway men to stop. People stopped using the stagecoaches and the Turnpike Trusts gradually became bankrupt. The last company closed for business in 1895.

By the end of the 19th century road administration had became the responsibility of the town and district councils, and the country and rural district councils. At the beginning of the 20th century there were no fewer than 1900 local authorities concerned with highways and a national policy for roads did not exist. The motor car had arrived in the late 1800s and in the 1900s there was a huge increase in the number of cars and lorries that wanted to use roads. Many of the lorries were heavier and needed much stronger roads. Therefore there was a need to improve and maintain the road on national basis rather than a local concern and this became a big political issue for all the country.

In 1936 the Government put through an Act of Parliament which was the first Trunk Roads Act. This ensured that the Minister of Transport had direct control over the most important through routes in the country. This meant that a consistency in types of road surface, treatment of bridges, the need for widening and bypasses could be achieved. The Act made the Ministry of Transport the highway authority for some 30 of the principal roads of Britain amounting to 4,459 miles in all. Less important roads were left in control of the local parishes and councils.

Today the Highways Agency looks after all the national roads in England - a total of 7,754 kilometres of trunk roads and motorways. We are responsible for delivering a safe, efficient and reliable environmentally acceptable network. We work for the government and the government sets policies which we have to follow.

Road building nowadays is much more involved and difficult than in Roman times. If a road is really needed then we have to look at the effects on traffic, the economy and the environment and consider all the alternative options before we make our mind up about a particular road. We have lots of discussions with people who are concerned about road building and local people who are affected by it. We have very formal consultation, sending out leaflets telling people what we want to do and why we want to do it and ask them to let us know what they think about our plans.

Once we have decided upon the route of the new road we want to build we have to issue legal orders which allow the Agency to buy land which provides the road. People can object to these orders and if they do then there is a public inquiry when an inspector will listen to all the arguments for and against the road before he makes his mind up and advises our Minister whether we should continue with the road. If the Minister decides that the scheme can go ahead there are certain steps we must take. We need to buy the actual land we need for the road; we will also compensate those people whose land we are taking. Sometimes houses and properties are needed for the road. We also have to pay compensation to those people whose property we need. We may also have to pay compensation to people whose properties are affected by the road, usually with noise, once it is built.

The Highways Agency is responsible for all the users of this network - the cyclist, the pedestrian, the horses and their riders, not just the cars and lorries! We aim to serve all our users as well as protect the environment. You might be surprised to know the Highways Agency plants more trees and shrubs than anyone else in the country. We provide safe routes for cyclists,and pedestrians, including bridges that enable them and horse riders to cross our roads safely. We build tunnels under some of our roads for badgers, frogs, toads and other animals to get across the roads, and we also provide fences along our roads where they are needed to stop deer getting on to the road.