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Thomas Telford

3 - Portrait tablets

2 - PC/landscape tablets

4 - L/scape smartphone

5 - Portrait smartphone

Section 3:

The Roads

Introduction

The world of long-distance coach travel

Ancient Trackways

The first roads

Celtic Trading Routes

The Celts were trading across Europe and although nothing remains of their roads, they must have followed fixed routes

Roman Roads

The Romans built roads, famously straight. These are the first roads that we in England are familiar with

The Middle Ages

After the Romans left, our roads fell into disrepair. Find out what happened

The Tudors

After the dissolution of the monasteries, even the church’s work ended

The Stuarts

During the Stuart period the first beginnings of improvement appeared

Thomas Mace

The first proposal to improve Britain’s roads

The Blind Roadmaker

The first person to take active steps to improve the roads

Thomas Telford

As pressure for improved transport links grew, this engineer made a real difference

John McAdam

Perhaps the most famous roadmaker, His method is still essentially in use today

Turnpikes

Britain’s roads at last allow fast long-distance travel 

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 Part 1: Living Memories

Anecdotes written by people who actually travelled on the coaches

Part 2: The Age of Coaching

The coachmen, the inns, the coach proprietors - they’re all here. Come in and meet them

Part 3: The Roads

Britain’s roads were pretty impassable for most of our history.  Coach travel was very difficult until they improved

Part 4: The Coaches

Wheeled transport evolved over many years. Find out how coaches developed

Background

Sources and information about how I came to create this website

Home Page

Home Page of the Coaching Website

Thomas Telford was born a year after John McAdam and died a year before him, so was a contemporary of his. He was a civil engineer, and a road, bridge and canal builder. He was so prolific that he was dubbed the “Colossus of Roads” (a pun on the Colossus of Rhodes q.v.)

Telford was born poor but he gained a wealthy patron in the form of William Pulteney, and became an architect. He completed many projects and became a local celebrity in 1788 when he assessed a leaking roof at St Chad's Church in Shrewsbury and warned that the church was in imminent danger of collapse. His reputation was made locally when the church collapsed 3 days later.

In 1790 he designed a bridge carrying the London–Holyhead road over the River Severn at Montford. It was the first of some 40 bridges he built in Shropshire, which included one at Buildwas which was his first iron bridge. He was influenced by Abraham Darby's iron bridge at the town of Ironbridge which was the first ever bridge made of iron and had been built twenty-five years earlier. He thought it was over-designed for its function, with many of the component parts poorly cast. Telford’s bridge was 30 ft longer and half the weight,. Sadly, it no longer exists. 

At the time, iron was a new material and using it in engineering projects was new and experimental. I made a film using about new materials which includes Abraham Darby’s bridge. You can see it on YouTube here.

By the end of his career Thomas Telford had built over a thousand bridges, over a thousand miles of roads and countless canals, churches and harbours. His roads used John McAdam’s construction method and all told he laid the infrastructure that enabled Britain to become  an industrial powerhouse that could support an Empire.

But such was the speed of the Industrial Revolution that within a generation, the canals he created were made almost obsolete by both steam ships and steam trains. The future of transport would be rail, and would belong to engineers like George Stephenson.

His name lives on in the town of Telford in Shropshire and in the many roads which he straightened and levelled, to the relief of the horses pulling the stage coaches which proliferated through his and John McAdam’s lifetimes.


Next: John MacAdam