A1-The Great North Road
In 1285, during King Edward the first's reign, the Statute of Winchester, probably the earliest piece of road legislation, ordered ...that highways leading from one market town to another shall be enlarged where as bushes, woods, or dykes be, so that there be neither dyke nor bush whereby a man may lurk to do hurt within two hundred feet of the one side and two hundred feet of the other side of the way. Just how much deforestation was occasioned by this legislation history does not make clear. I suspect not a lot. Similarly, it is not at all clear who was responsible for the maintenance of this clearance. And of course the Statute of Winchester was not just about roads but a wide-ranging act dealing with local policing. The Statute regularized custom and practice from Saxon times concerning night watchmen and the responsibility of tythings, or groups of about ten households, and hundreds, the groups of ten tythings, for maintaining law and order.
There does not appear to have been any earlier legislation regarding road maintenance and the 1285 act does not speak of the actual surface of the road. For centuries to come, roads, in a legal sense, were rights of passage rather than something physical on the ground. Folk had the right to walk over the land but not to stop and shoot a pheasant. The Statute of Winchester's demand for a strip of land clear of obstruction, however, focuses on the hardware but just who was responsible for doing what is not clear. That roads were maintained is clear, as there does appear to have been a great deal of travelling done in the early mediaeval period. Traffic may have actually diminished after about 1350. Fairs declined in importance, pilgrimages to shines lost popularity. Land redistribution in the 15th century saw the consolidation of once scattered estates and the agricultural move towards pasture involved less transport. The reformation saw the end of appeals to the Pope and journeyings to Rome. The wayfaring life of the Middle Ages gradually passed away.
There were several Road Acts in the first half of the 16th century, mostly of a local nature, allowing the realigning, rebuilding and paving of stretches of road found to be in a particularly woeful state. The Statute of Bridges of 1531 (22 Hen. VIII, c.5) made it a duty of Justices of the Peace to see to the maintenance of bridges that didn’t have clear arrangements for upkeep.
Historically the need to maintain bridges has long been recognized. The Statute of Bridges decreed that, in the absence of any traditional duty upon an individual, parish, hundred, corporation or other body to keep a particular bridge in repair, it should be maintained by the County. It gave the County Quarter Sessions powers to levy a parochial rate and appoint surveyors to undertake the repair and rebuilding of bridges. The Statute empowered Justices of the Peace to compel landowners or corporations to repair bridges and at the same time the Highways Act empowered Justices of the Peace to appoint Surveyors to each Parish to ensure that the inhabitants repaired roads and bridges. It was a timely piece of legislation that pre-empted the dissolution of the monasteries, between 1536 and 1540, since it was those monasteries that had often taken on the responsibility of building and repairing bridges.
It was not till 1555 that the 'Statute of Phillip and Mary', a major piece of general road legislation that was to form the basis of road organization and maintenance for the following three centuries, was enacted. 2 & 3 Phillip and Mary, c. 8 was passed as a temporary Act in 1555 and permanently re-enacted in 1563 by 5 Elizabeth, c. 13. There followed several amending acts:
18 Elizabeth, c. 10 (1576)
14 Charles II, c.6 (1662)
22 Charles II, c. 12 (1670)
3 & 4 William and Mary, c. (1691)
7 & 8 William and Mary, c. (1695)
8 & 9 William III, c. 16 (1697)
These were all, in effect, repealed and re-enacted by the codifying Act of 1766 (7 George III, c. 42)
Concern about the growing problem of highway robbery is evident in the passing in 1693 of 'An Act For Encouraging The Apprehending Of Highwaymen', (4 William and Mary).
Whereas the highways and roads within the kingdom of England and dominion of Wales have been of late time more infested with thieves and robbers than formerly, for want of due and sufficient encouragement given and means used for the discovery and apprehension of such offenders, whereby so many murders and robberies have been committed that it is become dangerous in many parts of the nation for travellers to pass on their lawful occasions, to the great dishonour of the laws of this realm and the government thereof; for remedy whereof be it enacted that from and after the five and twentieth day of March one thousand six hundred ninety and three all and every person and persons who shall apprehend and take one or more such thieves or robbers, and prosecute him or them so apprehended and taken until he or they be convicted of any robbery committed in or upon any highway, passage, field or open place, shall have and receive from the sheriff or sheriffs of the county where such robbery and conviction shall be made and done, without paying any fee for the same, for every offender so convicted the sum of forty pounds within one month after such conviction.
The Webbs' description of the various roads legislation goes like this: Under these Acts, together with the Common Law, which they only slightly modified, the obligation to provide for the maintenance of all existing public highways rested on the Parish as a whole and on every inhabitant thereof; on the newly created Surveyor of Highways appointed for the Parish; on the Justices of the Peace within the Division in which the Parish was situated; and, as regards certain minor services, on the owners of the lands adjacent to the highway. All these persons could be independently informed against or presented before a judicial tribunal, and if they had failed to fulfil their legal obligations, could be separately fined for their respective defaults. But upon the Parish as a whole, and upon all the inhabitants thereof, was cast a pre-eminent obligation. Unless it could be definitely proved that some particular person was legally liable to maintain a particular bit of road, it was the Parish which had to do it. Moreover, even if each and every inhabitant had severally performed his own statutory duty, if the highway was, in the opinion of the Court, still insufficiently repaired, the Parish might be fined over and over again until the road was made good. This general and continuous collective liability was, however, merely an uncomfortable background to the onerous personal duty imposed upon each inhabitant.
The first duty cast on the Parish was to provide, from among its own inhabitants, one or more persons to serve gratuitously as Surveyors of Highways for the ensuing year. But except for the individual who found himself thrust into an unpaid and onerous office, this was the easiest part of the task. All the manual labour, tools, and horses and carts needed for repairing the roads, had to be furnished gratuitously by the parishioners themselves. "Every person, for every plough-land in tillage or pasture" that he occupied in the Parish defined subsequently as a holding of £50 annual value and" also every person keeping a draught (of horses) or plough in the Parish," had to provide and send "one wain or cart furnished after the custom of the country, with oxen, horses, or other cattle, and all other necessaries meet to carry things convenient for that purpose, and also two able men with the same." Finally, "every other householder, cottager, and labourer, able to labour, and being no hired servant by the year," was either to go himself to work or to send "one sufficient labourer in his stead." All these teams and labourers had annually to appear on the roads on the date and at the hour fixed by the Surveyor, there to work under his direction for eight hours on four, and afterwards. on six, consecutive days.
The Webbs go on to describe how, for the next couple of centuries, the practice of 'Statue Labour', whereby the parishioners turned out for six days each year for a road-mending party, tended more towards party than to road-mending. Somehow, having to work for no personal gain but the general good, did not seem to provide the incentive to deliver the goods. Despite near universal criticism down the years, it was not until 1835 and the General Highway Act (5 and 6 William IV c. 50) that Statute Labour was done away with and replaced by a parish rate levied to raise money for road maintenance by hired labour. Perhaps if Karl Marx had studied the history of the roads he would have realized the limitations of the efficacy of communism and 20th century history might have run a different course.
Bridges
A Bridges Act was passed in 1531 confirming the common law rule of bridges being repairable by counties. There was much legislation in subsequent centuries. By the Local Government Act, 1888, County Councils were made responsible for the county bridges including those on 'main roads'. Jeffreys
Lincolnshire
©Biff Vernon 2002