The Local Roads Were Superb!
In his ‘Tour In Ireland’ (1779) the inveterate traveller Arthur Young commented on the general state of Irish roads:
“For a country so very far behind us as Ireland, to have got suddenly got so much the start of us in the article of roads, is a spectacle that cannot fail to strike the English traveller exceedingly”.
He describes travelling from Newry to visit the Earl of Gosford at Markethill:
“The road is abominably bad, continually over hills, rough, stony, and cut up. It is a turnpike, which in Ireland is a synonymous term for a vile road; which is extraordinary as the bye ones are the finest in the world…the presentment roads show what may be done, and render these villainous turnpikes more disgusting.”
Even if we read “the finest in the world” as “the finest I have ever seen” it is still a remarkable compliment from such a seasoned traveller. In 1812, Arthur Wakefield wrote:
“…there are few things in Ireland which astonish a stranger more than the magnificence of its many excellent roads.”
The Turnpikes Were Dreadful!
Turnpike roads such as what is now the A1 (Belfast-Dublin) had a dreadful reputation, because of the sporadic way in which tolls were collected and used for their upkeep and repair. If a turnpike deteriorated so badly that there was a public uproar, tolls were re-imposed, money was collected, and the most badly-needed repairs were done. Tolls were then removed … until the road was once more near-impassable, and the cycle started all over again.
Referring to the bye-roads, Dubourdieu (1802) wrote:
“The roads of this county [Down] are in general allowed to be excellent; the soil is dry, the country neither flat nor shaded, and the gentlemen very careful in keeping them in good repair, and anxious to have the money granted for them honestly accounted for.”
He also identified one particular ‘evil’ of Irish roads, later mentioned by many other commentators:
“…many of the old roads having been laid out before it was adverted to that going round a hill was often not describing a greater space than going over it, the traveller is not seldom obliged to climb a steep ascent, and to go down a declivity equal to it, when a most inviting valley appears to left or right, which he naturally thinks would have made as short a line of road, and would have saved him and his panting breast the fatigues of ascending and horrors of descending, without costing the county one shilling more than that which has produced so much pain and so many alarms.”
Coote (1804) writes of the same road about which Young complained…
“The turnpike road from Newry to Armagh is, perhaps, the worst in Ireland as a public road, and is a disgrace to an opulent county…The best roads are in the barony of Armagh.”
Our Roads Had Two Big Faults
However, Coote was not entirely uncritical, adding (and agreeing with Dubourdieu):
“The great mistake in the roads of this county is, the neglect of originally making the centre of the road higher than the sides, which would throw off the water into the ditches; nor do they seem to understand, that winding a road through the valleys is a short a distance as ascending and descending the hills, independent of the great labour and danger attending the latter.”
Even though the Romans had used it almost 2000 years earlier, cambering – raising the middle of the road – was largely unknown in Ireland.
Coote’s second complaint was echoed by Ivor Herring in 1940:
“One general weakness was a legacy of a pre-vehicular age—the tendency of Irish roads to go over a hill rather than round it, a disadvantage acutely revealed when coach and car traffic developed. It was indeed considered possible to identify the old roads by their love of gradients and much of the energy of the new century was applied to redrawing the lines of communication on the basis of the maxim, ‘the furthest way about is the nearest way home’.”
Access To Lime
Herring also identifies the early nineteenth century as “the heyday of the limekiln” and the need for access to lime for improving crop yields as an important factor driving the expansion of the road network. Good roads (and in the case of Poyntzpass, the canal) were needed to transport the heavy raw materials – coal and limestone – to the kiln, but farmers also needed good quality local roads to get to and from the nearest kiln to collect their lime.
Access To Turf
In the early 1800s, turf was still the predominant fuel in the area, and the common people preferred it to the more expensive coal. Herring also asserts that the building of roads not just up to bogs, but across them, was very important. It greatly increased the local supply not only of turf but also of ancient timber preserved by the anaerobic and acidic conditions in the bog, colloquially known as bog oak. It was still used almost exclusively in peasant houses and especially for the construction of looms; native forests had almost disappeared and imported Scandinavian timber was much too expensive for the poor.
Next: Grand Juries