Day 13. The Country Lanes

The rural lane with wide, flower-strewn verges: a key feature of the British countryside.

Until the 19^th century, Britain's roads were notorious. A lack of paving or hard surfacing, combined with the fickle weather and a multitude of passing hooves, feet and wheels, meant thoroughfares were churned to a near-permanent quagmire in winter, and baked hard to a ruinous assault-course of ruts and pot-holes in summer.

Roads had no defined boundaries – if a section was impassable, people would simply skirt round it.  Even the little-used rural roads had to be at least 50 feet wide, and heavily used routes such as the drove-roads towards London could be up to half a mile wide, essential if they were to remain anything like usable.

When Preston's open fields were enclosed by  parliamentary commissioners in the 1750s, to be discussed in a later post, the parish roads were also inspected. Their widths were fixed, mostly at 50 or 60 feet, and the commissioners ordered them to be enclosed [hedged]. These road boundaries are still in place today.

When the roads were paved and then tarmaced, the 60-foot width was no longer necessary for most rural roads. A single lane of hard surface was laid and the excess was left for grazing livestock. Today it grows wild.

But this didn't always happen. Sometimes the roadside hedges weren't planted for several years, and when they were, the farmers moved them outwards into the highway – what they saw an unnecessary waste of land. The Wimpstone Road near Broad Bridge, where it passes through what was once the Mansell family's land, is much narrower than the statutory 50 feet. Some unknown member of the Mansell family sneaked his hedges out a bit!

 

                                  The Wimpstone Road as it passes through the Mansells' farmland.