This book tells the story of roads and their traffic in
Gloucestershire during the 18th and early 19th centuries, basing
the account on reports, advertisements, and public announcements
from the county's principal local newspaper, the Gloucester
Journal. Scene-setting chapters describe the long and problematical
process by which the turnpike trusts, the road authorities of the
day, transformed a system of primitive packhorse routes into a
viable network of coach roads. A rich cross-section of the life of
the road at the period is then presented: the inns, on which the
transport system depended, standing at isolated strategic road
junctions, at ferry crossings on the river Severn, or in the
county's main towns at the hub of their social and public
functions; the expanding network of stagecoaches, mail-coaches,
post-chaises, and carriers' wagons; the travellers for whom the
road was a way of life, ranging from gypsies and cattle drovers to
showmen and 'commercial gentlemen'; and the hazards, such as road
accidents, highway robbery, and bad weather conditions, encountered
by travellers. The picture that emerges is often a harsh one, a
corrective to the romanticised, popular view. For those to whom it
gave a living, travel and transport in the Georgian age could be a
struggle for survival, with stagecoach operators attempting to
drive each other off the road, innkeepers spreading false rumours,
even altering signposts, to lure custom from rivals, towns mounting
publicity campaigns to counter the threat of route diversions, and
waggoners at odds with the turnpikes over restrictive regulations.
Some, like highwaymen and confidence tricksters, travelled to prey
on their fellow-men; others were on the roads to escape from
authority in the form of parish officers, recruiting sergeants, or
the county magistracy. For the ordinary traveller journeys might
involve the minor irritations of rude or corrupt innkeepers and
coachmen or more serious, and sometimes fatal, encounters with
Severn floods or Cotswold snowstorms. The extracts from the
Journal, supported by the author's informative and detailed
commentary, provide a fascinating contemporary insight into a
subject that lay at the heart of the economic and social
development of Georgian England.
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