Abstract
Eighteenth-century English roads have long been presented as so poor as to have been almost impassable, and historians have pointed to the innovations of those gravelly heroes, Metcalfe, Telford, and Macadam at the end of the century as the first sources of qualitative improvement. In examining elements of the changing transport system which could account for an Industrial Revolution, they naturally tended to look to new modes of travel, the canal and the railway, and in consequence to relegate roads to a supportive or complementary role in the process of change. Turnpike roads were thus disregarded as true innovations; goods carriage by road seen as prohibitively expensive; stage-coaches noted but under-valued; and the total impact of changes in road transport not fully understood.
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