Summon a
mental picture of Dickensian streets, and if you’re like me, images spring to mind of horses clattering
across cobblestones. Actually, whilst cobblestones are an
ancient innovation, Dickens would have been more familiar seeing “granite setts”
on the better London streets.
The ideal road
surface needed to be durable, easily cleaned (all that horse excrement!), non slip, and didn’t turn into a bog when it rained.
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| A street being repaved with granite setts |
As London
grew and expanded rapidly, the search was on for a road surface that could cope
with the traffic. One answer was macadam. St James’s Square in the affluent West
End was the first London road to use macadam. This is a mix of small granite
stones pressed into a prepared surface. Huge, heavy rollers pulled by teams of twelve
men were pulled over the surface, compressing it down. This worked well when
done properly; however, contractors frequently cut corners to increase their
profit margins.
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| Look closely and you'll see these are irregularly shaped granite setts rather than cobbles |
Their cost
cutting dodges included using bigger stones (less effort required to mill them
finer) and giving the artifice of smoothness by covering them with sand. First
heavy rainfall and sand washed away, exposing a hopelessly irregular surface.
Another problem was inadequate rolling flat, which meant the weight of traffic
pushed the gravel to one side creating deep ruts in the road. Perhaps an
altogether less obvious problem, was poorly laid macadam provide ammunition for
the protestors to throw at police at times of disquiet.
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| With thanks to www.expertpaving.com Cobbles are rounder than than rectangular setts |
Master engineer
Thomas Telford, also in the 1820s, came up with the idea of granite sets. These
were stone blocks measuring 11 by 13 inches, and 9 inches deep, set over level
ballast. Even when laid correctly, this surface was too smooth and therefore
slippery for horses. Labourers regularly had to hammer away with chisels to
roughen the surface to give the horses hooves purchase.
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| Granite setts |
But cutting
hard stone to the exact size was an expensive and time-consuming process, and
poorly shaped blocks or offcuts often found their way into the roads, providing
ruts and holes for a horse to trip on.
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| The idea behind hardwood roads |
A strange
solution to the modern mind, but for a while wooden roads seemed the obvious
answer. Wooden blocks were easier to cut than stone, and could be dowelled
together in the factory, and assembled on site like a giant jigsaw puzzle. The
surface was grooved so as to provide grip. Another huge benefit was the wood
muffled sound, and was much less noisy beneath hoof or iron wheel. One contemporary
reports:
“The shopkeepers stat that they can now
hear and speak to their customers…even when their windows were open.”
The residents
of affluent areas clamoured to have this new wonder road surface installed in
their square or road, and by the early 1840s Regent Street, Oxford Street, and
parts of Holborn had wooden roads.
However no
one foresaw the rapid deterioration of a wooden road surface – especially one
in high use. By 1843 they were in such a poor state that on one stretch, in
just four days, 19 horses had slipped and fallen. Indeed, on hills, or in
frosty weather the roads rapidly became impassable to equine traffic (at least
it kept the noise down!)
Roads which
had recently been paved with wood were torn up and resurfaced. Interestingly, a
few wooden roads remained in places where quiet was desirable, such as outside
the Old Bailey and the Central Criminal Court.
.JPG)
So what of
the humble cobble stone? The word “cobble” refers to a rounded stone, of
between 2.5 to 10 inches diameter. And before you ask when the Victorian’s
invented cobblestones – they didn’t! That honour is a much older one and dates
back to the Romans. Their preferred method of building a durable road surface was
to use the lumpen strength and reliability of cobbles.
