EIGHTEENTH CENTURY ROADS.

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY ROADS. I have written about the difficulties of land transportation and the importance of Roman roads here and here. John Steele Gordon’s review of Tim Blanning’s THE PURSUIT OF GLORY discusses the improvements in English roads in the eighteenth century. In 1648 the main roads in Europe were still the one built by the Romans. Between 1700 and 1800, the time of a trip from London to Bath was reduced from 50 hours to 16 hours. Blanning says that the greater use of the better roads made the eighteenth century a boom time for highwaymen.