Roads and Railways
Summary of
chapter. This chapter deals with the transport system, in
particular the roads and railways. The level of economic development of any
region depends on the quality of its transport system. The construction of good
and well-surfaced roads, and later of railways over the whole of Ireland. In
Ireland as in America it was the railways which opened up the interior.
(i) The
Tertiary Sector
(ii) Roads and Road Travel
(iii) Railways and the Electric Telegraph
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(i) The Tertiary Sector
The
following four chapters deal with the tertiary sector. I deal with the tertiary
sector before the other two because of the immense influence of developments in
this sector on the development of agriculture and industry.
The
tertiary sector is more amorphous than the other two. As first understood it
comprehended those activities that did not directly produce raw materials or
manufactured goods, but assisted in their production and distribution. Such
classically were transport, trade, and financial services. But the sector is
now often taken to include all other economic activities such as personal
services (medicine, education, etc.), remunerated cultural and leisure
activities, and so on. In this section I have included chapters on trade, transport,
and financial services only, and dealt with the others elsewhere as their
economic aspects were of secondary importance.
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(ii) Roads and
Road Travel
Roads,
at all times, provided the principal means for travel and transport. Canals and railways did not displace the
horse, and the number of horses in use in England and America kept on increasing until the First
World War. Horse-drawn traffic was used on roads especially for shorter
journeys to and from railway stations. Roads complemented railways to large
extent though between 1850 and 1900 there was no urgency about maintaining or
developing long distance road routes.
By
a road is meant a passageway with a sufficiently hard and smooth surface and
sufficiently wide to take wheeled-traffic easily. A bridle-path is not a road.
As noted earlier, a pack-horse could carry an eighth of a ton on its back but
could haul two tons on Macadamised roads. Even in England in the last quarter of the eighteenth
century most of the wool used in the woollen-manufacturing districts of Yorkshire was carried on horseback. By
mid-century, with improved roads, stronger horses, and the Scotch cart, it was
feasible to cart farm produce up to fifty miles. An agriculturalist remarked
that good roads and bridges were essential for improved agriculture.
The
Romans had a highly developed system of road construction but they never
occupied Ireland. Accounts of the campaign of William
III in Ireland at the end of the seventeenth century showed that
his army with its guns and wagons had to confine its advance to the few poor,
narrow roads that existed. In the eighteenth century the art of proper
construction was re-discovered, notably by Telford and MacAdam.
Roads were well drained at the sides to keep them dry, and were provided
with a firmly compacted surface. Easy gradients were provided so that horses
could easily haul loads. Sharp turns were avoided and obstructions jutting into
the highway were removed. Bridges or paved fords were provided. The improvement
of Irish roads began with the opening of a 28 mile toll-road from
Dublin to Kilcullen in co. Kildare in 1729.
Carts, wagons, and coaches however could not proceed on these roads faster than
at a walking pace.
In
the Middle Ages in Ireland, as in England, the upkeep but not the construction
of roads was a duty imposed on parish vestries. In Ireland, in the eighteenth century the
construction and maintenance of roads were transferred to the
county Grand Juries. Any gentleman of the county might present
to the Grand Jury proposals for the construction of this road or that at public
expense. Fiscal control by the Juries was minimal and there is little doubt
that the system was abused. But the system also produced good results, and when
Arthur Young travelled in Ireland in the last quarter of the eighteenth
century he considered that in Irish counties the roads were better than in
English counties where each piece of road was the responsibility of the
parishes. There was an obvious drawback to the system. Roadmaking was not
co-ordinated between the counties, and most Irish counties saw little profit in
improving roads for the convenience of people from other counties travelling to
Dublin. Still, with some patience it was
possible in 1800 to travel by coach to all the county or assize towns in Ireland.
For
longer roads speculators could apply for an Act of Parliament to improve and
maintain a road on the turnpike or tollbooth system between two towns or
cities, and there were many Turnpike Acts passed in Ireland in the eighteenth century. The owners
of the turnpike rights could operate stagecoaches or charge for the use of
their road by other coach operators. Regular but slow coach services were
introduced between Dublin and the principal towns of Leinster and even ran to Belfast and Limerick. Most of the tollroads were
unprofitable. The roads remained poor in quality until the Irish Post Office
determined to follow the example of the British Post Office and introduce fast
stagecoaches with galloping horses on improved roads in place of the postboys
on horseback.
In
1788 the Irish Post Office agreed terms with a Scottish contractor named John
Anderson. He secured a turnpike monopoly of the road between Dublin and Limerick, improved the road, procured horses
and coaches, and began the mail coach service, the first in Ireland in 1790. Tests resulted in broken
wheels and axles. Because the new mail contractors had to improve and maintain
the roads their charges were higher than those of the former contractors.
Anderson's example was soon followed by other
mail-contractors. The quality of the Irish roads, and consequently the speed of
the coaches, never quite reached the standards of England, and at first, to get the service
started, the Post Office set quite low standards. In the year 1800 the
Dublin to Cork coach was still making two overnight
stops, one in Kilkenny and one in Fermoy, but by 1810 the journeys to
Cork and Limerick were being made non-stop in under twenty four hours. (Before 1790 the journey from
Cork to Dublin might take three or four days, or even
a week, and a journey by sea was often easier and
quicker.) By 1815 the Belfast to Dublin coach on a route of over a hundred
miles was achieving an end-to-end speed of eight miles an hour. The skill of
the coachmen must have been impressive. The candle or oil lamps carried by the
coach served to indicate the presence of the coach to others, not to illuminate
the road ahead. On the mail routes average coach speeds end-to-end were between
four and five miles an hour. The British Post Office contractors succeeded in
getting an average speed of seven and a half miles per hour over 38 hours on
the run from London to Holyhead on the Welsh coast.
In
the 1820's the Irish Government, seeing the advantages roadbuilding had brought
to the Highlands of Scotland began to construct roads in places where
county Grand Juries were unable to afford them. In some
cases long-term loans were given to the counties, but in Mayo the Government
paid nine tenths of the cost. The engineer Alexander Nimmo was in charge of
construction in the West and South. His first road was built into Iveragh, in
Co. Kerry, and both he and Daniel O Connell described the prosperity he brought
to the area. The roads he built into the western parts of Galway and Mayo were less successful in
developing the region, and commercial agriculture did not properly develop
until the coming of the railways.
From
the end of the eighteenth century the authorities in cities, towns, and
liberties, following the example of English towns, began to pave the streets
with granite setts, and reserve raised pavements for pedestrians. The setts
were of a hard stone, shaped like a brick, and set on their ends firmly in
sand.
The
development of another road must be mentioned, though it was in Britain, for it was closely connected with
Irish interests and was pushed forward chiefly by an Irish MP, Sir Henry
Parnell. This was the Holyhead Road. It was the first trunk road developed
in the British
Isles since
the time of the Romans.
In
the eighteenth century the route from London to Ireland largely followed the Roman road from
London to the legionary camp at
Chester, and Parkgate
on the estuary of the Dee
was the sailing point for Ireland. Later in the century a port was developed
at Holyhead, on the extremity of the Welsh coast and it was reached from
Chester by a wild and precipitous route along
the seacoast. The estuary of the Conway river and the
Menai Straits had to be crossed by ferry. Early in the nineteenth century the
English Post Office switched to a shorter route through Shrewsbury and Capel Curig in the centre of north
Wales. One problem was that along large
stretches tolls were insufficient to cover maintenance costs. Another was that,
especially in southern England, the parish authorities would not
bother to maintain the road. Sir Henry Parnell year after year chaired
parliamentary committees on the subject and gradually overcame all obstacles.
Thomas Telford was commissioned to survey the route, repair or reconstruct the
road, and build bridges over the Conway estuary and Menai Straits. For the Straits Telford adopted the recently invented suspension
principle because the Admiralty required that the bridge be high enough for a
ship-of-the-line to pass under it at full tide. Telford and Sir Henry were present at the
cutting of the first sod at the bridge in 1819 and at the opening ceremony in
1826. Telford's marvellous bridge continues in use,
and the Holyhead Road is now the A5.
Coach
operators had to supply their own coaches and horses, unlike in England where local innkeepers provided the
changes of horses. Therefore in Ireland the contractor had to supply road
agents at each stage, responsible for receipts, for horses, fodder, and
stables. Contracts to carry the mails were given for seven years at a time. If
the contractor did not own the turnpike rights he, and not the Post Office, had
to pay the tolls. After 1815 Peter Purcell replaced John Anderson as the
leading Irish coaching contractor.
Most
of the vehicles, apart from stagecoaches, on Irish roads at the beginning of
the century were jingles, two-wheeled sprung carts with a cover, carrying six
to eight persons. They were privately owned and plied on all roads not covered
by stagecoaches. Around 1830 it was estimated that there were several hundred
jingle-car owners plying for hire between Dublin and Kingstown. Gradually the jungle was replaced by
the sidecar or long car, on which the passengers sat back-to-back facing
towards the sides. The only obvious advantage seems to have been that if an
accident threatened the passengers could jump clear. A four-wheeled 'omnibus'
began running in London in 1830 but the Irish car owners managed to keep
it out of their cities until after mid-century. If no regular coach or car
service was available it was usually possible to hire a chaise (two-seater
coach) if its owner was willing to let the traveller have it. After 1815 an
Italian immigrant named Charles Bianconi established a popular widespread
network of sidecar routes between towns in Munster and Connaught not connected by stagecoaches. He was
a Catholic and a nationalist so his name was better remembered.
The
bicycle or velocipede appeared on Irish roads as early as 1819 but cycling
could never become comfortable or popular until after the art of vulcanising
rubber was discovered about mid-century. Steam enthusiasts like Richard Gurney
in England and Sir James Anderson (son of John) experimented
with steam cars. The advocates of railways and other interests succeeded in
getting the Road Traffic Act (1831) passed which held up the development of
road transport for fifty years. (It was argued that a virtual monopoly of
transport was required by a railway to recover the high initial costs in a
reasonable time. It was also claimed that heavy, unsprung or badly-sprung steam
lorries or trucks with iron wheels would destroy road surfaces
and bridges. On the other hand, the bridges had to be strengthened eventually,
and wide iron wheels would probably have compacted the
roads better.)
In
the eighteenth century and up to the beginning of the century Irish hotels had
a very poor reputation. The Belfast
Newsletter (2 March 1802) described them as being filthy and unswept, the
rooms smelly, the furniture broken, the curtains ragged and unwashed, fleas
abounding, knives blunt and greasy, spoons sticky, and glasses dirty. The filth
in the yards and stables was indescribable. The guests were usually drunken,
dirty, and sick. Food and prices were no worse than in England, and the red wines were better. Sir
Jonah Barrington described the food at that time as 'a composition of
slovenliness, bad meat, worse cooking, and few vegetables (save the royal Irish
potato), but plenty of fine eggs, smoked bacon, often excellent chickens...They
generally had excellent claret.'
By
mid-century the best hotels in Dublin, that of Mr Gresham and the Shelburne
especially, were considered the equal of any hotels in the world. The major
hotels were the starting and stopping places for the coaches, and the Queen's
Arms Royal Hibernian in Dawson St. Dublin, was a favourite with coaching
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(iii) Railways
and the Electric Telegraph
This
deals chiefly with the construction of the railways for they had no appreciable
effect on the economy before mid-century.
Interest
in railways originated in Ireland at the same time as it did in England. The first railway laid down in Ireland was for the building of the harbour at
Howth in 1807. A similar line was laid down between the quarries at Dalkey and
the new harbour at Dunleary in 1817. Various experiments were being undertaken
in England at this time to construct a small light steam
engine on wheels that could haul trucks or carriages along the rails and George
Stephenson's Locomotion No.1 on the Stockton and Darlington line in 1825 is generally considered
the first really successful railway engine. The first commercial passenger line
was the Liverpool to Manchester Railway opened in 1830.
Petitions
were presented to Parliament in 1825 for the construction of lines between
Dublin and Kingstown and Dublin and Belfast. Many in Ireland, including Daniel O Connell felt that Ireland should develop it canals first. In
1831 construction on the first line, that of the Dublin and Kingstown Railway began. Alexander
Nimmo had drawn the plans, but he died, and the Wexford engineer, Charles
Vignoles, took his place. Thomas Dargan of Carlow was chief contractor.
Locomotives were ordered from various firms in England, and the English 'standard gauge'
(with track four feet eight and a half inches apart) was adopted. The rails
were of wrought iron set in cast iron shoes fastened to granite blocks. It was
several years before it was discovered that wooden sleepers placed transversely
gave a greater springiness and lessened damage to wheels and tracks. At first
engines were unreliable, the firetubes particularly being liable to burn out,
so each company kept several engines in reserve.
Ireland had no Board of Trade to approve
railways and supervise their running, so a Board of Railway Commissioners was
appointed by the Lord Lieutenant for these purposes. They had to inspect all
new lines and give a certificate saying that the permanent works and running
arrangements were safe for the transport of passengers. The story is often
told, and may even be true, that Col. Pasley, the chief of the commissioners,
settled the question of the railway gauge in Ireland by taking the three different gauges
on the first three lines in operation, adding them together and dividing by
three. The result was an Irish gauge of 5 feet 3 inches. Another question to be
settled was whether Ireland should have a centrally-planned system
of railways as in Belgium or whether free competition should
decide. The Railway Commissioners set up
a wide-ranging enquiry, and its Report favoured a planned system, with no
railways where there were already canals.
There was strong objections to this Report, and
the Government concluded that investors should have free choice. When the
'railway mania' finally reached Ireland in the 1840's many competing schemes
were proposed over the same or slightly different routes. The claims were
sorted out and the railways built, and nearly all of them were moderately
profitable in the second half of the century.
The
building of the railways was immensely helped by the re-organisation of the
banking system that had allowed joint-stock banks. Irish firms using Irish
labour carried out the works, only the locomotives having initially to be
imported.
The
directors of the Dublin and Kingstown Railway tried to leapfrog over
their rivals by introducing the 'atmospheric principle' for the extension of
their line to Dalkey. In this system no engines were used on the track, which
consequently could be made lighter and more cheaply. The absence of smoke made
for cleanliness especially within stations. Steam boilers were constructed at
intervals along the track, and a pipe with a slit in the top was positioned
alongside the track. From the leading carriage an arm with a piston at its end
reached down to the pipe. The piston was drawn along the pipe by using steam
pumps to exhaust the atmosphere from the pipe. A flexible leather strip ran
along the top of the pipe to keep it sealed before and after the passage of the
piston. The system actually worked successfully in Ireland, but was soon abandoned elsewhere. The
Dalkey Extension was converted to normal locomotives in 1854 (Hadfield).
Along with the railways, and along the railways came the electric
telegraph. Semaphore telegraphs had been erected in Ireland during the War, but had been
abandoned. (The principle was maintained in railway signals). Signalling by
means of an electric current passed along wires had been developed by Charles
Wheatstone in the 1830's, but later the simpler system of Samuel Morse was
adopted. The telegraph could be used by railways to send information about the
movements of trains, but from the start it was also used for commercial
purposes, to give information regarding the prices of shares or commodities in
London.
By
1848 the wires had reached Holyhead, and preparations were made for laying a
cable under the Irish
Sea. Irish
railways rushed to erect telegraphic lines along their tracks as they were
being built. Not only would they help in managing the line, but also they would
be an additional source of revenue. There were also two particular prizes to be
aimed at. It was expected that a transatlantic liner terminal would have to be
set up somewhere along the west coast of Ireland, and the Midland Great Western
Railway whose line ran from Dublin to Galway hoped to get a contract for
transmitting the first messages from the ships as they berthed. More
immediately, it was not certain which route would be adopted for the cable
under the Irish
Sea. The
Belfast and County Down
Railway put up wires along its tracks to Donaghadee on the coast of Co. Down, hoping the cable would come ashore
there.
The
first electric telegraph in Ireland to operate was that on the Dalkey
Extension, as it was necessary to send a message to the other end whenever a
train was dispatched. The undersea cable from Holyhead reached Kingstown, and the first message was passed
under the Irish
Sea on 1
June 1852. The
Dublin Evening Post noted that
without it businessmen in Dublin would be twenty four hours behind the
markets in London. Only fifty years earlier they could have been
weeks behind. With the telegraph came the telegram that was to remain the
medium for swift communication for another fifty years.
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