BoAr:Paterson'sRoads

BoAr:Paterson’sRoads

Latest edit 10 Sep 2007

The Bourne Archive

Paterson’s Roads

Paterson’s Roads was an eighteenth to nineteenth century road book listing features along the roads of Britain so that travellers could have an idea of what they were seeing, what lay ahead and what distances were involved. Before the publication of the original Ordnance survey maps in the first half of the nineteenth century, such a book was generally the best source for planning a journey. Broadly speaking, their period of use paralleled that of the turnpike roads in Britain.¹

There had been road books before Paterson’s but over several editions, he refined his presentation and information so that it became a clear and concise source giving mileages from the two ends of the road in question, to the successive townships, bridges, side roads (with distances to places along them), boundary crossings, toll gates and so on. The townships were briefly summarised and gentlemen’s residences noted.

Daniel Paterson was born in 1738 and made a career in the British Army. In 1798 he rose to the rank of lieutenant-colonel. He had begun publication of his book in 1771, when the great period of turnpike trusts was fifteen or tweny years old and the change in road quality was having an effect on people’s attitudes to travel. By the 1820s, now under the editorship of Edward Mogg, the book had run to eighteen editions. By this time, the one inch to the mile Ordnance Survey map was coming available, county by county, beginning with Lincolnshire and Rutland in 1824. (O1S36) Paterson died in 1826. (DNB Daniel Paterson)

The page layout does not lend itself to reproduction on a web page so the pages of the eighteenth edition, relevant to Bourne are presented here as photographs of the original. In order to speed presentation, they are on separate web pages.

The title page of the copy to hand reads as follows:

PATERSON’S ROADS;

BEING

AN ENTIRELY ORIGINAL AND ACCURATE DESCRIPTION

OF ALL THE

DIRECT AND PRINCIPAL CROSS ROADS

England and Wales,

WITH

PART OF THE ROADS OF SCOTLAND.

THE EIGHTEENTH EDITION.

TO WHICH ARE ADDED

Topographical Sketches of the several Cities, Market Towns, and remarkable Villages;

and Descriptive Accounts of the Principal Seats of the Nobility and Gentry,

the Antiquities, natural Curiosities,

and other Remarkable Objects throughout the Kingdom:

THE WHOLE,

REMODELLED, AUGMENTED, AND IMPROVED,

BY THE ADDITION OF

NUMEROUS NEW ROADS AND NEW ADMEASUREMENTS,

AND ARRANGED UPON

A PLAN AT ONCE NOVEL, CLEAR, AND INTELLIGIBLE,

IS DEDUCED FROM

The latest and best Authorities:

INCLUDING A TABLE OR THE HEIGHTS OF MOUNTAINS FROM THE GRAND TRIGONOMETRICAL

SURVEY OF THE KINGDOM:

ALSO A TABLE OF THE POPULATION, FROM THE CENSUS OF 1821;

TO WHICH IS ANNEXED THE ARRIVAL AND DEPARTURE OF THE MAIL, TOGETHER

WITH THE RATES OF POSTAGE;

AND

AN ENTIRELY NEW SET OF MAPS.

BY EDWARD MOGG.

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, REES, ORME, BROWN, AND GREEN, PATERNOSTER-ROW;

J. M. RICHARDSON, CORNHILL; BALDWIN, CRADOCK AND JOY, PATERNOSTER-ROW;

J. BOOKER, AND RODWELL AND MARTIN, NEW-BOND-STREET; G. B. WHITTAKER,

AVE-MARIA-LANE; J. SHARPE, PICCADILLY; W. REYNOLDS, OXFORD STREET;

SIMPKIN AND MARSHALL, STATIONERS-COURT; AND E. MOGG, GREAT RUSSELL

STREET, COVENT-GARDEN: AND JOHN THOMSON, EDINBURGH.

1826.

Pages 296-297

MEASURED from HICKS’S HALL LONDON TO WHITBY, WITH A BRANCH TO THORNEY. BY LINCOLN, HULL, and SCARBOROUGH.

Hicks’s Hall was the point from which routes northwards from the City of London were measured. It lay 1¼ miles (2km) south of Islington parish church, in St. John Street, near the City boundary, near Smithfield Market. About grid reference TQ317818 (MoggE p.179). The photographs show just the part of the route near Bourne.

Facsimile Figure 1.

The bigger web files such as this one are rather cumbersome in operation.

Pages 398-399 CROSS ROADS.

BOSTON TO WELLINGBOROUGH, THROUGH DONNINGTON,

BOURN, STAMFORD, AND KETTERING.

The alternative route, across Deeping Fen, is on pages 397 and 398.

Facsimile Figure 2.

The bigger web files such as this one are rather cumbersome in operation.

Page 391 CROSS ROADS.

BOURN TO SPALDING.

This is a rare if not unique, example of a road on which Mogg found nothing to say about its surroundings. This itself may be a comment on Bourne and Pinchbeck fens. But the road was very new; the Bourne North Fen Road having been connected to the Pinchbeck fen-edge road at Dovehirne (West Pinchbeck), as a through route, only in 1822. The toll gate symbols indicate the ends of the new section. Notionally, the old road across the fens had passed over the Glen around the site of the later railway bridge but its course was vague and it was bad to the point of non-existence.

Facsimile Figure 3.

Page 400 CROSS ROADS.

BOURN TO COLSTERWORTH.

This road, though turnpiked, had been notoriously bad. During the 1820s, the trust invested much effort in its roads around Bourne, employing J.L.McAdam and probably, labour made available by the agricultural depression.

Facsimile Figure 4.

Footnotes.

1. ↑ Quotation from page 301, the London to Great Grimsby road:-

This road, from Langworth Bridge to Market Rasen, is bad, the one given at page 302 is much to be preferred, though 5½m. farther, on account of its being a Turnpike road.