Talk on footpaths
THE February meeting of the Woodhouse and Woodhouse Eaves Local History Group was entitled ‘Ancient Footpaths, Bridleways and Green Lanes’.
This interesting talk was given by Vicky Allen, president and networks officer of the Leicestershire & Rutland Bridleways Association and a Member of the Leicestershire Local Access Forum’s Unrecorded Ways Research Group.
From Roman times water transport by river and sea was the easiest and quickest way of moving people and goods e.g Nottingham to Leicester using the rivers Trent and Soar. However, getting to and from water required roads.
Roman Roads survived into the post-conquest era and became the royal roads of England, providing direct and relatively easy travel for administrators and Kings. An example was King Richard 11 who rode down Watling Street to Westminster overnight with just one change of horse.
Early transport of goods would be by pack horse, donkey or mule – often tied together head to tail in strings of 20 or more animals. Goods also went by ox carts but these were heavy and slow.
Droving of cattle was a major use of early roads and the wide verges on the local Wolds from the Durham Ox pub on the Fosse Way to Loughborough Market give a clue to an old droving route. The rights of ‘drift’ or droving can be recorded on a modern bridleway and indicate that the right to drive animals is included in the rights for ‘all-purpose’ public roads.
Pre-1600, roads were in a poor condition and Leicestershire suffered from being largely on the Midlands clay belt (as am sure many local gardeners can agree!) If routes had any form of stone cover, these would be from local fields and only used in really wet spots. Road paving was unusual and even in 1571 required an Act of Parliament for the paving of a street in Aldgate, London.
In 1593, the Statute Mile was adopted of 1,760 yards so that distances could be measured accurately. Parishes were responsible for road repairs and Mary Tudor required 4 days work on roads from parishioners per year, increased to 6 days by Elizabeth 1.
The last journey of Mary Tudor from Chartley, in Staffordshire to Fotheringhay near Stamford (where she was later executed) passed through Leicester and was mainly on bridleways through empty countryside rather than roads, an important choice when escorting an important political prisoner.
The 17th century and Civil War saw more travellers but not much improvement of the roads. There is an early route map from London to Derby through Charnwood from John Ogilby’s Britannia dated 1675 in a format for riders and coachmen showing the route as a single line. Older readers might recall the same format was used by the AA and RAC in the 1950’s.
William 111 was also a traveller and in 1695 came from Belton House, near Grantham to Bradgate House crossing the brook at Anstey hence ‘King William’s Bridge.
The 18th century was a time of improvements and mapping was started by the military who needed to know the best routes for their heavy guns – the Ordnance which is the origin of the ‘Ordnance Survey’.
In 1751. Turnpike roads came to Leicestershire from London and by 1725 through to Derby via Loughborough. Engineers such as McAdam and Telford developed better ways of constructing a road and many of these are still with us today.
An amusing illustration was of a map produced in 1825 by C&J Greenwood of the County of Leicester for the Nobility, Clergy and Gentry of the County.
By the 1820’s Ordnance Survey maps were being sold to the public to support the peacetime cost of surveying and the first for Leicestershire was published in 1824.
The 19th century was a time of rapid development with steam engines, canals and by the end motor vehicles. In 1850, John Flower founded the Leicestershire Footpaths Association (LFA) and makes this the oldest campaigning group in the world. We owe LFA a debt for the completeness of Leicestershire’s Definitive Map of Footpaths and Bridleways in Charnwood Forest published in 1904.
In the 20th century, increased pressure had an impact on the countryside and ‘footpaths, bridleways and greenlanes’ and various Acts of Parliament have been passed in 1932, 1948, 1968, 1991, 2000 and 2006 – this last having a 2026 cut-off for claiming unextinguished historic rights.
Vicky ended her talk by giving her personal views on what is required to educate the public about the countryside, how it works, what to look for and how to behave towards each other.