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If the situation on the Great Ouse and the Thames is representative of most of the rest of England — and it is likely that it is — it follows that the bulk of the pre-industrial bridge network had been built by the first half of the 13th century. This means that most of the bridges standing in 1750 were on the site of a bridge constructed before 1250. A network of bridges replaced fords and ferries as the main river crossings, and many of these new bridges were on different sites from those of the Roman river crossings. Together with major new centres, they were the focal points of a new road system which was significantly different from the Roman network. By the first half of the 14th century, the new road system can be seen in considerable detail, but it is likely that it had been established centuries earlier.

After more than 500 years of change, when the major river crossings were bridged and a new road system established, there followed almost 500 years of stability. The stock of bridges changed little. The dense pattern of bridges which existed in the 18th century would have been recognisable to Englishmen five centuries earlier. Similarly, the routes established by the time of the Gough Map survived almost unchanged. One of the principal characteristics of the English road system in this period is clear: travellers on major roads could be sure of dry and safe river crossings, provided that the bridges had been kept in repair. It is no exaggeration to say that where a national highway met a river there was invariably a bridge. On secondary roads, bridges were also the norm, except on the downstream sections of rivers, where ferries were common. On minor roads, while bridges across major rivers were unusual, there were numerous bridges over streams and small water courses, as well as countless fords and ferries.

This chapter opens with a consideration of Jacques Derrida’s intersection of the histories of roads and writing as forms of inscription (tracks, traces, or paths, on the landscape and on the page). These shared cultural histories of roads and writing suggest new ways of conceptualizing the study of the medieval road as material object and as difference: just as the road is the imposition of form on matter, so is writing the imposition of form on nature. In the next section, discussion moves to the question of road nomenclature in medieval Britain. Where ‘road’ serves well enough to denote the universal set of modern commuter routes, medieval terminology is more particularized, more in tune with the contours of the material environment. Some caution is thus necessary in treating medieval roads as a ‘system’. The chapter then argues for a consideration of the medieval road less as a physical entity than as a right of passage: as function rather than physical structure. We then turn to consider how the legacy of Roman roads in medieval Britain and the powerful fiction of the king’s four roads served the social imaginary both in law and literature. In the last section, we offer summaries of the individual book chapters of the volume.

This chapter explores the land routes in the Eastern Desert from about 30 B.C.E. until the sixth century C.E. The Romans enhanced the previously existing road networks by refurbishing, enlarging, and extending older Ptolemaic routes and renovating stops and stations along them. The maps, itineraries, and lists of road stations, inns, towns, military garrisons, and cities throughout the empire were likely compiled by individuals of varying abilities on official or unofficial missions over long periods of time. Roman settlements in the Eastern Desert were connected with the road system and cannot be understood apart from it. The elaborate road system with its praesidia and hydreumata, mines, quarries, and other settlements of uncertain function, together with the Red Sea ports, dramatically shows the importance attached to the Eastern Desert and Red Sea coast by the Roman imperial and provincial governments, the military, civilian entrepreneurs, and others.

This chapter provides an overview of the work on the Plan Piloto de la Habana. It focuses on the two elements of the master plan defined by José Luis Sert: dividing the city into sectors and devising a classified road system. The determination of sectors and roads had two prerequisites: fixing the limits of the metropolitan area and an analysis of the land use within those limits. It discusses how the definition of metropolitan limits could be used as the basis for new legislative requirements. It argues that such legislation would stipulate that the city authorities would provide utilities only for repartos by supplying utilities even though they had not been consulted during planning stages.