History of Telford's Road
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At the Beginning of the 19th Century, with a booming economy, the United Kingdom was seeing major investment in its transport infrastructure. Generally speaking this was through the dubious good works of the Turnpike Trusts. However, in the remote Highlands such organisations had little or no hope of ever turning the all-important profit.
As a result, the government intervened and commissioned Thomas Telford to survey and consult on improvements and new routes, including for the Caledonian Canal. There were many reasons behind this decision, not least the need to stem emigration and provide work for the local men. Supporters included many of the Highland Landlords, the Fisheries Commission and the Military. It was 1803 when Telford himself crossed Rannoch Moor to survey General Caulfeild's Road, and found that it was already falling into disrepair. His main principles as an engineer, throughout the Highlands, were to take the gentlest gradients, with substantial bridges and box culverts in place of cobbled fords. This was to ease the passage of Carriages and other wheeled traffic. The surface was also to be dressed with 'a good depth' - records suggest 30-40cm (12-15 inches) - of gravel to prevent damage to the hooves of the livestock on their way south to market.
The construction was funded by a novel set of methods, with fifty percent coming from the Government. The remainder was to be provided by the landlords and communities that the roads would serve, although the complexities of Scottish law and tenure almost made such a proposition impossible. An Edinburgh Lawyer named Hope, who spent twenty five years working alongside Telford's team, eventually created ways round these problems. Much of the money came from an early council tax levied by the County Councils for the sole purpose of raising money for the roads. Land was deemed to be donated by landlords, in return for the benefit of better communications that the road would provide.
In the early stages of construction, Telford's workforce were housed in makeshift tented villages, much as the soldiers had been fifty years earlier. However, as work progressed and particularly after the end of the Napoleonic Wars, Caravans were provided, sleeping up to 16 men in bunks. These facilities were still in use at the end of the century for the maintenance gangs who repaired the route, although with the advent of first steam and then motorised vehicles the tradition of the workmen sleeping on-site slowly died out.
Despite being replaced in 1933, Telford's road still exhibits many of its original features as it continues in use for both Estate vehicles and as the long-distance path, the West Highland Way (WHW). The bridges are varied in both size and style, while the carriageway is still well drained and approximately 5-6 metres (15-18 ft) across.
The maintenance and construction of former Military Roads came under a different process to new road construction, and so work was able to get under way fairly quickly. I have not, as yet, been able to find out when the Rannoch Moor road was rebuilt, but suggest that it was one of the first, simply to enable traffic to travel further north.
However, in 1811 Telford was arranging the surveying for a supplementary drovers' route across the moor, running from Glen Spean along the shores of Loch Treig, via Loch Ossian (as the Railway ran 80 years later) and so to Killin. Due to the wide spectrum of interested parties (Land owners, Drovers and farmers from Lewis and Caithness to Perth and Falkirk), the organisation required to meet all of their requirements and raise the capital became impossible and the plan was abandoned. When considering the problems that the railway found, it is perhaps just as well that such a road was never built, as the construction and upkeep would have required a bottomless pit of money in those early years.
