Banffshire Field Club Transactions 1883-1887
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Transactions OF THE BANFFSHIRE FIELD CLUB. THE STRATHMARTINE BanffshireTRUST Field Club The support of The Strathmartine Trust toward this publication is gratefully acknowledged. www.banffshirefieldclub.org.uk 41 WEDNESDAY, MARCH 23, 1887. MEETING AT BANFF. THE monthly meeting of the Banffshire Field Club was held on the evening of Wednesday—Mr Ramsay in the chair. After routine business, and election of mem. bers, a paper was read by Mr Runcieman, Auchmill, on • Old Roads.' Mr Runcieman's paper was as follows :— OLD ROADS. Nothing more clearly shows the social and material progress of a country than the progress of the means of transport and locomotion. In the olden time, little communication existed between different parts of the country. Communities lived and died much within their own immediate circle. They had few or no material wants beyond what the natural produce of the soil sup- plied. Competent authority informs us that the com- mon food of the country people for a large part of last century ' was oatmeal, milk, and vegetables, chiefly red cabbage in winter, and colworts in spring and summer,* flesh never being seen in the houses of the common farmers except on great occasions, and that only within a few miles of a town. They brewed their own ale— one would think, if properly used, not the least nourish- ing part of their dietary—if it be true, as asserted by a writer of the first quarter of last century, that the common people boozed and got glorious on it when what seemed fit occasion, public or private, offered. Their shoes were made of leather tanned by themselves, and their hodden grey they manufactured from their own wool. Agricultural improvement had not begun, rents for most part were paid in kind and service, and very little money circulated in the community. Any- thing like heavy traffic Was very small. Even between Edinburgh and Glasgow, so late as 1760, the whole traffic was carried by ten or twelve pack horses going and returning once a week. In these circumstances, there was little or no inducement to road improve- Banffshirement. Roads were roads onl y Fieldin name, the bes t Club of them being mere tracks made by the hoofs of the horses and cattle that traversed them. Their chief merit was the direct course they invariably pursued, generally taking high ground and diverging only to escape soft boggie places. No better proof of the 42 wretched state of the roads and means of transport conld be had than what is recorded as having been the case during what is known as the ' bad years' at the close of the 17th century, that while in the earlier districts of Aberdeenshire there was bread enough and to spare, in the later men were actually dying for want. Writing of that time the minister of Turriff says of his parishioners' that most of them reduced to misery had not the money to purchase or the means to carry victual from the Formartine and Buchan district,' where we are told seed and bread abounded. Till 1719 it would appear no organised provision existed for mending the roads. In that year an Act was passed empowering the Commissioners of Supply to call npon every honseholder to give six days' work in the year towards the making and maintenance of the roads. Up till this time, and for a considerable time after, wheeled vehicles were scarcely known. The state of the roads admitted only of transport or personal touring on foot or horse back, the curracks and crooksaddle for goods, the saddle and pad for travelling. Gentlemen and their wives, as indicated by the saddle and pad, generally travelled on the same horse, a mode of travelling not necessarily so sociable as one might suppose, if the story I have heard of a gentleman from Insch and his wife be worthy of credence. They had intimated a visit to a friend in Inverurie, and setting out in this fashion .the gentleman duly arrived, bnt minua his better half. On being asked why he had not brought her with him, looked over his shoulder saying—' Isn't she there ?' Finding she was not, exclaimed—* Preserve me, it had been her cried clyte at Auld Rain.' Notwithstanding the Act of 1719, empowering the Commissioners of Supply to enforce statute labour for the maintenance of the roads, and though the following year, after ' due advertisement at the several Paroch Churches,' the Aberdeen county gentlemen met, and having read the Act of Parliament, 1719, relative to highways and bridges within the said county, unani- mously agreed that ' the whole highways and bridges should be repaired, amended, and built with all con- venient diligence;' very little improvement would seem to have taken place in the roads for a considerable time. The statute labour was very reluctantly given. The Commissioners, however, began more rigorously to enforce it, calling it out, by employing the precentors in the Parish Churches to read a notice from the Lectern before the blessing was pronounced, or the bellman to • scry' at the kirk door as the people ' scailt' to take Banffshirenotice that their service were needeFieldd at a certain plac eClub on such a day to work under some J.P.'s orders on the roads. They also appointed persons in each parish as overseers to look after the roads, and, in 1721, appointed • Al. Jaffray of Kingswells general surveyor of all the highways, causeways, and bridges within the county of Aberdeen, who is to ride and run the same and make 43 report what bridges or causeways may be necessary to be built or repaired within the county. His salary was 200 merksf with half-a-crown of riding charges for each day he has served or shall serve the shire.' They further intreated the ministers to' prompt all concerned to forward so good a work/ But the people did not see why the roads that were good enough for their fathers were not good enough for them. Thev hated and scamped the statute labour, and this ultimately led to its being commuted for a payment of 3d. a day. For the hired roadman 9d. a day was given; thus two days voluntary labour was considered equal to six of invol- untary. For all this the ordinary roads continued to be narrow unmetalled tracks, the only improvement, if it could be so called, being that in some cases ditches were cut along the sides, and what came out of them thrown on the road. In wet weather, this speedily became a muddy slough, rendering the road almost im- passable. In 1720, Sir Archibald Grant of Monymusk complains • I could not in Chariote get my wife from Aberdeen to Monymusk.' Thirty years later so little improvement had taken place that at a county meeting in June 1751 • Meldrum * produced a letter 4 from my Lady Dowager of Forbes, representing that the public road 'twixt Inverury and Castle Forbes is quite im- passable in several parts thereof, particularly that part twixt Pittodery's dykes and Overhall, which is dangerous to pass, especially with wheel carriages, and that lately her Ladyship's chaise had stuck there and broke the graith; and therefore craving the Commissioners to allow her a share of the highway money, and power to call out the country people to give their assistance, which, being considered, the meeting thought the re- quest of my Lady Forbes just and reasonable,' and ordered accordingly. It had been further represented to the Commissioners that many of the roads were * so narrow they will not permit wheel carriages to pass by one another, or even loaded horses with curracks and creels.* Taking this into consideration, the Commissioners, in 1756, passed an act enjoining all public highways to be made ' 20 feet in breadth, and where broader they are to be kept so.' The roads were directed to be raised in the middle, so as water might run off them. Tenants who had arable lands adjacent to the public roads were enjoined to make * head rigs next to the highway,' and to cease the abuse that prevailed of ploughing across the roads. This act of the Aberdeenshire Commis- sioners, with the formation, in 1759, of eight separate Banffshireroad districts corresponding t o Fieldthe eight presbyteries ,Club may be said to be the starting point of better roads in Aberdeenshire, though some impetus in improvement had been given shortly before by the Government, after the rebellion, beginning to construct roads and bridges for wheeled vehicles, having a hard bottom of stones. The first of these lines of 44 road made by the military was the road from Brechin by Fettercairn, the Cairn o' Mount, Potarch Bridge, Kincardine O'Neil, Lumphanan, Alford, Tullynessle, Clatt, Kinnethmont, Gartly to Huntly (Cairney, Birkenburn to Keith), made about 1746. The next, named after Gen. Wade, from the Spittal of Glenshee, Corgarff, and Tomintoul to the Spey, near Grantown, finished in 1754. About this time, also, our own old or King's road from Banff to Aberdeen was reconstructed, mostly on the line of the old currack road, as were most of the main lines of road, to suit the .wheel age, which began to develop about the middle of the century, and these continued to be the main roads till superseded by the turnpikes, which put Rome of them out of existence altogether. Every year is diminishing the number of individuals who know anything of these old out-of-existence roads, and our wish is, in this paper, to delineate some of them before they are altogether forgotten and lost sight of.