Page 60 - Hindsight Issue 26 April 2020

HeRItAge
Roade Cutting in 1839. A major piece of engineering, it had taken nearly five years to construct
the advantage which the railways bestowed upon the national economy was evident thereafter, with thousands of miles of lines being subsequently constructed. During the1870s the London and north Western Railway doubled the original London & Birmingham Railway Company lines from London, reaching Roade in 1877. over the following five years the cutting was widened and deepened to accommodate lines direct to the county town of northampton. these excavations heralded the return of the railway navvies. special Constables were once again required to maintain order as the community again suffered the torments which accompanied these journeymen. John Francis in his History of the English Railways wrote:
‘The dread of such men as they spread throughout the rural community was striking. They injured everything they approached, from their huts to the parts of the railway they were working on, over corn and grass they tore down embankments, injured young plantations, made gaps in hedges with no regard to damage of the property invaded. Game disappeared from the most sacred preserves, game keepers were defied, and the country gentlemen, who had imprisoned country rustics by the dozen for violating the law, shrank in despair at the railway navigator. They defied the law, broke open prisons, released their comrades and slew policemen.’
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