A History of Inland Transport and Communication in England. Edwin A. Pratt
communities dwelling on the banks of navigable rivers, and thus possessing a ready means of communication at all times with others having a like advantage, attained to a higher degree of culture, refinement and social standing than people in localities where, remote from any river or passable highway, they were shut off by bad roads from all intercourse with their fellow-men for, at least, the whole of the winter months.
In C. H. Pearson's "Historical Maps of England During the first Thirteen Centuries" there is abundant evidence of the way in which towns and trading centres in Britain grew up along the course of navigable rivers, while the country at any distance therefrom remained unoccupied, however important the places that may be found there to-day. On the map of Saxon England, for instance, mention is made of Gleaweceaster (Gloucester; spelling from "Saxon Chronicle"), Teodekesberie (Tewkesbury; "Domesday"), Brycgnorth (Bridgnorth; "Saxon Chronicle"), and Scrobbesbyrig (Shrewsbury; "Saxon Chronicle"), but no one can doubt that these places attained to their early importance mainly because of their situation on the river Severn. Other typical inland cities or towns include London and Oxford on the Thames; Ware on the Lea; Rochester on the Medway; Peterborough on the Nen; Lincoln on the Witham; York on the Ouse; Doncaster on the Don; Cambridge on the Cam; Norwich on the Yare; Colchester on the Colne; Ludlow on the Terne; Exeter on the Exe; Winchester on the Ouse (Sussex); Hereford on the Wye; Chester on the Dee; Caerleon (Isca) on the Usk; and so on with many other places, the location of which alongside a river must doubtless have been due, in part, it may be, to the convenience of water supply, and in part, also, to the greater fertility of the river valley, but more especially to the facility offered by the water highway for transport when other highways were either lacking or far less convenient.
Adam Smith, in his "Wealth of Nations" (Book I., chapter xi., pages 20–1), compares the cost of sending goods by road from London to Edinburgh with that of forwarding them by sea, and adds:—
"Since such are the advantages of water carriage it is natural that the first improvements of art and industry should be made where that conveniency opens the whole world for a market to the produce of every sort of labour, and that they should always be much later in extending themselves into the inland parts of the country. The inland parts of the country can for a long time have no other market for the greater part of their goods but the country which lies round about them, and separates them from the sea coast and the great navigable rivers. The extent of their market, therefore, must for a long time be in proportion to the riches and populousness of that country, and consequently their improvement must always be posterior to the improvement of that country. In our North American colonies the plantations have constantly followed either the sea coast or the banks of the navigable rivers, and have scarce anywhere extended themselves to any considerable distance from both."
On the Continent of Europe the location of the chief inland centres of trade, commerce, and industry was no less decided by the convenience of transport afforded by the great navigable rivers, as shown (to give two examples only) by Augsburg on the Danube and Cologne on the Rhine.
In Britain there were found to be advantages in having a port, not at the mouth of a river, but as far inland as the vessels employed could go. One of these advantages lay in the fact that, the further inland the river-port, the greater was the protection against the Danish or Norwegian pirates who, at one time, infested the seas around our shores; but the main reasons for the preference are somewhat quaintly expressed by "R. S.," in a pamphlet, published in 1675, entitled "Avona; or a Transient View of the Benefit of making Rivers of this Kingdom Available. Occasioned by observing the Scituation of the City of Salisbury, upon the Avon, and the Consequence of opening that River to that City." The writer says:—
"There is more advantage to those places, which, being seated far within the Land (as this[19] is), do enjoy the benefit of Commerce by Sea, by some Navigable River, than to those Port-Towns which are seated in some Creeke or Bay only, and are (as I may call it) Land-lock'd, having no passage up into the Land but by Carriages, as we see in Poole and Lynn, in Dorset, and in a number of other Port-Towns of like Scituation in other places quite round the Island: For such places, though the Sea brings in commodities to them, yet they can neither without great charge convey those commodities higher up into the Land, nor, without the like charge, receive the Innland commodities to export again: Whereas, Cities seated upon navigable Rivers far within the Land look like some Noble Exchange of Nature's own designing; where the Native and the Forreigner may immediately meet, and put off to each other the particular commodities of the growth of their own Countreys; the Native (as a Merchant) receiving the Forreign Goods at first hand, and exchanging his own for them at the very place where they are made, or grow; or, at most, going no further to it, than to his ordinary Market."
Thus the ideal river-ports were those that were situated, not only a good distance inland, but in close connection with a Roman or other road along which commerce could be readily brought or distributed, the land journey being reduced to the smallest and most convenient proportions. The advantage was still greater where the small sea-going vessels could be carried by a tidal stream right up to the town to which their cargo was consigned.
As against these advantages, however, there was the disadvantage that, the further inland the river-port, the greater was the risk that access to it might become impracticable either through the formation of shallows in the river-bed or because the larger build of vessels in later years could not pass where the smaller and more primitive type of ship of earlier days had gone without difficulty.
From one or other of these causes many English rivers on which considerable traffic formerly passed have dwindled in importance, even if they have not ceased to be navigable at all; and many inland places that once flourished as river, or even as "sea"-ports, would to-day hardly be regarded in that light at all, as shown, for example, by the fate of Lewes on the Sussex Ouse, Deeping on the Welland, Cambridge on the Cam, Ely on the Ouse, West Dean on the Cuckmere, and Bawtry on the Idle. York and Doncaster, though situated so far inland, once considered themselves seaports because of their river connection with the coast, so that, as told by the Rev. W. Denton, in "England in the Fifteenth Century," they claimed and exercised the right of sharing in "wrecks at sea" as though they stood on the seaboard instead of high up the course of the Ouse or the Don.
The Romans not only supplemented their road transport by river transport but they sought to improve the latter by the construction of river embankments. In the case of the Trent and the Witham they even cut a canal—the Fossdyke—in order to establish direct communication between them. Just, however, as road-making became a lost art here on their departure from Britain, so did an interval of a thousand years elapse before there was any material attempt to follow their example in effecting improvements in river navigation. The initial advantage, therefore, lay with towns located on rivers which were naturally navigable and remained navigable both for a considerable extent and for a considerable period, without need of amendment; though river navigation, as a whole, did not attain to its highest development until, as will be shown in the chapter that follows, much had been done, especially in connection with streams not naturally navigable, to overcome the various impediments or difficulties to effective transport.
All the same, the part that English navigable rivers, great or small, have played in the social and economic progress of the country has been one of undeniable magnitude and importance, and offers many points of general interest.
These considerations more especially apply to the river Severn, which, in conjunction with such of its tributaries as the Wye and the Warwickshire Avon, was once the great highway for the trade and traffic, not only of the western counties, but of, also, a considerable area in Wales and the midland and northern counties, enabling the districts it more directly served to attain an early development long before others which were then still struggling with the disadvantages of bad roads, however much they may since have outstripped them in the race for industrial advancement.
The Severn itself was naturally navigable from Welshpool, Montgomeryshire, a distance of 155 miles by a very winding stream to where the river empties itself into the Bristol Channel. This was the greatest length of navigation, unaided by artificial means, of any river in the kingdom. The early Britons passed along it in their coracles, and, as these were supplemented by vessels of an improved type, trade was developed, towns and cities—each a storehouse or an entrepôt for a more or less considerable