Another evil custom on the estate had been to permit huts of miserable construction to be erected to the number of several hundreds by the poorest, and in many instances the most profligate, of the population.  They were not regularly entered in the rental account, but had a nominal payment fixed upon them which was paid annually at the court leet.  These cottages were built on the sides of the roads and on the lord’s waste, which was gradually absorbed by the encroachment, which the occupiers of these huts made from time to time by enclosing the land that lay next them.  These wretched holdings gradually fell into the hands of a body of middlemen, who underlet them at an extravagant rent to the occupiers; and these men began to consider that they had an interest independent of the landlord, and had at times actually mortgaged, sold, and devised it.  This abuse was also put an end to, the cottagers being made immediate tenants of the landlord, to their great gain, but to this day small aggregations of houses in Shropshire called ‘Heaths’ mark the encroachments of these squatters on the roadside wastes.  This class, indeed, has been well known in England since the Middle Ages.  Norden speaks of them in 1602, and so do many subsequent writers.  Numbers of small holdings exist to-day obtained in this manner, and the custom must to some extent have counteracted the effect of enclosure.[491]

The roads of England up to the end of the eighteenth century were generally in a disgraceful condition.  Some improvement was effected in the latter half of the century, but it was not until the days of Telford and Macadam that they assumed the appearance with which we are familiar; and long after that, though the main roads were excellent, the by-roads were often atrocious, as readers of such books as Handley Cross, written in the middle of the nineteenth century, will remember.

Defoe in his tour in 1724 found the road between S. Albans and Nottingham ‘perfectly frightful,’ and the great number of horses killed by the ’labour of these heavy ways a great charge to the country’.  He notes, however, an improvement from turnpikes.  Many of the roads were much worn by the continual passing of droves of heavy cattle on their way to London.  Sheep could not travel in the winter to London as the roads were too heavy, so that the price of mutton at that season in town was high.  Breeders were often compelled to sell them cheap before they got to London, because the roads became impassable for their flocks when the bad weather set in.[492]

In 1734 Lord Cathcart wrote in his diary:  ’All went well until I arrived within 3 miles of Doncaster, when suddenly my horse fell with a crash and with me under him.  I fancied myself crushed to death.  I slept at Doncaster and had a bad night.  I was so bad all day, that I could get no further than Wetherby.  Next day I was all right again.  I had another terrible fall between North Allerton and Darlington, but was not a bit the worse.’[493]