Romsey heritage: The chequered history of Romsey's roads

For many years they were the responsibility of the parish in which they lay, which was very unfair on the ratepayers whose roads were much used by travellers passing through.

In the 18th century, a number of turnpike trusts were established in this area who undertook to provide and maintain main roads. Their income was derived from people paying to use them. By the 1860s the system had largely broken down as the income was insufficient and the investors had lost interest.

In the 1870s the trusts were abolished and responsibility transferred to the county Justices of the Peace who were responsible for county administration before county councils were established in 1889.

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The first thing that needed to be done was to ascertain the state of the roads that came into their care.

The J.P.s appointed Highway Surveyors who were each issued with a large book and allocated a separate page to each road in which they recorded their surveys.

The surveys made between 1879 and 1882 have survived and do not make encouraging reading. The state of the road from Romsey to King’s Somborne (now the A3057) was summarised as ‘Indifferent’.

The first report says of it ‘Section bad; great many hollows; surface uneven and irregular'.

The road from Mainstone to Spursholt (part of A27) had an uneven surface and was irregular and worn. ‘Requires coating or less metalling’. This road had been closed for a while in the mid-1820s and was re-sculpted to make it less steep.

The road to Southampton around Ashfield was also uneven with an irregular surface. At the Romsey end it was described as ‘muddy’. In 1881 it was judged indifferent, but had been improved by 1882.

Pauncefoot Hill continued to create problems. There was a spring towards the top of the hill, although some of the springs that had existed had been drained. The report of 1882 remarked that the hill by the brick kiln is better than before. This is beside the slope towards what is now the Ower roundabout.

On the other side of Romsey, hill before the Hunters Inn was ‘cut up at sides in part and rather rutty at top and dirty’. In particular it was dirty opposite the ‘New Mansion’, which building I have not identified unless it was Harefield House.

And finally, for today’s summary, there was ‘a very bad place cut up just over the brow of Scrag Hill (which) ought to be attended to at once’.

Just think what my successor will write about our potholes.