Page:Cornwall; Cambridge county geographies.djvu/149

COMMUNICATIONS 133 world, until the extension of railways caused the service to be transferred to Southampton. Whether there were systematically constructed Roman roads in Cornwall has been doubted. One curious ancient road the Giant's Hedge is found near Lanreath, and appears to have been a portion of a road raised on a bank that started from a ferry over the Tamar and was carried into the west of Cornwall.. There was a road also that came from Exeter and crossed the Tamar at Poison Bridge and then turned north to Camelford. Another ran past Stratton to the estuary of the Camel opposite Padstow, where Romano-British remains have been found on Bray Hill. But it is possible enough that these roads were of British and not of Roman construction. In the Middle Ages little or nothing was done to keep the roads in repair. Even in the eighteenth century all that was thought necessary was to throw down a load of boulders into the ruts, rake them in, and leave coach and cart wheels to grind them up. But the roads were taken in hand at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and the turnpikes served to provide funds for keeping them in order, while Macadam's invention of breaking the stones before laying them on the roads assisted enormously in facilitating transit along them. The roads in Cornwall are now for the most part excellent, metalled with elvan, and cyclists and motorists can have little to complain of on that score. Two railway companies have penetrated the county; the G.W.R. in the south crosses the Tamar by the famous Saltash tubular bridge, and runs to Penzance,