.

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