Went the day well?

Try searching, it's not that hard.

Something like: when did roads become tarmacked in uk

should tell you.

HTH

Nope

didn't find it

I can find out from the technical pov, when it was first possible to tarmac roads

but I cant find, what I believe the OP is looking for (and which I myself have also thought about when seeing similarly aged films), when the country's finances were sound enough for us to actual afford to tarmac all roads

tim

When we moved in here the roads around the estate were just concrete slabs with joins, it was in the 60s that they made them tarmac. Many roads were also as you say, a kind of fine gravel baked into some kind of tar, and come the frosts of winter it was like walking on ball bearings!

Brian

Look up tarmacadam on Wikipedia - ~200 years !

PA

Indeed, but by and large 'dirt' roads of crushed stone were the norm until well into the 20th century.

As a boy post war, most roads were tarmaced - but not all, in the country.

Whereas I think pre WWI very few were.

In some parts of Scotland in the 1970s, you shad "3 ply roads".(Tarmac, grass & tarmac again)

I vaguely remember gravel roads occasionally in Hampshire, possibly in the New Forest, in the 70s?

Also some motorways and main roads that were concrete with expansion joins.

One of the older family friends (honorary uncle) said one of the main differences in his lifetime was the widespread tarmac roads and the absence of dust.

Owain

Some of the roads where I lived as a child were tarred and then rolled with gravel. Hurts when falling off bike.

Brian Gaff (Sofa) has brought this to us :

Up here they used a lot of cobbles on side streets, with tar between them - lots of fun to be had in hot weather ;-)

The new extension of the M1 north passing a mile from here, was originally done in concrete slab around 10/15 years ago. They were inundated locals, complaining about the noise from the concrete rumble. They were forced to tarmac it to reduce the noise.

all the roads here are done like that

The Natural Philosopher formulated the question :

They were often given a quick resurface around here like that, back in the 60's.

They still do that in Wales, certainly in Gwynedd, where they seem to have a six week season of it in May/June.

IME all roads hurt when falling off a bike.

I've seen footpaths done with a "system" of glass fibres in the tar, and gravel rolled over.

Owain

Concrete slab roads were not just noisy for residents. There were also noisy for drivers. I can remember driving on the A34 (*) near Oxford and for mile after mile there was a continuous thump-thump-thump.

(*) Except in those days it was called the A43 - the road from Kidlington to Bicester, anyway. At that time, what is now the A44 (Oxford-Banbury) was called the A34. Confused?

Nowadays in the UK there are two types of road surface:

- tarmac - tar/stones pre-mixed, laid on the surface like icing and then rolled flat

- surface dressing (what Jon describes) - tar sprayed on road, stones tipped on top, cars left to roll them into the tar

Surface dressing would be fine if they would only use a road roller to roll the stones into the tar, with any loose stones after that being "hoovered up". But instead they think it is acceptable to impose very lower speed limits (eg 20 mph on a 60 mph road) for several weeks afterwards while cars roll some of the stones in, with the remainder being a skid hazard (hence the draconian speed limit) until they get thrown onto the verge. Also, the road tends to develop bald patches where all the tyres run, so they process has to be repeated every few years.