Lost Highways

It's been a central question to me in my quest for a better understanding of my family's many and various migrations in and out of Wales and The Marches over the past couple of centuries: how did they move around with such apparent ease, given their backgrounds and circumstances? Practically all of my forebears were from poor stock, insofar as I understand, and most originated in sparsely-populated rural communities, very often with populations as few as a hundred or so individuals. That they ranged as far and wide as they did, whilst frequently returning to their homeland as they often did, has taxed me in  wondering about the mechanics of it all. The other night, the penny dropped. The railways. I'd quite forgotten that this archipelago, including quite isolated rural areas, was once well served with a railway system that allowed easy and often cheap transport to pretty much anywhere else.

It goes some considerable way to explaining how - the why is self-evident: the need for work - my mother's side of the family, for instance, came to spread themselves into Shropshire, Gloucestershire, Cornwall, and London and the home counties, as well as Warwickshire and Staffordshire; very often returning to the Herefordshire hamlets of their birth when money [and mitigated family scandals] permitted. It explains the ease with which my Welsh forebears moved in and out of Denbighshire, Warwickshire and Staffordshire at pretty much the same time. A complex web of poverty, family difficulties [children born out of wedlock had to be farmed out to relatives near or far to be raised] and distant opportunity, motivated these frequent peregrinations to and fro. The realisation came to me that, having come of age in the cursed post-Beeching era, I had neglected one simple truth: travel was a lot easier for people with few means then than now...