Where ever we go around the Mansfield area, there always seems to be roadworks for one reason or another. Life it seems has been the same for well over 100 years as this poem from the Mansfield & North Notts Advertiser 15/5/1903 reveals. The photos at the bottom of the page taken in 1993 and 1996 of the same road are also a good example.
UP AND DOWN
The took a little gravel, and they took a little tar
With various ingredients imported from afar.
They hammered it and rolled it, and when they went away
They said they had a pavement, that would last for many a day.
But they came with picks and smote it – to lay a water main;
And then they called the workman, to put it back again.
To run a tramway cable they took it up once more;
And then they put it back again, just where it was before.
They took it up for conduits to run the telephone;
And then they put it back again as hard as any stone
They took it up for wires, to feed the electric light,
And then they put it back again – which was no more than right.
Oh, the pavements full of furrows; there are patches everywhere.
You’d like to ride upon it, but it’s seldom that you dare.
It’s a very handsome pavement; a credit to the town;
They’re always diggin of it up or putting of it down.
-“Cassell’s Saturday Journal”
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