A network of military roads, sometimes called General Wade's Military Roads, was constructed in the Scottish Highlands during the middle part of the 18th century in the wake of the Jacobite rebellion of 1715.
The roads were constructed to link the Central Lowlands with a series of fortified barracks located strategically across the Highlands. Their purpose, much like the network of roads constructed by the Romans more than 1,500 years earlier, was to suppress and exert control over the local population.[1] The engineered roads of the Roman period did not extend into the Highlands, which was where these later roads were constructed.
The first four of these roads were constructed in the 1720s and 1730s under the direction of General George Wade (an Anglo-Irishman) and are commonly referred to as General Wade’s Military Roads or simply as Wade’s Roads.
The network was subsequently expanded considerably under the direction of Major William Caulfeild, although his name is now largely forgotten and each of the roads that he had put in place are referred to, on Ordnance Survey mapping for example, simply as "Old Military Road". A further road was constructed by Caulfeild in southwest Scotland in the 1760s.
- ^ "The Creation of The Military Roads". An 18th century military road in the Scottish Highlands and 3 of its bridges. Scottish History Online.