TARMACADAM was first used in England in the 1830s, when roadbuilders in Nottingham blended coal tar (a byproduct of town gasworks) and `macadam' (graded stones), spread the resultant hot, sticky mixture over a stone foundation, and dressed the surface with sand. Stones bound together with bitumen instead of coal tar - a product that eventually became known as asphalt - were also used for some roadbuilding schemes in the 19th century. Nevertheless, most roadbuilders continued to surface their roads with gravel, crushed stones and waterbound grit until well into the 20th century. `Tarmac' and bitumen-coated roadstone became more widely used when the suction effect of fast motor vehicles' rubber tyres started to reduce water-bound road surfaces to clouds of fine dust!

1902

A British county surveyor Edgar Purnell Hooley revolutionised our roads when he invented tarmac and patented it 100 years ago on 3 April 1902. The invention made travelling easier. The days of dirt tracks, which became impassable in the wet or "macadamised" roads made from crushed stones, which caused punctured tyres, were over.

The inspiration for Edgar Hooley's invention came when he noticed a smooth stretch of road in Denby, Derbeyshire. On asking how this had been achieved, he was informed that a barrel of tar had accidentally fallen off a dray. To cover the tar, slag from the blast furnace at a nearby iron works had been added on top. In 1902 Edgar Purnell Hooley from Nottinghamshire patented the process of heating tar adding slag or macadam to the mix then breaking stones within the mixture to form a smooth road surface.

1903

In 1903 Edgar Purnell Hooley formed TarMacadam (Purnell Hooley's Patent) Syndicate Ltd and registered Tarmac® as a trade mark. Edgar Hooley may have made a brilliant invention but it was not until Sir Alfred Hickman, a Wolverhampton steel manufacturer bought the patent rights that it took off, making use of slag, a byproduct of the steelworks. Sir Alfred Hickman became very prosperous with his new company Tarmac Ltd, which remains successful today. Tarmac® is still a registered trade mark.

Kent's first `blacktop' roads were built following the publication of Kent County Council's `Joscelyne Report' in 1903. The KCC appointed D. Joscelyne, formerly Chief Engineer and Secretary to the Public Works Department of the Government of Bengal, to head an independent enquiry into the management and maintenance of the county's roads. Joscelyne reported that most of the laying and rolling of fresh stone was done in the winter. The advantage of this was that water was more readily available - although heavy rain affected the lasting quality of the new surface, and the traction engines that hauled the stone wagons caused further damage. Joscelyne noted: "The heavy engines grind up the surface ... often destroying some of it altogether. The motor cars and cycles, by their rapid impact, loosen the surface wherever it is not perfectly smooth ... they also disturb and scatter the binding material of the road surface, thus leaving the road still more susceptible to the combined effects of the weather and the wear of heavy traffic ... the fact must be faced that motor power has come to stay."

In the summer of 1903 the KCC laid an experimental stretch of tarred road at Farningham.

1905-1908

The experimental success at Faringham, was followed in 1905 and 1906 by dust-laying experiments in which `painting' road surfaces with tar proved to be the most effective remedy. In 1907 a KCC contractor applied two coats of tar to a few main roads (at a cost of 1/2d a square yard!) and in 1908 the KCC bought its own tar spraying equipment.

1911

By 1911 the council was spending nearly £30,000 a year on tar spraying and on repairing its roads with bitumen, pitch and tar.

The Farningham experiment was followed by trials and tests in which tarmacadam was used instead of waterbound macadam to rebuild road surfaces. In the years immediately before the First World War the County Surveyor, Henry Maybury, reported that local roadbuilding materials were not strong enough to withstand the increasing volume and speed of motor traffic, and that the passing of `light cars' was accompanied by `a shower of flints.' Granite was imported at great cost from outside the county to
create stronger surfaces, only to crumble under the assault of the anti-skid studs that motorists were now fitting to their tyres; the studs `cut right through the granite surface, leaving saucer-shaped holes which are extremely difficult to repair.'

1910-1913

Kent became one of the pioneer counties in the extensive tarring of roads, the KCC's use of `tarmac' increasing twelvefold (from 2,728 tons to 31,905 tons a year) 1910 and 1913.

1913

In 1913 Maybury declared: "The waterbound-system of repairs will have to be discarded in favour of bituminous grouting or similar treatment." Public transport aggravated the situation.

1914

In 1914 H.T. Chapman, Maybury's successor, reported that before motor omnibuses became popular, waterbound granite macadam or flint could be used to keep roads in good condition, but now they had to be strengthened and surfaced with bituminously bound material at twice the cost - "Anyone travelling over roads that have not recently been specially surfaced can tell at once that they are passing over a `bus route' by the
waviness, corrugations and deep holes."

1928

Five years after opening its first plant in Canterbury the Kent Tarmacadam Company - a subsidiary of Robert Brett & Sons Ltd - decided to relocate to Whitstable Harbour and build a new, larger, plant at East Quay.

Bretts first became involved in the `blacktop' trade in 1928, after winning a contract from South Eastern Tar Distillers Ltd to collect crude coal tar from Kent's gasworks, take it to SETAR's distillery in Broad Oak Road, Canterbury, and deliver refined tar to Kent County Council's tarmacadam works and to the gangs that tarred and gritted the county's roads. In those days every town had its own gasworks, whose processes produced abundant quantities of tarry residues which were ideal for making `tarmac' and road dressings.

1930

When road maintenance and construction returned to normal levels after the war, waterbound granite was soon discarded almost entirely in favour of. `tarmac.' For a time this was produced at the KCC's own plants - those that served east Kent were at Faversham and Pegwell Bay - but in the early 1930s privately owned plants, such as the one at Whitstable Harbour, became the council's suppliers

1931

SETAR's distillery was near Bretts' sand and gravel quarry in Riverdale Road, about a mile from the centre of Canterbury. In 1931 the quarry was producing more gravel than it could sell, so in August the directors decided to build a tarmacadam plant to use the surplus material. A 1.54 acre site next door to SETAR's distillery was acquired for £260; Mr Arthur Dundas Shera, general manager of the Road Maintenance Stone Supply Company, was appointed general manager of the new Kent Tarmacadam Company (on a salary of £880 p.a., plus a motor car); and in October a plant capable of producing ten tons of `tarmac' an hour was bought from Millar's Machinery Company for £2,336 -less 5% discount for cash! A Blackstone 32 bhp oil engine was purchased, to power the plant.

A few years later Bretts set up another new venture at Riverdale Road Quarry - a calcined flint plant. This consisted of huge coal-fired kilns which `roasted' flint gravel and shattered it into small, variegated particles (marketed as `Durite Canterbury Spar') which when spread on freshly-tarred roads created an attractive, skid resistant surface. Durite could also be coated with tar to make `Durite tarmac.' The kilns had previously been operated by a small tar distilling firm at Rye Harbour. SETAR bought the firm, closed the distillery, and sold the kilns and calcining `know how' to Bretts, who were now able to offer not only conventional `tarmac' but also Durite tarmac and Durite surface dressing material to the highway authorities.