Cobblestones or Setts? -- Misidentified Paving

Cobblestone streets just instantly conjure up ideas of times gone by and horse-drawn carriages trotting down busy streets of antiquity. This very old style of pavement comprises of rounded stones laid down in sand, mortar, or similar substrates. From a technical standpoint, a "cobble" must be a stone 2.5-10 inches wide (larger, its a boulder, smaller and its on the large end of the pebble spectrum). These roads were a step-up from the common dirt roads of the time, riddled with problems during the rain (water and dirt become mud), dry weather and wind (plenty of dust), or with heavy cart traffic (deep grooves would form in the dirt, creating tripping hazards for pedestrians and horses alike).

While being full of rustic charm, these uneven stones generally create a great deal of noisy traffic, not to mention the difficulties inherent in walking over them. As a result, in the early 19th century sett paving overcame cobblestone work. Setts (also called "Belgian Blocks") were smoother, uniformly quarried and cut rectangular stones which would be laid into the ground as pavement. Sadly, however, setts are almost always mistakenly identified as cobblestones by the uninformed. Setts have much more use in modern day, with still wide-spread popularity as decorative inlay. Sett paving gave way to macadam paving (layering of gravels or sands, with binders applied to form solid surfaces), tarmacs (combining macadam practices with tar coating,) and the asphalt pavements seen throughout the modern world.

As legend has it, many of the earliest cobblestone and sett roads in the East Coast cities of America were made out of stone kept in the ballast of ship journeying across the Atlantic for trade goods. As most of the trading resulted in goods leaving America, the lost ballast weight of the stone would be made up for in raw goods and materials heading back home to the mother country.


Words of the Day!
"Impeccant" : free from sin or wrong; blameless.
"Samara" : a dry, one-seeded, winged fruit, as of the maple.