Motoring history was made in West Bridgford more than a century ago. Andy Smart tells the story.
The next time you're driving along Radcliffe Road in West Bridgford take a moment to remember that you are passing over a piece of history.
Because, strange as it may seem, Radcliffe Road was the first in the world to be covered with something we know today as tarmacadam.
The discovery of Tarmac was made by Edgar Hooley just after the turn of the 20th Century. Hooley, a Welshman from Swansea, was employed as the Nottinghamshire county surveyor at the time.
Popular belief credits a Scotsman named John McAdam with the invention but he can only be remembered for inventing a method of using crushed stones to create a solid road surface which worked perfectly well in the days of horse-drawn vehicles.
When motor cars came on the scene, placing heavier demands on road surfaces, the system fell apart.
Sharp, jagged stones caused many punctures; and in bad weather the surface broke up into an impassable quagmire of mud and ruts.
One day, so the story goes, Edgar Hooley was walking in Derbyshire when he noticed a smooth stretch of road close to an ironworks.
He asked locals what had happened and was told a barrel of tar had fallen from a dray and burst open. Someone had poured waste slag on to it from the nearby furnaces to cover up the mess.
Hooley noticed this unintentional resurfacing had solidified the road – there was no rutting and no dust.
That gave Hooley the idea and, for the next year, he worked on perfecting a process of heating tar, adding slag to the mix and then breaking stones within the mixture to form a smooth road surface.
Having patented the operation, Hooley began transforming road surfaces and Radcliffe Road became the first Tarmac road in the world. A five-mile stretch was given the Tarmac treatment and proved itself by being long-lasting, dust and mud-free.
In 1903, Edgar Purnell Hooley formed his company, Tar Macadam (Purnell Hooley's Patent) Syndicate Limited, and registered Tarmac as a trademark. In 1904 Hooley obtained a US patent for an apparatus for the preparation of tarmacadam, intended as an improvement to existing methods of preparing tarmacadam.
Hooley's invention was revolutionary – but he didn't have the business acumen to exploit it. He sold the company to Wolverhampton MP Sir Alfred Hickman, owner of a steelworks which produced large quantities of slag that could be used in Tarmac production.
He relaunched the Tarmac company in 1905 and it became an immediate success and remains a major company to this day.
Having given up his interest in Tarmac, Hooley concentrated on his other great passion, military service.
He had served with the 1st Nottinghamshire (Robin Hood) battalion, reaching the rank of captain before resigning his commission in 1902, presumably to concentrate on his Tarmac invention.
But in October 1914, he joined the 8th Battalion Sherwood Foresters with the rank of quartermaster and honorary captain.
After the end of the First World War, he continued to serve with the Territorial Force Reserve until he retired, retaining the rank of quartermaster and captain.
Hooley, father of two sons and two daughters, died at his home in Oxford in 1942. He was 81.
