THE answer to Ann Stokes' question in the Times on July 16 about the Parkwood Road Plaque and the period of 'Great Distress 1817' refers to the road being constructed at that time as part of the Turnpike Act Roads in the area. The construction of Parkwood Road as far as Harford Bridge gave great employment to many unemployed men of the area at the end of the Napoleonic Wars and that was the period of Great Distress — the depression following the Napoleonic Wars. Simon Dell Tavistock REGARDING the 'great distress' referred to in Ann Stokes' letter, my father, locally born and bred, was at school in the 1890s, so to him, Waterloo and those times were as talked about as The Great War is to us. He told me that the beautiful engineered roads — the ones to Milton Abbot, Gunnislake etc. replacing the steep, narrow lanes, were built at a time of great distress after the Napoleonic wars, also by prisoners of war in Dartmoor Prison. Phoebe Woollcombe Bere Alston