Historically, the width of a highway was rarely contentious. The right of highway was (and is) a right to pass and re-pass; a right to travel from A to B. In the book English Local Government: The Story of the King's Highway, the highway was, as Sydney and Beatrice Webb wrote in 1913, not a strip of land, or any corporeal thing, but a legal and customary right:

'…a perpetual right of passage in the Sovereign, for himself and for his subjects over another's land.'

Because ancient highways were rarely surfaced, they became muddy in winter and it was necessary to divert around the muddiest parts, in order to get through at all. The Webbs tell us that:

'…if the beaten track became foundrous, the King's subjects might diverge from it, even to the extent of going upon the corn…Of this liberty, it is clear, the riders and pedestrians of the time made full use.'

Arising directly from that situation is the old legal obligation to maintain the surface of a highway,