The 'Wood-block paving' I know of as wooden cobbles. Iron-shod horses apparently made a lot of noise on stone and IIRC experiments were done to reduce this, the

The 'Wood-block paving' I know of as wooden cobbles. Iron-shod horses apparently made a lot of noise on stone and IIRC experiments were done to reduce this, the best results being from using wood not stone for cobbling. So it was a noise reduction thing in essence. One of my locals is a coaching inn that goes back centuries. Where the coaches would have entered is covered by the building above and under that, where people now sit and drink, there are still wooden cobbles. I doubt they're from the original horse-time (which is only a century ago, or less), but there they are.