Local History Group

The term Turnpike (or toll gates) referred to the military practice of placing a pike staff barrier across a road to block and control passage. Upon payment of a toll the pike would be ‘turned’ to allow rite of passage. The principle of making travellers pay a contribution towards the upkeep of roads they used began in the Middle Ages. In Medieval England the King would grant ‘pavage’ (a medieval toll for the maintenance and improvement of a road or street) to people or organisations and allow them to collect tolls. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, British roads were in a terrible state. Previous to this a law was passed in 1555 which instructed local people to maintain roads in their area but this was largely ignored. The first turnpike trust was authorised in 1663 by the justices of Hertfordshire, Huntingdonshire and Cambridgeshire who petitioned for an act allowing them to levy tolls on a short section of the Great North Road between London and York which would be put to keeping the road in a good state of repair. In 1706 the momentum of the turnpike system increased. From then a system of turnpike trusts spread and the rapid increase in industrial production between 1700 and 1750 resulted in the need for an improved road system. Acts were passed to allow bodies of gentlemen to set up turnpike trusts. This extended to almost all parts of England. The system after 1706 depended on local initiatives and people interested in certain parts of the road joined to form committees and became trustees. Once a local turnpike act was obtained the trust would accept competitive bids at auction and allocate the collection of tolls to the highest bidders. The creation of turnpike acts became prominent in the 18th and 19th centuries and by 1840 there were about 1000 turnpike trusts managing approx. 20,000 miles of roads but Parliament failed to make best use of the turnpike system. They allowed most trusts to be too small as they managed only ten to twenty miles of road and often, they could not pay their way. Many toll houses were built in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as a result of the turnpike trusts. In 1840 there were approx. 5000 toll houses operating in England, standard design of toll houses in the 1820’s were small single storey cottages with a polygonal shape. Those built in the early nineteenth century had a bay front so that the pikeman had a clear view of the road, the turnpike barriers were positioned at the side. The coming of the railways intensified the financial difficulties of the turnpikes. Between 1865-95 the turnpike system trusts broke up and slipped back under parochial control. When the turnpikes closed many of the properties were sold off in the 1880’s or demolished but several hundred remain today. After taking 232 years to grow and flourish, the turnpikes decayed and came to an end. The Local Government Act of 1888 created County Councils and gave them authority for maintaining major roads. The abiding relic of the English toll roads is the number of houses with names like Turnpike Cottage