Taking its toll
Thinking about the bridge house at Cookham in the previous post reminded me not only of the numerous toll houses I’ve seen by the sides of main roads up and down England but also, specifically, of one at the Avoncroft Museum. This little building was rescued in around 1985 and was resited at the museum, where it has a pleasant leafy site. It was originally built in 1822 at Little Malvern, Worcestershire, for the collection of tolls by the Upton upon Severn Turnpike Trust. Back in the 19th century, anyone wanting to travel along this particular stretch of road in a landau had to fork out sixpence in the old money, but if you brought only your horse, the charge was ‘a penny-ha’penny’, or 1.5 of the old pence.
The house takes the usual polygonal form of these turnpike houses, and although it’s quite a plain brick building, it has the fancy Gothic glazing that was fashionable in the early-19th century. It no longer stands by a roadside, but the people at Avoncroft have put up a gate outside, to give an impression of the original set-up, with passersby stopping at the gate to pay their money before being allowed to pass through on to the turnpike road.
2 comments:
We can only imagine how cramped that house would have been if there were young children, as the cot suggests. Bad weather would more or less confine them to a single room. Also, presumably, the gatekeeper's family were on duty 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, although the nature of the work was not arduous. A much better deal for the travelling public to maintain highways out of general taxation, even at the expense of the loss of quaint polygonal cottages!
Indeed. These little houses make even my grandparent's tiny one-and-half-bedroom farm worker's cottage look spacious.
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