Long before the days of the Road Fund License or DVLA annual car tax, the responsibility for the upkeep of roads was at best haphazard.
The Highways Act of 1555 required each parish to take responsibility for maintaining the roads that crossed through its boundaries. Every year, each parish elected an unpaid (and therefore probably unwilling!) local official, called a Surveyor of Highways to inspect the roads, identify where repairs were needed and direct the workforce.
Men of the parish were expected to give up 6 days of unpaid labour to maintain the roads, by filling potholes with stones, clearing ditches or overhanging vegetation. Wealthier parishioners or landowners who owned horses and carts were required to supply their teams and equipment for those 6 days, instead of giving their physical labour.
As you can imagine this did not always work out well! Labourers were untrained and unwilling; surveyors were amateurs who knew little about engineering and any repairs made were temporary and poor quality – a phenomenon not unfamiliar to us in the 21st century!
In the late 17th and early 18th century, as the era of coach travel dawned with growing national trade and longer distance travel, the system needed radical change.
So, in the 18th century, Turnpike Trusts were set up by Acts of Parliament to improve the long distance through routes that had been long neglected by parish administration. The aim was to shift the financial burden of maintaining the roads from the local parish to the actual travellers who used them!
A complex system of toll charges was introduced so that the cost reflected the capacity to pay of the user, with commercial travellers being charged more – see opposite.
To facilitate the collection of the tolls, many routes had purpose-built cottages built at key junctions with windows on all sides facing the road, to ensure that all travellers were spotted and their toll charge paid! And Welton had its own tollgate!
The historic Welton Tollgate was a designated toll station operated under the Lutterworth to Badby Turnpike Trust, which was established in 1765.
The route stretched some 20 miles across Oxfordshire, Northamptonshire and Leicestershire, from the south end of Mill Field in Lutterworth, heading along what is now the A426 Rugby Road, and briefly the A5 Watling Street and then branched off towards Daventry onto what is now the A361.
The Turnpike had four main tollgates:
- Misterton Gate – Leicestershire
- Dove Bridge Gate (Leicestershire / Northamptonshire border)
- Welton Gate
- Badby Gate
Example of small toll gate building opposite.
So where was the Welton tollgate?
We learned from records from the time that the tollgate was located ‘on the south side of a crossroads’ near Welton. It was designed to control the thoroughfare between Ashby St Ledgers and Daventry. We discovered that the current exit road up to the Barby crossroads, across the A361 did not exist as today. The main route out was along the lane that branches left as you leave the village, off what is now Ashby Road.
The census documents proved to be a starting point for the location ……
In the 1851 census the tollgate is listed as a property – Welton Gate – and is the second listing on the census between Hill House and Windmill House – thereby locating it near the outskirts of the village, where we believe an early windmill was located and the Ashby – Daventry Road.
In the 1861 census the tollgate listing was not linked to geographical location. In this census, farms and other dwellings were listed separately at the end of the census, so the Toll Gate house (entry 153) was listed between Welton Place Farm (entry 152 on the road into Daventry near the canal) and Hobberhill Farm (entry 154 – and which is located on Ashby Road).
However, the discovery of an early 18th century map of Welton and Daventry sourced at the Northamptonshire Archives Office makes the location of the toll gate clear as you can see below.
The Toll Gate was located within the green circle above. The map shows that the gate lay beyond the village proper, on the left side of what is now the A361 between Daventry and Kilsby. At this time the road leading out of Welton (now Ashby Road) forked quite sharply, the left-hand fork remaining as you leave Welton heading northwards (highlighted green). The current extension of Ashby Road to the junction towards Barby did not exist – however the toll gate would have been near what is that crossroads now! And what looks like a road to Ashby St Ledger’s is the current footpath across the fields (highlighted pink)!
If you look closely, you can also see that one of the Welton windmills was located just to the north-west of Welton, on the high ground between Welton and Kilsby!
In the 1851 and 1861 census records for Welton we discover Edwin Watts and his family, living at Welton Gate.
In this record, Edwin is aged 41 and described as a labourer and a ‘farmer of tolls’. Further research has revealed that he was probably born in Kislingbury, where he was recorded on the 1841 census as an agricultural labourer. Becoming a farmer of tolls was clearly a step up in life!
In 1851 Edwin is living with his wife, Hannah, who is 40 and born in Frankton, Warwickshire, along with their son, Thomas George, who had been born in Badby. In 1851, Thomas is 16 years old and working as a shoemaker.
By 1861, Edwin is now 51 and no longer a labourer, only a farmer of tolls. A report in the Northampton Mercury tells us that on February 7th 1864, Edwin’s son, Thomas was married to Miss Sarah Baseley of Welton in St Martin’s Church by Revd. Daniel Darnell!
So, what was a farmer of tolls?
In the 19th century ‘farming’ in this context had nothing to do with agriculture but referred to the legal collection of tolls or taxes for using certain “toll roads’.
As mentioned above, roads during this era were managed by local Turnpike Trusts. To fund road maintenance, trusts set up toll gates and side bars to charge passing travellers.
Instead of hiring staff to collect tools directly, the Turnpike Trusts would lease or auction off the right to collect tolls at a certain gate for a set period of time – usually a year – to the highest bidder.
As a toll farmer, Edwin Watts would have paid a fixed, up-front lump sum to the turnpike trust. His income – and profit – relied entirely on his ability to collect more money from passing traffic than what he paid for the lease.
Several newspaper cuttings such as the below confirm the annual auction of tollgates to would-be toll farmers. This article dates from 19th May 1804.
The 1851 and 1856 census records show us that not only did Edwin a secure a steady income from toll farming, but that the job came with accommodation.
By the late 1860s and 1870s, the Turnpike System was rapidly declining as railways took over as the main provider of long-distance travel. With Welton being well served by the canal system and the railway with its station across the A5 in Watford, it was inevitable that the Welton toll house would become a less than sustainable means of making a living, although newspaper articles confirm he was still farming tolls as late as 1868
On Saturday 15th January 1870, the Rugby Advertiser reported the ‘shocking death’ of Edwin Watts.
Following an inquest held at the Warwick Arms, Daventry it was established that ‘the deceased’ the ‘keeper of the Welton tollgate’ had on Friday 14th January had two pints with Joseph Bates at about 1pm in the Warwick Arms, Daventry with a third man, Edmund Claridge. Watts sent Claridge to get some beefsteak. Whilst Claridge was gone, Watts ate cold meat and bread provided by a Mrs Hancock, the publican.
Once Claridge returned with the steak, it was cooked by Mrs Hancock. Watts was being served when he started choking. A doctor was called, a piece of beef was removed from his throat, but it was too late. Edwin Watts died of suffocation.
What else do we know about the history of the tollgate at Welton?
We know that the Welton Tollgate was in use as early as July 1785 as a report in the Northampton Mercurytells of Ralph Wood, who was accused of breaking open a drawer in The Tollgate in Welton and removing ‘two half crowns and two shillings,’ on the oath of Mary Howes. The report adds that Benjamin Baker was his accomplice!
The then Toll Farmer was recorded as William Siddens.
And what happened to the toll house? The physical tollhouse building has been documented as lost since 1920. It certainly seems to have been long forgotten.
