Many toll houses survive in Derbyshire (see previous blogs) but the only surviving ensemble of cottage, gate and board of charges is found at the National Museum of Wales, near Cardiff. This was moved to the Museum from its original location near Aberystwith. The list of charges (see below) gives a fascinating insight into the traffic that used the turnpike roads in the early nineteenth century. Sixteen different kinds of horse-drawn passenger vehicles are listed, including chariot, Berlin, landau, chaise, phaeton, vis a vis and calash – all charged at six pence per horse (over £2 at modern values). Agricultural traffic was rated at four pence per animal, unless the cart was pulled by an ass, in which case it was only two pence. Droves of large animals like cattle cost the drover ten pence per score, while flocks of sheep were only five pence. It is easy to imagine the disputes that could have arisen about whether an animal was a cow or a calf (half price) or how many animals were in a drove!

The list of exemptions is also revealing. Farmers leading horses to work on the adjoining fields were free of charge, as were attendees at Sunday services, or funerals. Waggons carrying vagrants or prisoners were also free, as was military traffic and clergy doing parish business, sheep going to be washed and people taking part in county elections. Again, there seems to be plenty of scope for argument in such a lengthy list!

Despite these exemptions, ordinary people commonly hated the turnpikes, which seemed to take away a basic freedom – to use the ‘King’s highway’ without paying. This was especially the case in Wales, where an agricultural depression between 1839-42 caused widespread misery. This lead directly to the Rebecca riots, when protesters disguised themselves in women’s clothing and attacked and burned the toll gates, which had come to represent the general burden of taxation on the poor.