More on turnpikes

10:48am Friday 1st February 2008

THE Bill relating to the turnpike road from Macclesfield to Buxton, etc., was finally passed in May 1852, after all the concerned parties had agreed on the amendments. The decision was taken to remove both tollgates, ie Broken Cross and Buxton Road, at the end of four years, which would mean that only two tolls were payable through Macclesfield all the way to Buxton, instead of four.

It would seem that the decision to set up the toll bar lower down Buxton Road, and the one at Broken Cross, had been contrived to collect additional tolls after the disastrous road fiasco, and does suggest that the original gate on Buxton Road was higher up the hill.

Interestingly, McAdam himself had appeared before a Commons Committee in April 1825. On that occasion he was asked what the best materials for roads were, and the cheapest method of obtaining them. Answer: Berkshire flints for roads further from London, but Guernsey stone was best and least liable to wear.

When questioned why some of his road surfaces were breaking up, he explained that drainage was too much neglected' in town and country. The principle was to keep the soil dry and tight. If subsoil was dry from above and below then the road would not give way. He went into the greatest detail of building up the surface, declaring that the consideration should be the subsoil and not the carrying of carriages on the surface, an idea he found difficult "to drive into the heads of the surveyors and to compel them to attend to".

Evidently we have our answer regarding the deterioration of the original Macclesfield to Buxton turnpike road surface.

A further query from my correspondent was the question of when the turnpike road from Higginbotham Green via Lyme Green was laid. The only information I have is a copy of a deed for a property on Old Mill Lane when the plot of land, part of the Mill Field, was sold for building upon on February 14, 1815. The boundary description gives on the Eastwardly end thereof by the Turnpike Road leading from Macclesfield to Leek' (now Old Mill Lane); the present Cross Street was still a plot of land.

Presumably this section of the turnpike road linked into Byrons Lane and passed through Sutton on the older routes south out of Macclesfield. Possibly, with the creation of the better road through Cross Street, the new section of the turnpike road was created along the route which now passes the Fool's Nook; this must have been after 1815.

The Tytherington turnpike was at the junction of Manchester Road and Bluebell Lane, the old route following the lane round and coming out further down the hill. When the new section, which extended Beech Lane, was created it actually passed through the land of the Tytherington Hall estate.

To finish this series on an amusing note, what better way than to quote the words of Charles Dickens through some of his delightful characters in Pickwick Papers'?

Having arrived at the Mile End turnpike, the coach driver Sam Weller senior turned to Mr Pickwick and said: "Wery queer life is a pike-keeper's, sir". "A what?" asked Pickwick. His son, Sam junior, who was also Mr. Pickwick's servant, explained that his father meant a turnpike keeper.

"They're all on em men as has met with some disappointment in life," said Mr Weller senior. "Ay, ay?" said Mr. Pickwick.

"Yes. Consequence of vich, they retires from the world, and shuts themselves up in pikes: partly with the view of being solitary, and partly to rewenge themselves on mankind, by takin' tolls".

"Dear me," said Mr. Pickwick, "I never knew that before".

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