Turnpikes
Throughout
England, turnpike roads were an important part of life from around 1690
to 1840 - some 150 years or so.
Road users had to contribute to the upkeep
of the roads. Toll bars and turnpikes were set up at key points to ensure
that no one using the turnpike road evaded payment of the toll.
Royal
Mail coaches were common from around 1785 to 1840 - when the railways
rendered the stage coaches obsolete.
Before 1756, the old road from Leeds to London crossed the River Calder via Wakefield Bridge (often called Chantry Bridge), along Manygates Lane (then called Cock and Bottle Lane), Castle Lane to the Three Houses and then along Chevet Lane to Royston, eventually joining the Great North Road. See map.
Sandal Magna's elected Surveyor of Highways was responsible for the upkeep of highways of the township, and getting householders to fulfil their obligations was not always easy.
A similar situation prevailed throughout the country and, in an attempt to meet the growing need for better roads, turnpike roads were introduced. Tolls were levied at the bars or turnpike gates and these were used to pay for road maintenance.
Barnsley
Turnpike Road was first opened in 1756. Bars were erected at various points to prevent people using the side roads and so avoid paying tolls. Later,
the stage coaches provided much of income from the turnpikes. In 1777
it took 2.5 days to travel from Leeds to London on the turnpikes. More about turnpikes.
In 1836
the fastest stage coach to London took 23 hours to complete the journey.
That would have been a gruelling journey on the Great North Road (now
the A1 more or less) at an average speed of 8 miles an hour (13
km/h).
The turnpike at Sandal Bar closed in 1876 - well into the era of
the railways. For a while, stage coaches, canals and railways all co-existed.
The Royal Mail coach through Sandal ceased in 1840 when the business was
transferred to the railway. The Royal Mail stage coach travelled at an
average speed of 10 mph (16 km/h).
Highwaymen
Highwaymen
were a constant threat. By 1782, a stage coach from Leeds to London (taking
a mere 2 days) was advising passengers that it did not travel during the
night near London as that was a high risk area for attacks by highwaymen.
Often glamourised, the highwaymen were, in reality, just common thugs
and murderers. Their lives were brutish, they were generally ungallant,
and their lives often short.
One of
Sandal Magna's last Highway robberies happened in 1780, when the coachman
kept his life only because the highwayman's pistol misfired. Leeds
Intelligencer 18/07/1780.
Read more about William
Nevison, an infamous highwayman captured in Sandal Magna. He was credited
with the epic ride from London (actually
Gadshill in Kent on the London to Dover road) to York, some three hundred
or so kilometres (around two hundred miles) in 15 hours (at one time Dick
Turpin was credited with this ride, but that is now accepted as a work
of fiction).
^ top
 |
Captain James Hind
robbing Col. Harrison in Maidenhead Thicket.
For this crime, Hind was drawn, hanged and quartered at Worcester Gaol on
Friday 24th September 1652, aged 34 years.
(from A Complete History
of the Lives and Robberies of the Most Notorious Highwaymen,
Footpads, Shoplifts & Cheats of Both Sexes,
by Captain Alexander Smith, 1933 reprint of the 5th edition published
in 1719.)
~~~
"Hind
made our wealth one common store,
he robb'd the rich to feed the poor,-
What did immortal Caesar more?
A
somewhat romantic view of a criminal from
"To the Memory of Captain Hind", by a Poet of His Own Time.
Contained in
Lives and Exploits of English Highwaymen, Pirates & Robbers,
by Capt. Charles Johnson,
London, Henry G. Bohn, York St., Covent Garden |
^
top
