One of our visitors at The Village Hub told us that her father or grandfather remembered having to pay to get in/out of Stoke Village, which got us wondering about tolls that people might have paid in our area in the past.
Before Vehicle Excise Duty (aka ‘Road Tax’ or tax discs) and centralised government funding for the upkeep and maintenance of roads, toll roads were common across England and Wales. These roads were managed by a series of “turnpike trusts1” who set up turnpikes (gates, toll houses or other barriers) to control access to the roads they looked after.
One of these turnpikes was situated at the junction of Milehouse Road with Molesworth Road in Stoke Village (on the old Plymouth and Tavistock Turnpike Road, which went from Devonport all the way to Tavistock2).
There was also a toll house where the Plymouth to Saltash and Devonport to Tavistock turnpike roads crossed at Milehouse. The area got its name because it was near the first milestone on each road, so it became known as the mile-house3.
More leads to explore:
- Map of Plymouth turnpikes by Alan Rosevear from turnpikes.org.uk – http://www.turnpikes.org.uk/map%20Plymouth%20turnpikes.jpg
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Image credit:
Child holding pocket money change – Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
References:
- Turnpike Trusts – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turnpike_trust ↩︎
- Alan Rosevear (2013) Plymouth and Tavistock Turnpike Road – http://www.turnpikes.org.uk/Devon%20-%20Tavistock%20Plymouth.htm ↩︎
- David Ayres (1965) A Short History Of Higher Stoke and Milehouse ↩︎
Contributors:
- Rachel Dobbs