Turnpike trust

This article is about road tolls in the United Kingdom between the 17th to 19th centuries. For other toll roads, see Toll road.

The Hyde Park Gate in London, erected by the Kensington Turnpike Trust. This was the first toll point encountered along the Bath Road, upon leaving London.

Turnpike trusts were bodies set up by individual Acts of Parliament, with powers to collect road tolls for maintaining the principal roads in Britain from the 17th but especially during the 18th and 19th centuries. At the peak, in the 1830s, over 1,000 trusts[1] administered around 30,000 miles (48,000 km) of turnpike road in England and Wales, taking tolls at almost 8,000 toll-gates and side-bars.[2]

During the early 19th century the concept of the turnpike trust was adopted and adapted to manage roads within the British Empire (Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, and South Africa) and in the United States.[2]

Turnpikes declined with the coming of the railways and then the Local Government Act 1888 gave responsibility for maintaining main roads to county councils and county borough councils.

  1. ^ Parliamentary Papers, 1840, Vol 280 xxvii.
  2. ^ a b Searle (1930), p. 798.