BILL MCALLISTER: Toll houses are a reminder of our past... and our future?
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This is the 160th anniversary of the Highland Roads and Bridges Act which transferred responsibility for toll houses and roads to the new county councils.
It is also the 195th anniversary of Inverness’s original toll house, one of six erected around or not far from the burgh in that era to tax travellers and use the income to maintain the roads.
Scotland’s first toll house was on the then new Edinburgh-North Queensferry route in 1715 but lack of roads meant it took a century for the Highland ones to appear.
Muirtown Toll House, on Clachnaharry Road, in whose garden is a replica of the Titanic and other vessels, remains a private residence. Similarly, Ardersier Toll House, backing on to the firth at the entrance to the village, is refurbished and available for holiday lets.
The others have crumbled away to ruins – or disappeared completely.
They are relics of turnpike roads, so named because a man wielding a sharp pike would refuse you passage if you could not stump up this earliest form of road tax.
Parliament’s 1823 Toll Gate Act sparked the boom in thousands of toll houses being built, run by local turnpike trusts. They were built with a protruding bay window, through which people could pay, and with height, so the operator could spot traffic coming in good time.
There was annual bidding for the franchise to collect tolls with bidders gambling they could bring in much more than they were paying.
There was resentment by local people because some roads had five toll spots where payment was required, while others went good distances without the levy.
Highland roads had been little more than tracks for people and horses until the combined efforts of General Wade’s post-Culloden roadbuilding spree and Thomas Telford’s 1809 survey recommending new and better roads.
Seafield, where the city’s main retail park stands, was where Inverness’s first toll house opened in 1827, where travellers to and from Fort George and Nairn were surcharged. The mail coach between Nairn and Aberdeen only started in 1809 – before that a postman on horseback was the only communication!
Muirtown toll house arrived in the 1840s and a report in 1878 states there was originally a chapel beside the building. In 1844 Raigmore Toll House raked in a record £269, while Muirtown raised £162, with the Inverness-shire total that year being £1053.
But in 1857, the highest bidder for the right to run Muirtown coughed up £295, a new record for the Inverness area.
Some people will recall Stoneyfield Toll House, sited on the firth on the old road east. It was still in one piece in 1969 when the new dual carriageway diverted the A96. Now, however, it is a ruin, with one gable wall standing with three upstairs windows and one below.
The rest of the building, subject of a charming 1903 watercolour painting by Pierre Delavault, the Frenchman who taught art at Inverness Royal Academy, is, sadly, rubble.
Drakies Toll House was demolished in the mid-1960s to make way for the Raigmore Hospital entrance and local planners of the time deserve criticism for failing to preserve Drakies and Stoneyfield, part of our heritage.
If Muirtown Toll House ever becomes vacant, councillors must ensure it is not bulldozed…
There was a Toll Gate at Beauly and a Toll House at Maryburgh while south of Inverness the Toll House at Moy, demolished in 1873, is now a grassy mound.
The 1862 Act transferred roads from turnpike trusts, many of which were in debt and had thus not properly maintained surfaces, to the counties in which they lay. The likes of Inverness-shire County Council was set up. Most tolls were gradually abolished. The Act authorised councils to appoint county surveyors and county road boards to oversee the roads.
The advent of railways had hit toll income. Turnpike trustees had debts waived and in came a uniform tax on lands and property – the first council tax – to meet road repair bills. The tolls era faded from memory, leaving some local landmarks. Ironically, Transport Scotland is now considering reintroducing them to reduce our carbon footprint!
Sponsored by Ness Castle Lodges.
