f toll-gates found their principal customers in
the numerous coaches and the wagons which travelled up and down the
main roads, for the farmers could, and frequently did, by a little
mutual contriving, manage a cross-cut by their field-ways on to the
main road on the town side of a toll-gate, as in the case of
Bassingbourn and the Baldock Road into Royston. For the wagon traffic,
which conveyed much heavy merchandise, the older toll-gates had a
weigh-bridge attached to them so that the weight might be ascertained
and charged according to their scale. In later times the regular
coaches generally ran through without being stopped, and paid the toll
periodically.

The turnpike-road to Caxton--or rather from Royston Cross to Wandesford
Bridge in the county of Huntingdon, of which the southern part from
Royston to Kisby's Hut formed one Trust, is said to have been the first
turnpike-road in England.

{154}

Certainly the various Acts of Parliament for its repair and maintenance
date back to the time of Queen Anne, if not earlier, and, after turning
up in Acts all through the reigns of the Georges, ended with the Act of
1822 under which the old Trust was managed in the times of the modern
coaching days. The traffic never was sufficient to maintain the road
without resorting to a rate upon the neighbouring lands, owing to the
diversion of a good deal of the coaching and wagon traffic at Royston
for Cambridge, and the Trustees were often in great straits, and on the
horns of a dilemma--if they charged enough toll to pay their way, the
traffic was driven off the roads; if they modulated their charges the
roads went to the bad.

Money was advanced by private individuals upon the security of the
tolls, and the road between Royston and Arrington was always in debt
and dirty. So bad was it that the mail coaches were delayed, the
Postmaster-General came down upon the trustees, and Mr. McAdam, the
surveyor to the trustees (at a salary of L50 per annum), whose hands
were full of surveying at that time in various parts of England,
reported that though the road was "not indictable at common law, it
certainly was not in a fit condition to travel upon, at the speed which
the excellent regulations of the Post Office require." "It required
fourteen hundred tons of material and one thousand pounds value in
labour to put it into a proper condition, at a cost of L7,500, or about
L500 a mile"!

That this state of insolvency was not d